Glenn Chan
Forum Replies Created
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Virtualdub on the PC side has a bunch of noise removal plug-ins available.
MSU denoiser2- Now this workflow is pretty terrible, but Noise Ninja (Photoshop plug-in) does an even better job.
You have to export an image sequence of PROGRESSIVE frames to photoshop. And then batch actions in Photoshop (set things up first).
Noise Ninja is reasonably cheap and does a really good job.
3- Grain Surgery for After Effects does something similar to Noise Ninja. Supposedly it’s slightly inferior to Noise Ninja (this is from what digital still photography sites seem to say).
I think Grain Surgery is also available for FCP.4- Graeme Nattress (Nattress.com) also sells some noise reduction filters, although I have never tried them.
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Possibly a big deal has to do with economics. American TV shows are typically very well funded. The American market is quite large and American programming exports better than programming from other countries. I’m not saying that American culture is better, but rather there is a bigger demand for American culture/television than that of other countries.
It’s the only system where going over budget is expected. Everywhere else, producers have to keep their productions on budget.
Bigger budgets means the show can afford color correction at the telecine stage or tape-to-tape, which can really alter the look of a show (i.e. CSI) and make it look better/stylized.
2- PAL versus NTSC:
In the following interview, Yves Faroudja makes some interesting comments on how NTSC can be better than PAL when properly implemented. *Better in the sense that it’s more efficient. Since it has less bandwidth it doesn’t carry as much information as PAL.
https://www.avguide.com/film_music/film/film_main_04.jsp
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Nattress’ film effects (version 2.5) has curves (improved over previous versions). It has perfect conform since it’s a plug-in, as opposed to XML (which will lose some things like speed change). You can also play back footage, unlike Color Finesse.
$99, free upgrades, nice support direct from the developer himself.
The (dark) saturation is also nice… gives a different look that FCP’s and looks better in my opinion.
Do check out the demo first, and email for support if it doesn’t work on your system.
2- Effects Essentials looks interesting.
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It probably can’t render as slow as Magic Bullet. 😉
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If you’re doing video work and not print work, why do you need color sync?
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I think talent and experience plays a really big role in how good your footage looks.
I saw some Z1 and Varicam footage (bumped down to SD resolution) and I couldn’t tell the difference apart (until the editor pointed out weird artifacts the Z1 picks up in some rare situations). They had a pretty killer Z1 setup though… 35mm adapter, other accessories (LED lights, mattebox, field monitor), Discreet Smoke + professional colorist.
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Some web hosts give you a FTP server… i.e. I have dreamhost.com right now (they have some nice promotions)
Filezilla FTP software is free. There may be better/cheaper services around.Phone patches:
You can make your own device if you have soldering skills. I never really got my phone patch to work though (it did for one glorious moment… and then something happened). The one described in Jay Rose’s book Audio Postproduction for Digital Video will work. You may need to be careful about soldering capacitors, they are sensitive to heat.Some electronics stores do sell devices that’ll let you put the microphone feed so that the other side can hear it. i.e. Radio Shack has this thing for $30. It seems it only works with consumer miniplug inputs… doesn’t seem to like the inputs on a Mackie mixer.
Skype should also work, although you would need to get it working for the client. If the clients are going to the same studio, then that may not be a problem.
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Hey Ty,
I think the main reason is this:
The studio had 2 AT4040s, and only one Neumann.
To record two talent, you obviously need two microphones. So it’s just easier to leave the AT4040s in the shockmounts all the time.That, and I believe the AT4040 is more accurate / less coloration. As in, it doesn’t do anything “funky” to the sound that clients may not like. They also had a compressor in the chain, so maybe that didn’t make much sense.
It wasn’t exactly a high-end VO studio, so they may not be doing the same thing as everyone else.
At the end of the day, I think particular sub-$100 mics are more than good enough from a technical standpoint. The S/N ratio probably isn’t “bottlenecked” in the mic (need to consider background noise, preamp, A-D converter).
Then it really comes down to the microphone’s sound, which is subjective and depends on the talent and the voice you’re looking for.
Neutral mics obviously can’t have a negative effect on the sound. -
I interned at a voice-over recording studio two summers back. They had several microphones there, one of which is a Neumann (very expensive mic, over a thousand dollars). It got used once.
The mic they used all the time was one of the Audio Technica large diaphragm condensors (AT4040 I think), because it is pretty much accurate to the talent’s voice and doesn’t color it.
Sometimes coloration is desireable. Dynamic microphones add a particular coloration to the talent’s voice. A particular microphone’s coloration/tone may work better on some voices than others.
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The laptop may have really poor S/N ratio because laptops have to cram all the electronics in a small space, and this makes the analog-digital converters more prone to interference.
2- Your best bet may be to record sound into the camera (it’ll be synced, which saves you time). The Rode Videomic is affordable and a great microphone from what other people are saying about it.
The boom for it may be good too, and it’s also affordable (about half the cost of other products). Using the boom to get closer to the sound source will improve your audio dramatically.3- If your camera has XLR inputs, that opens you up to world of (slightly) better and pricier equipment.