[Richard Crowley]

Sorry, I wasn’t implying anything about you personally. It just seems like people assume that sophisticated timecode and special equipment is required for syncing music-video-type production. I’m no genius, but it just seems pretty simple to slide the video clips into place against the master audio track. Music videos are a special case that make this a lot simpler than more conventional types of production.

If you have the equipment available, do the experiment and see how it works. I just think it is simpler than many people assume.

[Richard Crowley]

“That should work right?
How do I convert the audio to 23.98? ”

So the iPod playback and the sync audio track on the Red are only for reference, right?

The REAL music track from the master mix is layed into the NLE. I’ve done this many times with no timecode, just by manually tweaking the video into place so that the video (scratch) audio track matches the (master) reference audio track from the original music mix. It isn’t rocket surgery. Takes longer to explain than to just do it.

[Richard Crowley]

I have a similar situation coming up with a massive array of windows letting in lots of 5600K++ sky light. I only have enough color correction/ND film for part of one window.

So I was going to experiment with getting some orange double-knit polyester fabric which is just about the cheapest fabric at the cloth store. The fabric is semi-transparent, so it will block maybe 2-3 stops of absolute level, and the orange color will bring the very high color temp outside down to something more compatible with the tungsten interior lighting.

[Richard Crowley]

“What do you do with that mound of slightly-used batteries which are just fine for average use, but NG for professional applications?”

Put them back into “average use”. Use them for flashlights (etc), give them to friends to use for their flashlights. Use them for non-critical applications like monitoring (Comtek, etc.)

You can also be more environmentally-friendly by using relatively “safer” batteries like alkaline vs. the ones with toxic and polluting heavy metals like lead and lithium, etc.

[Richard Crowley]

Check the TSA web information about transporting batteries. They have slightly relaxed the restrictions.

NOTE that rechargeable batteries and cells use a very different chemistry and the cell voltage is significantly less than primary (dry, non-rechargeable) cells. Lots of equipment has a much shorter run-time because the battery starts out at a lower voltage (like 1.2V vs. the nominal 1.5V of a typical dry cell.) And some equipment won’t run at all on lower-voltage rechargeable batteries.

[Richard Crowley]

Indeed, I was about to recommend Rick Chinn’s website myself. I bought a bunch of “phase inverter” adapters from https://www.audiopile.net ($3.25 ea). I will keep a few as phase-inverters, but I am going to re-wire the rest of them as 10 or 20 or 30db attenuators, using Rick Chinn’s web information.

Yes, you need the flexibility of various amounts of attenuation. Just because your latest encounter with “line level” was solved with 30db attenuation doesn’t mean that your next job will need the same value.

I’m making my own attenuators because I enjoy building/hacking equipment almost as much as using it. And, of course, because I’m profoundly penurious. I have been making my own cables and adapters since I was in high school in the mid 1960s.

[Richard Crowley]

Good additional ideas from Mark. Of course it is different in every city, but in my metro area LPTV construction permits (just the piece of paper) run around 1 million dollars. Then you must build the station and program it. And the sattelite providers are pretty stingy about how they divvy out their spot beams. In our neck of the woods they will only carry channels that they are required by the FCC (“must carry”).

Reminded me of another option, too. If you have something beyond the bare-bones cable system in your city, they may have the technology for “upstream” video, so you could put your church service on a local cable access channel as a live show and just have the other locations (as well as viewers at home) tune into the live program.

[Richard Crowley]

Thomas, it is probably better to start a new discussion if you have a different question. Otherwise you are “hijacking” someone else’s discussion thread.

If you can only distribute SD, maybe you will need to horizontally compress your 16:9 signal into 4:3. Local TV stations should be able to take a variety of different encodings and aspect ratios and display it however they wish. Full HD (16:9), or letterboxed, or whatever.

[Richard Crowley]

What are the technical options available in your city? Do you have fiber and/or broadband cable service to the locations? What is your budget? There are DIY (consumer-level) broadband video distribution things like Slingbox (and probably others). And for significantly more $$$ there are broadcast-grade internet distribution options like Streambox, etc. There are also the kinds of microwave systems used by local TV stations for live news coverage.

What are the logistics? Does it have to be “live”? A large church in my metro area produces the Saturday-night service to DVD and then “sneakernet” distributes copies to the satellite locations on Sunday morning. They have live music teams at the satellite locations, but use the DVD of the pastor’s sermon.

Satellite seems pretty expensive for your application and probably eclipsed by more attractive broadband options depending on what is available in your area.

[Richard Crowley]

Making a logical decision about using a shotgun vs. lav really needs a lot more information than we know about here. Shotguns “really suck” for exactly the same reason that lavs “really suck”, but just under different conditions and applications.

In particular I don’t recall that you mentioned whether this is outdoors or inside? Shotgun mics are NOT the choice of most sound professionals when shooting indoors. Unless you are in a very large studio with treatment for reducing reflections, a hypercardioid is virtually always the preferred pattern vs. any kind of shotgun mic. Nearby reflections from walls, floor, ceiling will make most shotgun mics sound like a $10 toy from Radio Shack.

I haven’t read anything here that actually suggests that a lav is NOT the right microphone for your shoot (except the prejudice of your boss). Now if your boss is an experienced sound person, then your should certainly trust his/her evaluation of the situation. But if it is just a blanket generic statement, it doesn’t hold water.

If this is really important, and on a low budget, you should consider renting the proper mic for the job.