[Richard Crowley]

“As for cheaper lights from a legitimate seller, i’ve heard nothing but good things about coollightz quality and customer service. What would you suggest if those two softboxes won’t give me that infinite white background? thanks for responding!”

No question that CoolLights is a good vendor and makes nice equipment. But it would take more like 10-12 of them rather than 2 of them. You don’t particularly need softboxes to light a white background because the background itself does the “softening”.

“Just seems like too much time to setup all those bulbs.”

But it is precisely “all those bulbs” that gets a broad and even illumination of the background. There is no known substitute for that.

[Richard Crowley]

Which dimension is the 10ft? What are the other dimensions? My guess would be that two of those lights are not anywhere near enough to get a good “infinite white?”.

You might want to check this out: https://vimeo.com/789519 There is likely much more information online about lighting “infinite white”.

IMHO, you are painting yourself right into a (dark) corner with your requirement for “legitimate seller” and “cheaper alternative”.

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[Richard Crowley]

“Would you recommend a lav mic over a hyper-cardioid on a boom?”

Maybe. Depends on the hypercard and depends on the lav. And depends on the working distance for each type. Even better might be a “headset” type microphone with the tip mere millimeters from the talent’s mouth. The ratio between direct and reflected sound is one method of improving audio in a reverberant environment. The higher you can make this ratio, the less effect the ambient sound has on the recording. The closer the mic is to the mouth, the higher the ratio of direct to ambient sound.

“Would putting up a wall of C-stands and sound blankets help?”

C-stands (or something like them) are only necessary if you don’t have anything else to hang sound absorbing material from. If you shoot in the corner of a room, then there are two existing walls to use for backdrop (for video) and for sound control (for audio). Sound blankets are not magic, any similar absorbing material could serve the same purpose. If this were a mattress factory or warehouse, then you have great stacks of sound control devices that could be used. People have found that building temporary walls out of hay bales do a great job, also. You haven’t described what this space is used for, so we can only throw out random suggestions that may or may not be of any help in your particular situation.

[Richard Crowley]

Are you trying to fix a particular problem or improve some specific aspect of your recorded tracks? Or is this just “free-floating anxiety”? (nothing personal 🙂

An external mixer is not necessarily some sort of “magic bullet”. Furthermore, it is one more piece of gear to haul around, power, and OPERATE. Something to consider if you are doing run-n-gun news or documentary style production. No question that a mixer will make some improvements in performance and/or operations, but whatever benefits come with some offsetting cost (well beyond the $$$).

I don’t know if it is the case with you (since we don’t know you), but many people come along looking for whizzy expensive gear thinking that it will improve their video or audio, etc. But some of the most impressive video (and audio) we have experienced (especially historic footage) was made with very modest equipment by today’s standards.

[Richard Crowley]

“why didn’t it happen in previous winters? ”

Building managers make changes to the HVAC systems (or just changes to how they are operated) typically without informing the tenants. There could be several different reasons why something would happen this winter where it hadn’t before.

I’m not ruling out the possibility that there is some sort of epidemic with the computer hardware, either. I’ve had 2/3 of the computers in one of my classrooms all drop dead nearly simultaneously from the same cause (bad batch of hard drives).

[Richard Crowley]

My first bet would be environmental (low humidity static electricity from users). Note that many synthetic carpets are even worse then wool for generating ESD. And you can zap electronic equipment with a spark that you can’t even detect. Winter is the worst time for ESD problems because of dry indoor air. Same reason many people use indoor humidifiers to keep their noses from drying out in the winter.

The other possibility might be that somebody(s) has started using some new make and/or model plug-in drive that is causing a problem, although I wouldn’t put much money on that horse.

Anytime the same problem starts happening to lots of different systems, especially after a long period of problem-free use, I would look for an environmental cause first, and this just smells very much like ESD to me.

[Richard Crowley]

Simply rip the CD track to WAV and avoid the MP3 compression.

When I did a Google search for: CD ripper it returned over 8.5 million hits, including many excellent candidates right on the first page. There is no shortage of CD ripper applications, including no shortage of free ones.

[Richard Crowley]

HVAC systems tend to reduce humidity by warming the air. Wouldn’t
hurt to go and get yourself one of those little temp and humidity
indicators and hang it on the wall.

Here is another discussion about Firewire port vulnerability right here on the COW: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/921212 There are likely others, including many in other places on the internet, but I spent only a few seconds browsing Google hits.

I don’t think there is any evidence to support the “shelf-life” theory. There is no intrinsic quality of Firewire (or any other) hardware that has some finite “shelf-life”. Indeed there are Firewire ports that have been in continuous use literally for decades.

[Richard Crowley]

There are scores of CD rippers available, many of them free. Google will reveal way more than you can use.

MP3 is not a recommended format for production as it is a lossy format. It is a shame to take a perfectly find uncompressed CD track, compress it into MP3, loose a significant part of the content and then un-compress it back into the timeline. Completely avoidable.

[Richard Crowley]

Both Apple and Sony have published warnings about the vulnerability of Firewire ports, particularly when hot-plugged. Over the years I have seen many complaints about Firewire ports that have been zapped and rendered dead in both computers (Macs and PCs) and camcorders, etc.

Where are you? Are you experiencing low humidity? Do you have wool carpet or some environmental condition conducive to generating ESD? Many ports can be damaged by zaps that are too small to be noticed by users.