Jean-christophe Boulay
Forum Replies Created
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Finding old Apple OS’s is hard. It almost seems like Apple incinerates every last unsold copy when they bring out a new one. You could go to eBay and Craigslist to find it, but I’ve seen Tiger going for around 150$, which is the same price as a new SL box set. I’d be doing the rounds of my geek friends to find someone who has that installer. I’m sure there are darker corners of the internetz where people would give you another response. Once you track down the installer, the link Alex posted will bring you up to 10.4.11.
That little computer will always be sluggish. It was underpowered when it was released, so it’s normal that it’s choking six years later. Running Tiger on it is probably what I’d do. Leopard was clearly designed with Intel-equipped computers in mind with more eye-candy and background tasks and it would be dreadful on a single G4 CPU.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Here’s a link: https://spl.info/software/microplugs/de-verb.html
On first try, I was really impressed with this plug-in. It’s a process that’s achievable through other tools, but to have it with one knob is very impressive. One second of mouse clicking mostly replaces 15 minutes’ work. You can still hear pumping when you’re removing boomy rooms, but mixing in music, effects or even just a room tone mostly masks that. It works pretty well for something that’s supposed to be impossible. There are many scenarios where it just can’t work, though. I ran some super-roomed rock concert recording through it and it mangled it completely, because the tail of the reverb was always combined with lots of direct signal. There’s clearly some creative use to be done with drum mixing.
This plug should be a no-brainer for anyone working with sound captured in the wild. At 40 Euros, it’s a steal. Just don’t let sound recordists know it exists or they’ll slack off, like when they learned about noise reduction. Anyone working with music a lot should plop for the full Transient Designer, IMO. That’s a great plug!
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
The Help page you quoted refers to video files sent as attachments, which is not your case.
Go to the YouTube page of the video you want to send and click on the Share button below it. Underneath the big link that appears is another button labeled Embed. Clicking that will open a text zone contain the embed link for your video. If you paste that into your email, I think most modern email clients will treat it correctly and show the YouTube video inside the email body. I’ve gotten a few emails like this through Thunderbird and webmail, and it worked fine. The wisest thing would be to test-send it to yourself to be sure.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Steve,
There is no one answer to your question. The main variable is the quality of the recordings. Sometimes you get great audio from a good recordist on a set run by a director who knows his sound (as in he keeps people’s mouthes and cellphones shut). Then you get the audio from the recordist who couldn’t tell a sound check from a hunting accident, where you hear people filling their coffee on the set and talking about their weekend. If you’re editing and mixing the dialogs, it’s your job to make it work, no matter what. If you’re lucky, you can have a say in what lines are to be redone in ADR, but that is often a separate process you have no say in. You get a heap of sound and have to make it work. That’s both the chaos and beauty of the work.
A part of the work is hunting around for better sound takes, as they’ll keep the best picture takes at the video edit regardless of their audio. That often includes retracing takes through EDL’s, transfer lists and sound logs. Once in the mix, you’ll of course need lots of EQs and dynamics processors as well as some sturdy noise reduction. You could also need pretty much every other audio effect known to man to cover all your bases, as well. The dialog you mix could be happening in any type of room, behind windows, out of speakers… though that is often left for the final mix if you’re only acting as dialog editor. If not, you need the tools to create it all.
But the most useful tool for editing and mixing dialog is the one most people neglect: a hardware VU meter. There is no better way to easily gauge and keep your perceived levels constant, especially on long-form projects. Software meters are usually PPM and you have to open a window to see them. Hardware VU meters can be just in your peripheral vision so you don’t even have to really look at them. It’s the tool I rely on most when working on dialog.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.comPS: or were you talking about voice over recording? I could also write a novel on that subject.
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“Core iX” is an expression relating to the current crop of Intel CPUs. It refers to Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors. It just means Core i-something.
What has changed lately is the introduction of the second generation of Core CPUs, named Sandy Bridge. While these keep the Core iX naming scheme, their model numbers are in the 2000’s, for example Core i7-2600. This architecture is way faster than its predecessor.
No Apple product uses these new CPUs. Maybe the next MacPro’s will use them, maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see. These CPU’s are shipping outside of Apple-land, though. Got a new laptop with one and it’s screaming fast.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi again,
Indeed, I should’ve suggested you look at iZotope’s range. iZotope RX2 costs less than Waves Z-Noise and can help you cure much more problems. That would be a much wiser investment in your situation, IMO.
The glassy artifacts you’re hearing are the result of going too far with a full-range noise reducer. It’s a fine balancing act of noise and artifacts. That’s why I advocate setting up the rest of the mix first and then, once the background is set, you have a better idea of how much you can get away with. Sometimes, the artifacts will be masked so you should push it, sometimes the noise will be masked so you should hold back. If your denoised sound will be all naked and hanging out there, I’d probably go for subtlety. The ear is more used to noise than metallic artifacts popping up out of nowhere. At that point, it’s about choosing the lesser evil, as it often is with noise reduction.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Alex,
Z-Noise is a good tool, but I doubt it’s the solution to your noise problems. Z-Noise is meant for removal of full-range, constant noise. It works exactly like the noise reduction tool in STP does, with a learn function. It will treat your white noise problems pretty well but will struggle with more frequency-specific and less consistant noises such as hum, AC noise, street noise and rain. Those scenarios are where the other types of noise reduction tools come in handy. In Waves-land, those are W43, inspired by the Dolby CAT43, and WNS, Waves’ take on the Cedar approach. This being Waves, both are available only as part of the really serious bundles. All “affordable” noise reduction tools will be comparable to what you already have in STP.
I don’t think Z-Noise would be a wise investment in your situation. You wouldn’t be gaining much compared to the tool you already have at your disposal, which is pretty powerful already. To get a real edge over what you have would mean a mighty investment in a more complete DAW.
As for Waves and STP, Waves say it’s possible to get it to work, but Waves plugins work best WaveShell-aware hosts, which STP is not. If you only have to use one plugin per WaveShell at a time, it will work fine. If you want to use more than one plugin hosted in the same WaveShell, you may have trouble. Then again, maybe not.
I find noise reduction should be left alone until the sound mix. It’s no good denoising loads of audio that won’t make it to the final cut and the sound mixer should have the tools and, most important, overall perspective of how much noise he can get away with in the final mix, so he has less chance of introducing artifacts by going too far. Denoising out of context in useless.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Everett,
Definitely PT’s fault. OMF import has had some changes in PT9 aside from the fact it’s now built-in. Avid have been very quiet about this, but the behaviour in some situations has changed. Still, I think this problem is specific to your system. If PT9 could not import from FCP OMFs, the backlash would’ve been huge and instantaneous.
Have you done the good ol’ PT incantations of trashing preferences and databases, DiskWarrior’ing your system and audio drives, creating a new admin account and trying the operation from there…? I’ve seen PT import audio as noise in version 7.something and the PT Revival Ritual worked for me then. From your description, I’d wager on DiskWarrior settling the issue.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Fred,
What model Mac are we talking about here? I have a weird friend who has an unhealthy thing for pre-cute Apple computers who may have what you need. He tells me that most of the sites where his ilk hung out have closed one by one and finding old updates and firmware is a mighty hunt now. If you have the details on the firmware you need, I’ll check with him and you might get lucky. There’s a good chance you’re out to dry unless you arrange for secret meetings with retro nerds in seedy cantinas.
Good luck!
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
In audio, the same kind of cry came up when Apple released its own version of Logic. “This is a toy!” we clamored. “This is user-friendly!” we bellowed. “I don’t have to program my own mixer from scratch! This is heresy!” we cried. You know what? All we were being was whiny little b!tches. The software was prettier, easier and more accessible, but more important than all that, it was better. Yes, my uncle could now have a hope of understanding what was going on, but we pros now could accomplish our work faster and easier than before. No one complains about it anymore.
Moral of this tale: wait until it’s in front of you before you pan it. Eating our own words never tastes so good.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com