[Seth Bloombaum]

I agree with David.

Also, even when a DVD successfully finalizes on a recorder, it takes precious minutes during which you can’t record.

IMHO a sony DVCAM studio deck is a great way to capture a switched conference – they can take 3-hour tape loads.

I don’t know how you do a good job with prosumer camcorders, the lenses just aren’t long enough, you need to be right in the audience to get a good head & shoulders shot. Then you’re looking right up the nose of the presenter.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Mahesh, daisychaining camcorders/decks and FW drives does not work always. As I understand it, there are two different FW protocols that the deck and drive use, and not all cards run them simultaneously. But many do.

Several ways to deal with this if sharing doesn’t work: a second firewire card on a desktop. A PCMCIA FW card on a laptop ($35 USD?). A USB2 drive. I use drive enclosures with both USB2 and FW, but usually have them hooked up as USB2.

[Seth Bloombaum]

To take this a little further, best practice is to feed the broadcast chain with an output that can be metered at the mixer. If you then send tone at 0db to the broadcast chain, and set whatever input levels are available on the chain to 0db, you can now monitor what the broacast chain is receiving on your mixer meters.

Perhaps there is someone who can tell you what level the broadcast chain likes best (peaks to -6, 0, or +3db?). Or, establish this by trial and error. Then, set your output at the mixer so that peaks come to that level.

If you continue to have trouble with this, the a-v contractor who installed the systems can straighten things out real fast.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Sound Forge from Sony Media Software has clipped peak detection and restoration tools. I’ve not used them.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Vegas will accept a stereo bwf via file | import. The bwf will be dropped on the timeline at the point that matches the timestamp in the header of the bwf file. The timestamp will also be visible in the clip properties | media dialog.

Polyphonic bwf (more than stereo, such as output from a Sound Devices 744T or other multichannel recorder) must be split before use in Vegas. Fostex has a freeware splitter on their site called BWF Manager that will tear down a polyphonic file into 1ch. bwfs.

Audacity is a freeware audio editor that will open BWF and export as wav, losing timestamp in the process.

[Seth Bloombaum]

remoteaudio works great.

Another approach is to buy an in-ear monitor such as Etymotic ER-4, which provides about 20db isolation out of the box. Then, if you need even more, put on headphone-style hearing protection from an industrial safety supplier or from a gun shop. Kinda’ geeky but it really works.

[Seth Bloombaum]

-12 is fine.

And then you peak your signal to 0 on the mixer.

[Seth Bloombaum]

ummm… no.

I think Ty was referring to the incomparable movie “This is Spinal Tap”, where, the lead guitarist said he “turns his amp up to 11”.

Or maybe I’m misinterpreting Ty. He does mention compression and limiting. Mastering is the final process of preparing an audio program for replication and distribution. Final levels will be determined, as well as dynamic range. Compression, limiting, volume maximization are just a few of the processes used in Mastering that affect dynamic range.

My car is quite loud. I shouldn’t have to turn my radio up to 11 to hear the quiet passages of a piece of music only to be blasted when all the instruments are playing. (At least for music someone expects me to listen to in my car.) So, an audio engineer mastering a recording for my car will use a smaller dynamic range, accomplished with compression. This squashes the volume of louder content, allowing the whole program to be turned up louder without exceeding 0db. The effect is that quiet passages are now louder.

If you rip a pop music CD and look at it on your digital meters, you’ll see a *very* narrow dynamic range. A classical CD – a much broader range. Folk – it depends. This isn’t just the composition and instruments, it’s how the recordings were mastered.

Details of mastering could be many hours or days of study, some people do only mastering as their full-time job.

You’re right – there are no hard-and-fast standards. However, you want it heard. I’d not peak at -11db, and I don’t think Ty was suggesting that for replication and distribution (could be wrong about that). Most say peaks -3 to -0.3db as you go to CD or encode for the web. How loud the quieter material should be is a judgement call, based on the content. You want it to sound like it should.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Sorry this isn’t working for you – it’s worked on 2 of my computers (one XP Pro, one XP Home), and worked for forum members.

Every time I look at the list of steps I realize there’s another tiny little thing to add, such as:

1. Plug in the camera and turn it on.
This means plug in the firewire, then turn on camera power, then wait for XP to recognize it

3. Locate AVC/Subunit in the Device Manager
This will be under the “sound, video and game controllers” headging, click the little plus sign to expand the listing, then double-click on the camera’s entry to open up the properties dialog

It would help if you provided more information – at what point in the process does your pc show you something different than the instructions? You are using Vegas 6.0C or Cineform ConnectHD with Vegas 5? You have checked your firewire ports on your camera and PC and checked your cable?

[Seth Bloombaum]

I’m not sure I said it strongly enough above:
Getting receipts and keeping records is key.

Even if you can’t add 2+2 your accountant can rescue you IF you have records.