[John Fishback]

Read the following thread. It is very instructive about rights policy. Basically, if it’s a copyrighted work you need a license to use it. The non-profit rationale or “it’s for educational purposes” rationale is basically hogwash.

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?univpostid=855867&forumid=17&postid=855939&pview=t

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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[John Fishback]

Other than eq to bring up the bottom there’s not much you can do. You can try FCPs multi-band compressor and use it to bring up the bottom. Maybe there’s an audio plugin that can help. I know Waves had a mega-bass (?) plugin that enhanced the bottom end for music, but that usually requires that there is some bottom to begin with. Good luck.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

Here’s another logging app. I’ve not used it, but it looks promising. And, it’s free! https://dvcreators.net/qt-movie-notetaker

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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AJA IO driver 2.1 firmware v23-28
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/movielogger/

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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[John Fishback]

Back in the 80s when we had a large 24 track music studio a client recorded a parody version of a popular song for use in a business meeting. The meeting was a one-time event somewhere in the middle of Ohio. It just so happened that the songwriter’s brother was staying at the hotel and walked by the meeting room just as the song was being played. The result wasn’t pretty with the client and company for whom he did the work paying out a lot of money to settle. This was a wakeup call for me. I had never thought about copyright issues. Now, we simply never record or use any copyrighted material without the appropriate license. Without an actual license (and despite all the rationale clients will throw at you), you are crazy to bet your business to make a few bucks.

We subscribe to a large music library for use in our productions. Recently a client asked about using music in a program which will be sold. I thought this was beyond the extent of our license so I called to check out the pricing. I was right. That use required additional licensing. Just the other day, I was starting a project that would end up streaming on the internet. I suddenly wondered if our license extended to that use. It didn’t, so I signed up for that use. All the expenses are passed on to the client, so it’s really not an issue. And it’s not a large expense. In all the years I’ve been doing this I’ve never had a client complain about music licensing costs. It’s typically a small fraction of any budget.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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[John Fishback]

I haven’t done this, but I recall seeing some post on this forum about using Keynote. Do a search and you will find them. Keynote will open PPTs and then export QTs of them with most effects intact. Otherwise, your idea of getting the individual slide graphics and using them in AfterFX or FCP makes sense. Just be aware that fonts that look good on a PPT slide being viewed on a computer will be shakey on video if they are too small and/or thin. Also, horizontal lines with high contrast will exhibit field jitter.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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AJA IO driver 2.1 firmware v23-28
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

Some audio applications (such as Sonic No Noise) have a manual de-clicking function which removes clicks and replaces them with audio synthesized from each side of the click. In some cases this can be used to “fix” distorsion. However, it’s an extremely time-intensive manual process. I don’t know if Soundtrack Pro can do this or not, but you might try playing with it’s click removal section.

[John Fishback]

I don’t know of any other easy way, but I’m not Pro Tools expert. I’m surprised they can’t do this if they do sound for picture. How do they get tracks into their system?

Another thought is if you can export each audio track from your edl as a wav. Be sure they all have the same in and out points (in point should be picture start and out should be picture end) so they are identical lengths (even if a track only has a little audio on it). Name them appropriately so the PT folks can work with them. Then they import each file and stack them up in their timeline. Depending on the length of your show, you could end up with a lot of large file, but it should work.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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[John Fishback]

It was probably clipped when it was recorded during the shoot. Once clipped, it will stay that way regardless of subsequent level settings. One practice when shooting is to send the same audio to channels 1 & 2, but set Ch 2’s level down 3 to 5 db. This way, if Ch 1 clips, Ch 2 might be okay.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

The flattened tops and bottoms indicate the sound is clipped. As a result, it will sound distorted. This happened at one of two times, either during your original shoot as the audio was recorded to your camcorder or when you transferred the sound from the camcorder to your edit app. Hopefully, it was the latter as that can be corrected. However, if the original sound you hear out of the camcorder is hot/distorted, then you’re stuck.

It wasn’t clear from your description if you tried to recapture the audio or just lowered the clip level. Lowering the clip level in the edit app won’t do anything if the audio is already clipped. Try capturing again and set the audio to a lower level than before, and see if this helps. Also, how are you capturing the audio? Are you using a mixer? If so, make sure the mixer’s input is set properly so it’s not overloaded.

Your meters or level indicators don’t always tell you if everything is allright. Any recording device has a series of amplifiers that handle the sound. The gain control usually affects one of the last stages of amplification. So, if the sound being fed to your recorder is too hot (loud) it may overload (clip) the first amplifier (preamp) in the series. Even turning down the gain in a later amplification stage won’t change the fact the intial audio amp is overloaded and distorted. The old Sony BVW-35 field Betacam recorder was famous for its audio being easily overloaded by feeding it too loud a signal. Any time I saw the audio gain controls set below 5, I questioned the sound person to make sure the input level wasn’t too hot.

Bottom line: Always listen to a playback of your audio after the first take (or do tests before the first take) to make sure it’s okay. (It’s not a bad idea for video confirmation, too.)

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.3 QT7.0.3
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