Heather Walters
Forum Replies Created
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Dave, those are good suggestions. Unfortunately I have no GPU decoding available, but the Handbrake suggestion in particular may be what I need. Thank you for the advice!
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*Sigh*. I can get a 720p video if I use wmv (tho in the past, when I rendered it with audio, but removed audio tracks the wmvs stuttered very badly during shot transitions). I will try 480p mp4 and see if the hardware chokes. It shouldn’t, as it’s only SD and the bit rate is around 2Mbps.
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Cool, I will try this immediately. THANK YOU!
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Thanks! I’m still pretty weak on codecs (I get the feeling that even after learning them for 10 years the subject is still confusing for many people).
Could you perhaps point me in the direction of menu choices in my render dialogue? I read somewhere that the quicktime animation codec doesn’t ship with Vegas 8 (I am using Vegas Pro 9, is it still this way?). Is it freely available for download, or does it cost? Do I use the .mov container?
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I worked around it by taking mxf files and chroma keying out the black background, but it seems….inelegant.
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Thank you, I had heard that Sony Vegas was fairly capable for NLEs with its audio (just don’t really know how to use anything other than basic EQ sliders on it). In defense of my boss, I think he wants eventually for us to really build our own studio in the future, a bit at a time, with me being the one in charge of all the studio work. I am just beginning to get a handle on the video side of it. I think he knows that we would really have a long way to go, both with me learning the audio skills, and audio equipment that we would add down the line. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know any more than me about audio at this point, but I believe he is just trying to get the check writer to approve as much equipment as he can for us so that we do everything “in-house” as opposed to renting and hiring outside help (which is the unofficial policy of our parent company).
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Ok, thanks anyways for your time and advice!
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Thank you all for your good, sound advice. I would love to take it. My boss is the one insisting that a boom mic is what we will be purchasing and he does not believe we need a mixer, a boom operator, a sound tech, rentals, or anything that would make this shoot better audio-wise. Until yesterday I didn’t even know about cardioid, omnidirectional, etc, that is how unqualified I am to do sound. Neither one of us do, but this is how he wants it done. (by the way, the commercial will be shot indoors, inside our conference room. The actress will speak in front of a greenscreen, so no worries about scenery at all. I’m going to try to talk him into at least putting up some egg crate on the walls or something). He wants to buy the shotgun as it’s more versatile than a lav, I guess. I posted the question before I found out his final word. It was my bad. Given all of my restrictions, I understand I’ll probably have off-axis noise (humming of the lights overhead, building noises, etc) and the actress’s voice won’t be true, correct? Does anyone know of some basic tutorials on the internet where I can find maybe “how to bring up bass in voice, how to reduce hiss on a track” kind of stuff? I know I’m going to run into problems, I am just wondering where someone can point me right now so I can be more prepared for it when I go into post. I will be using Sony Vegas Pro 9 in post. (Yep, no standalone audio programs either. This commercial is kind of a one time deal for us. Our other commercials generally have no audio whatsoever, or there is a music track playing. Not sure why we’re buying a mic and greenscreen instead of renting and hiring a sound person, since this is not our usual workflow, but I’m not the decision maker.)
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Thanks so much for your quick response! I will be using a boom mic as I was told that a lav is completely out of the question, and that the mic MUST be boom-mounted. There will be no one to hold the boom, and they will hire no sound man. So I will have to use a shotgun mic, mounted on a tripod stand boom that the actress will stand under. I also will have to record the audio directly into our EX3. I am going to choose the Audio Technica AT875R (with some cabling, tripod boom stand and mic clip), which apparently stands up really well against its much more expensive counterparts, or so I’ve read. I hope, with what I have to work with, that this is going to be my best solution.
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Ok now I have to backtrack. My boss just informed me that lavalier mics suck and I am required to use a boom mic. So I guess my whole question is now moot!