Frank Nolan
Forum Replies Created
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[fablephil] “Any suggestions on how best to get a stereo recording of a live music performance, either in-cam or standalone to sink later.”
The way to “best” get a stereo recording of a live performance is to record, through a seperate mixer than the house, to a multitrack device and mixdown the music later in post.
What’s your budget?
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[dgadirector] “Frank, are you talking about reformatting the cards while in the PowerBook? If so, I didn’t know that could be done. That would be great. How would I do it?”
I was actually referring to re-formatting the cards in the camera, however on one shoot I did, I had to shoot for over 2 hours continuously in 24pn. I have 4 x 8gb cards (only 84 minutes) so I did have to “format” the cards in my G4 PB during the shoot. There isn’t a format tool as such so what I did was transfer the data to an external FW drive. Once I verified in the import window of FCP that the footage was there and played OK, I deleted the contents and lastclip.txt file from the card. I then emptied the trash while holding down “option” so it would delete the locked files. This worked ok and I would hot swap an empty card back in the camera while still shooting.
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A couple of things I have found using a G4 1.5ghz laptop. The issue Shane mentioned about computer locking up, I found out that it actually wasn’t locking up although it appeared to be. What was happenning was that after each card, it would take longer and longer to mount the next one. Sometimes up to 3 minutes but it would eventually mount if let alone. When you’re in a high pressure environment to get the card off loaded it can be quicker just to reboot every 5 or 6 cards.
If you have FCP 5.1 or later installed you can check the footage in the P2 import window as long as you are offloading to FW drives. You bring the cards up in the import window and play them but do not actually import them. Once verified you can reformat the cards.
When doing a 2 camera shoot, it may be advisable to have 2 offloading stations, if the shoot is continuous. I did a 2 camera shoot once with only 1 laptop and it was held up while waiting for downloads. Use FW800 drives for the fastest downloads. -
[Patson] “On location, I want to be able to have two people mic’d so that as one is talking, if the other coughs, the cough doesn’t mess up the audio of the first person. “
One often mis-understood concept of discrete channel audio recording is that you get totally clean audio on each channel.
Even with 2 seperate systems recording to 2 discrete channels you will still hear the cough from the other person on the speakers channel, if they are standing next to each other, just as you would hear the cameraman cough or a car going by or whatever other ambient sound is in the vicinity of the microphone. It will be “off mic” but you will still hear it nonetheless. -
The sound devices SD302 is a great little mixer within your budget.
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HDV is notorious for not handling motion very well so I would avoid the sony, jvc and canon hdv cameras. I would go with the Panasonic HVX200 if you’re looking for a compact HD camera.
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According to the ATSC, there are about 20 or so different formats that are considered HD. DVCProHD, which the HVX can shoot in either 720 or 1080, is one of those “standards”.
Look up the ATSC website for more information.
https://www.atsc.org/ -
I think $4995 is the best deal I’ve seen from an authorized dealer. That was at studio exchange in Burbank CA.
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[Mike McDonald] “Is AT100 or Sennheiser 500 G2 better?”
No. definitely not better. Cheaper, Yes.
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[jamski] “It should be noted that, at least for the foreseeable future, that while we shoot in HD with our Varicam, we do not edit in HD. There’s just no need in our market for HD end-products. “
So what form of SD are you cutting and keying in? This could also have an effect on how good of a key you can get. For instance if you capture your varicam footage to a 10bit uncompressed SD codec you will get better keys that if you captured to a DV NTSC codec.