Jean-christophe Boulay
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Justin,
Since the clipped audio never goes over -12dB, your camera clearly did not do the clipping. You are absolutely correct in thinking the clip was elsewhere and you could only control the level of the clipped audio. It may have something to do with the engineer sending you a -10dBV signal while all his internal bussing and levels were for his main +4dBU outs. That’ll cause havoc on many makes of live boards. Bad cables can do lots of stuff to your audio, but clipping the signal isn’t one of them. Vodka has a negligeable effect on audio as well. A good thing that is, too.
Sadly, there ain’t no going back now. That audio is clipped forever. There are tools to remove a clip here and there, but what I see in those screenshots is pretty much a lost cause. I hope you had everything on your mic channel.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
For the complete lowdown on all things PT, I suggest you come over and join us on the Digidesign User Conference at duc.digidesign.com.
In general, PT8 is relatively stable on newer MacPro’s, though a few bugs have been flagged. A few of those cause crashes after a specific series of MIDI track manipulations. A few MIDI track resizing issues as well. There have been many reports of problems with Beat Detective working with fades, so if you rely on that kind of workflow, you should clearly wait it out. The main issue, though, seems to be screen redraws and general performance becoming extremely sluggish on many systems, mostly G5’s with ATI graphics cards, though the culprit has yet to be identified exactly. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for the slowdown and it may be down to memory leaks that made it through beta.
The upgrade process itself is pretty smooth if you’re already running Leopard. Since you’re on 7.4.2 I imagine that is the case. Plugin compatibility has not changed at all since 7.4.2, so you save a lot of headaches there.
If you have a current system with power to spare, I’d say go for it. If you have an older system or laptop, I’d wait it out until at least the first CS update release. If you’re going to do this kind of upgrade on any machine involved in your day-to-day workflow, I always advise that you set up a dual boot system, so you always have your fully-functional 7.4.2 system should things go pear-shaped with the new system.
Happy pondering!
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Nicholas,
First, go heat some water for the tea you’ll be sipping while doing all those exports. Exporting your consolidated regions is the way to go, indeed. The resulting files will take the name of the regions they were exported from. Of course, you need the PT MP3 Option to do this.
For meters, there are a few options in the “audio analyzer” plugin market, but those will only show you the one channel they are inserted on. A neat trick I’ve seen used is to create a window configuration that just shows the faders in narrow mix view and put it on the top of your monitor. It makes a decent meter bridge, but it eats up lots of screen real estate.
As for plugins, Inspector XL is well regarded, but you might want to try the free version (https://www.rndigital.org/inspector.html) as it might be all you need. As a true meter plugin, Waves Dorrough is fabulous but very expensive for a software meter, IMO.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Montreal is accepting of everyone. English is way more widespread than in QC. Phrasebooks are still accepted, though. The beat is different as well, more active. Summer in Montreal is just crazy. Too much to see and hear and once.
Not too sure about that warm breeze part, though. It is not too cold a day today, but -6C is not warm by any standard I know of.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
As usual, there is not much more to say after Mr. Ford has spoken. I would suggest that, while trying to get the tightest sound possible with the lav, also run a boom if that’s workable at all. I love receiving tight production sound to mix, but having the boom track will give you the flexibility of adding as little or as much air around your subject as you want.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Between the three you listed, Pro Tools takes it hands-down. I’m used to sitting on a fat TDM rig so couldn’t advise on the DV Toolkit issue, but that should be checked out before you buy anything. If you ever get stuck, there’s loads of people that are super-fluent in PT, which is more than can be said for Audition and SoundForge. Digidesign only makes Pro Tools, while Adobe and Sony have bigger fish to fry.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
You can’t do much better than the DUC. Some of use spend half our lives on there and every question that has an answer gets one very quickly. If you’re experiencing some kind of bug, Technical Support also monitors the forum and chimes in once in a while.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
That sounds like a sweet gig! Parabolic mics are really good to pick up sound that is far away, but lack low-frequency response, which is a problem if you’re recording really powerful engines and want the “oomph” that goes with them. The parabolic would be good to record the whole run continuously, but you wouldn’t have that super-fast whoosh-by you’d get from fixed shotguns along the way. To complement those recordings, an omnidirectional mic might be useful, to record the whole atmosphere. As land speed records are usually done on dry lakes, the omni would pick up the engine sound bouncing off the surrounding landscape.
If I had to mix a show with big engines going really fast, those are the sounds I’d want to have at my disposition.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Rodney is right. Bass traps affect only the bass that remains in your room. Whatever goes through walls is out of your control. You (or rather your neighbours) are SOL&JWF. Appart from all the things you listed as not options, there ain’t much you can do.
And Rodney, i believe he meant “DJing”, which would explain the strained neighbours.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
If you’re going to be doing more complex stuff, learning the right way to do it and going at it with the optmial tools is definitely the way to go. These two examples are very basic things that can be done in most applications that have such a thing as an audio editor included in them. So if this is the funkiest manipulation you’ll do, don’t invest, just learn the tricks to achieve what you need. If you want to have a larger palette, then investing in software and plugins and especially investing time in learning the chops and fooling around with your new toys is a must.
For your telephone effect, you can make it more realistic by bringing up a compressor after your filtering and really compressing the hell out of it, with something like a 6:1 ratio and fast attack and release settings. I’m talking 10dB gain reduction to start with. The breaths will come to the front and, combined with the filtering, give you a truer rendition of what a phone really sounds like. Of course, recording through a phone in the first place is best, but it gives you zero maneuvrability if the plan changes or the client wants a different effect.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com