Jean-christophe Boulay
Forum Replies Created
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Have you tried booting in Verbose mode (command+V)? It’ll usually hang on a particular line every time. Try copying that into Google or report back with it. Sounds like hardware trouble, though, so the timing may be a coincidence.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
It’s how Ms. Diane taught me this and, to this day, I still visualize apples when working with fractions. No nagging intended. OK, maybe just a little. 🙂
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
I’ll second Peter all the way. That’s a mighty big step you’re taking there and you need a good audio technical background to digest the step up from stereo to surround, never mind theatrical delivery. If it makes any economic sense at all, I’d also recommend you find a post house that can do this for you. A 2-minute program can be mixed quite quickly by experienced hands so the bill shouldn’t bleed you dry but if it’s for friends and you’re already spending a bunch, it may not make sense to invest on this. Remember: a good stereo mix will always sound way better than a “meh” surround mix.
If you decide to go surround, Peter has pointed you in exactly the right direction as to what to put where. Use the surrounds very sparingly. The tendency is always to put way too much in there the first time you try. Put as little as you think you need, then take some more away. It’s good training and fun to try it yourself and find things out by listening at home, but if there’s an actual deliverable, especially theatrical, I can’t recommend you hire a pro enough. On top of the actual mixing, there’s just so much to cover on monitoring levels and position, metering, AC-3 dialnorm level, deliverable standards… Or stick to stereo, which will also fill a room quite well when coming from huge speakers. There are also level requirements for stereo, so check that out if you stay in LR world.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
The words of the song are usually on the same copyright as the tune of the song. Usually. There are many exceptions. It can be a bit of a pain to find these details. A good place to look if you want to acquire rights is with the music editor of the artist. You can usually find that info in the fine print of any record with the song on it.
Of course, there are a lot of unapproved versions of songs on YouTube. Tons of them. Technically, all of them are illegal but since YouTube has a takedown policy, it’s them the rights-holders will complain to if they’re misguided and don’t want a few million more people to hear their song in a format that would never generate revenue to begin with. The number of takedowns is quite low these days, as more people accept the “new paradigm”. If videos were on a personal site generating revenue, then the lawyer letters would probably come a lot faster. That’s if someone is watching out for that song. Only the biggest, most profitable catalogs are watched in this way.
Now that the context of the whole thing is clearer, the chances of getting into trouble for showing such a video down the pub to mates is vanishingly small. It’s probably covered by fair-use provisions in most countries, as it could fall under private performance and satire. While I can’t recommend you do it on here, I probably would myself in the same situation. Going though rights-clearing for such a situation is a tad over-the-top. It’s your call, really.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Gary,
There are a few issues with this. First of all, there is the technical aspect; while it is possible, through phase manipulations, to take most of the voice out of many recorded and mixed songs, the opposite is not true. If you want the solo voice, you need access to the unmixed tracks, which I’m guessing you don’t have for Queen’s catalog. Which brings us to the legal aspect. Not only is it illegal to have any version of “We Are The Champions” in your work without synchronization and performance rights from the rights-holder, usually the artist or his succession, it is illegal for you to alter the finished recorded song (removing instruments) without permission from the owner of the master tracks, which is usually the record label. Also, who holds the synchronization rights can vary from one country to the next.
Now, these kind of chanting things are normally done in walla sessions. That funny name basically means having a few people around a microphone who will chant/cheer/jeer for many takes, with changes in tone and timing and script from one take to the other. We then mix it all up with EQ and reverb to create the illusion of distance and spread. You need a good mic, a non-reverberant room and some good mates who’ll go through this (beer and pizza never hurt). There can be quite a bit of involved mixing to do once the recordings are done, depending on what you’re looking for.
If the chanting is done in walla, you need the rights to the song only, not to its recordings. Unless you want the actual song to play in the background. Still, it’s quite a bit of work to secure those and there is no charity involved in the process; it will probably cost you. Can you take a chance and wing it without rights? Sure. Can I recommend you do that? No way. It’s without doubt one of the most watched-out-for songs out there, with cease-and-desist letters already written and waiting for a stamp.
What you’re doing now with you half-second delay is putting a constant delay on the exact same sound, which, I’m afraid, will never sound like a crowd chanting. It’ll sound like the song going through a guitar pedal board. I recommend a re-think that involves less technical and legal hoops to jump through.
This one has no quick, easy fix and the end results are unlikely to justify the hassle. I’d recommend you look in the direction of library music that permits overdubbing. Or simply a library track of crowd chanting.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
You start with 100 apples. You take 40% of them away, you have 60 apples. You want 100 apples again. If you add 40%, that’s 40% of 60 apples, which is 24 apples. You want 40 apples over your 60 apples, which is 2/3, which is 66.66667%. After you slow down the footage, the reference frame changes with it.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
I haven’t seen this particular issue with FCP exports, but I have seen Mac OS report completely bogus file sizes before. In most cases I remember, it was after a QT export out of QT itself. The Finder will report the file as being an impossibly-small size, but when you go get the file through the network or even move the file to another folder in the Finder, the file size updates to the correct value. Sounds a bit like what you’re seeing. A little DiskWarrior and permissions routine usually fixes this, as far as I can tell.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Greg,
If FAT32 doesn’t work for you, and in video in seldom works, one of you will have to install additional software. If you decide to modify the Mac, there’s Paragon’s aptly-named NTFS For Mac which will give Mac OS the possibility of formatting drives in NTFS and to write to them. If you decide to modify the PC, the solution is MediaFour’s MacDrive, which lets the PC read HFS disks.
Personally, I’d get NTFS For Mac, simply so it’s you buying and installing software and not your client. Also, it’s way cheaper.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
https://www.mediafour.com/products/macdriveIHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
This is a classic in audio editing. You need a closed intention to finish the sentence but you only have an open intention because you chopped off the end of the sentence. No combination of effects or treatments will give you a convincing closed intention from an open one. You really have to replace the audio.
The absolute best solution to this is to have the talent on hand and just have him read the new sentence end. Of course, if you’ve gone to this length, that’s not possible. Next would be to go through all the session records in the hopes of finding the exact work you’re after with a closed intention that could be patched in. Unless you had an exhaustive alternates list during recording, the chances of this are minute. So, pro-tip, find someone around the office with a similar voice, record them saying the complete sentence in sync with your source sound, but only keep the trailing edge of the last word and try and cut that in there. Work with EQ and whatever other tools you have to make it fit. If the result sounds horrible, maybe you can get away with a subtle SFX to cover it a bit, depending on context. It’s Level 2 audio editing for sure, but it usually works pretty well.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Roli,
With the FCP disc in a useable optical drive, open up Disk Utility. In the drive list to the left, select your install disc and then click on New Image on the top menu. Then you just have to decide where to save it. For the other options you have, you can keep the image compressed for your purposes and encryption may be a tad over-the-top in this situation. You’ll have to repeat the operation for each install disc, but you never have to get your discs out again after that. I have a hard drive with images like this of most software and system installs are super-fast with it. Don’t forget to create a folder or file with your CD key.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com