Jean-christophe Boulay
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Bob,
I have a Studio Technologies StudioComm 74/75 system here for 5.1 monitor controller duties. It has two 5.1 inputs, a matrix unwrap function, talkback, dub out and pretty much all other features you’d expect from such a device. The company make simpler and cheaper models as well. I’ve had good mileage from Studio Technology devices up to now. Since everything goes in XLR or 1/4″, better check that soldering iron beforehand.
https://www.studio-tech.com/ProductPage-M74M75.htmAnother studio is equipped with a Dynaudio AIR system, which connects all speakers through Ethernet and integrates a table-top controller. That system is super-sleek, perfect for easily jumping from one config to another. I don’t like the sound of those speakers, myself, though. Blue Sky also make systems based on the same principle and I remember them sounding pretty good. This kind of integrated system might be worth checking out.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Personally, I’d plug the destination drive into a Windows PC, format the drive there, capture everything to whatever format the client asked for locally on the Mac and transfer the whole lot to the destination over the network. That’s clearly a night-time transfer. It’s a clunky setup, but it ensures everything will be readable by the client first try. Asking a client to install software to complete my job is against my rules, personally.
Any old semi-functional Windows XP or later machine should do the trick as long as its FW and LAN ports work.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Oh yeah! I forgot about DigiTranslator, which is needed for OMF interchange.
*flush*
That sound was the MIDI Timepiece workaround going down the drain. It’s no good having TC if you can’t move your project around.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
In post it’s all about ProTools. I’ve personally given a shot at pretty much every DAW out there. Logic and Cubase are both superb software for composing and mixing music. Logic even does a very good job of simple post work. But the real post tool that does it (almost) all would be Pro Tools. Nuendo has a great feature-set that could position it, but it lacks the adoption level PT has. I really hate to recommend something because “everyone else is doing it”, but to get into sound design the alternatives all have more downsides. To work to picture, SMPTE is of course super-important. I’d personally say the Video Toolkit add-on to PTLE is almost essential to work to picture. If you can get your hands on an old MOTU MIDI Timepiece, you could convert SMPTE to MIDI TC that PTLE can chase. That’s probably the cheapest way to TC-enable PTLE. You also need quite a selection of plug-ins in most sound design scenarios, which adds to the outlay.
There’s no doubt that, by gearing up for serious sound work, you’re opening a can of darn expensive worms. As Ty pointed out, Digidesign almost always have upgrade plans in place to go up a notch once you’ve reached the limit of your current setup. Most of all, with PT, you are guaranteed your DAW and audio interface will play nice, since they are from the same company.
As for Soundtrack Pro, I have yet to hear an audio pro mention it outside a humorous context. In four words: it’s a joke.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Why not just keep your 1080 sequence and export it to whatever SD format you need with letterboxing or other “preserve aspect ratio” setting on? That’ll give you your HD frame inside the 4:3 without fussing with your sequence presets and messing up your field dominance. Way quicker, way less chances of screwing something up. You won’t have near HD quality, though, as was stated earlier.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Some people still use auto-locators and tape in 2010? Seriously?
For every single ADR session I’ve done in the last few years (Flahspoint, Bloodletting, Degrassi…), we received the scenes to rework as QT files with BITC. Other times, we get Beta SP tapes of the offline and digitize that to QT. We set that up in a PT session with a range marker for every loop, slap some post-sync beeps in front of all the loops and jump from one loop to the other simply by jumping to the marker matching the loop number. Depending on the talent, I rarely actually loop the line. Usually, after one playback, the talent can nail the rhythm (if the talent has talent, that is). Pretty much every dialog editor asks for one boom track and one lav track and it’s up to the recording engineer to adapt to the the dialog editor’s preferred setup.
Mastery of this technique is not very specific. Any post engineer quick enough on his feet can do ADR sessions. Once the setup is done, it’s really very straightforward. It’s one of the least complicated types of session. It’s as straightforward for the dialog editor, as he gets a PT session, imports the tracks and gets the ADR takes right on top of the set takes. It’s pretty much business as usual for him after that.
Equipment is relatively simple, though you need a fully-referenced, timecode-enabled DAW and video setup to do things by the book. A selection of mics is always good to have to match the source and a lavalier mic is usually necessary. Clean, unflattering preamps are also good to have. You also need a video setup for the talent that will not leak high frequencies into the mic.
If I had to pinpoint the one operation in sound post where technology has changed the game the most, it would probably be ADR. What used to take half a day of set-up with four different machines and a few hours of recording can now be done on a whim, with a 20-minute setup in one computer and a 40-minute session. SourceConnect has opened the door to dialog editors directly listening in on sessions and pulling favorite takes on the fly from anywhere in the world, which steamlines the process even further.
If you have any more questions, post them and I shall try to answer them.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
I’ve used a Holophone to record ambiances. I can’t really see it fitting into a typical video shoot workflow, though, mainly for the reasons Ty mentions. It’s useless to record on-set, as you’ll record everyone behind the cameras and the mixer will want that track in mono anyways. On a set, it will also record the ambiance of the whole set including all the things you don’t want.
For its uses, it it great. It records killer surround ambiances. That’s still a pretty niche market. You usually record an ambiance once, transfer it to the database and will never record it again. In that perspective, it’s a mic I’d rent a few times rather than buy once. Also, as Ty hints, this is a sound engineer’s mic. There aren’t that many on-set sound guys I know I’d want fussing around with my surround.
As a mixer, I’d take mono tracks over Holophone tracks almost every time. I may lay those mono tracks over an ambiance recorded through a Holophone, but that’s about as far as I see its use going in most typical workflows.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
The AJA site should really open on a photo of Bob giving the thumbs-up.
I have to agree, though. They have yet to disappoint me.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
“How do I convert the audio to 23.98?”
You don’t. You’re talking either video frame rate or time code rate. Audio has sample rate, in your case 44.1kHz. The rest of the workflow seems pretty iffy to me, but if that’s the way it has to go down, I guess it could work.
Ideally, you’d really want your audio on a timecoded source, to be able to run that TC to your camera. Some major swearing from the video editor would be saved this way. Traditionally, music videos are shot using an audio CD with the song in mono on the left side (that gets played on the set) and audio timecode on the right track (that goes into the camera TC input). The TC format you use should be the one you shoot in. That way, every time the song is started, TC goes to the camera and all takes can be aligned to audio for editing in seconds, without having to go back to the beginning of the take all the time. I’ve been involved in such projects countless times and this workflow has always been airtight.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com