[Shea a.j. Comfort]

The NT4 is not a shotgun mic, from what I can tell, rather, a set XY condenser pair. I just need something that will capture the performances from an audience perspective and give me a better recording than the on-camera mic. I believe the NT4 should do it.

I have a complete studio and do already own Schoeps mics, for when we might record in a controlled environment (church, etc) for the traditional acoustic ensemble. But, for the gigs with the rock band (pubs, cafes, etc, I am not bringing the Schoeps…;-). The NT4 will be the good quality workhorse…

BTW, I am also playing in both bands, and doing the stage sound for our gigs, so all I really can do is set a camera on a tripod for the evening and get on with it. Not ideal, but will get us promo material to show who/what we are for future folks who may want to hire us…;-)

Make better sense?

Thank you,

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Thank you Everyone for the comments, your help is appreciated.

I think at this point, I am clear about just getting a better +48v mic, and have narrowed it down to: the Røde NT4, or the AT 8022. The one audio example I heard from a shootout on these two had much more detail in the Røde mics’ audio than the AT mic. The Røde also has a case and a 10 yr warranty, which is also quite nice.

I realize the Røde mic is large and heavy (compared to the AT 8022), but, I don’t have to mount it to the camera, it just would be very convenient if possible. The camera will always be set-up on a tripod and just left to run for our shows…

Has someone worked with both of these mics? Any reason why I should not do the Røde mic?

Thank you in advance for any comments or suggestions.

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Hello Brian,

It has L R very clearly marked on it, and is stereo… But, thank you for the reply. I am looking for a stereo solution, as I am recording mostly our bands/ concerts with the camera at the moment.

Too bad the +48 to +5v is so difficult to come by, seems like it would be quite easy to implement. I guess not enough market for the effort.

Thank you again of the suggestion/comments.

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Hello Bob,

Thank you for the reply. Just to clarify: if I am doing audio and video, but the video is only going to be 3 cam 1080p HD streams in FCPX, at most, wouldn’t a RAID 5 for the video using 4 disks, and keeping the other 4 disks as JBODs for the audio work (and back-up) be a good way to go? Or, do you still recommend using the whole array as a RAID6 as the best approach and just back up to external single spinners?

Thank you for the help, I appreciate your insight.

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Thanks Everyone for the endorsements, I just picked up Slice-X with Mocha. However, the auto tracking did not work in this case for me because of the problems with the original shot (I.E.: my own fault! Had one of those moments… had someone grab an extension cord during an involved green screen shoot – did not catch that it was also green until editing…yep, that just happened). But, the ability to keyframe objects easily is still great with Slice-X, and saved this session.

Thank you all for the help.

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

SOLVED!

So, I finally got everything to work correctly by turning off the other hard drives (back-ups) that were connected to the main target drive via firewire800. (connections are: computer->target drive->backup drive #1->backup drive #2). What is strange is that I could transfer multiple clips to an event on the back-up drives that are chained to this drive just fine, but the drive that was connected directly to the computer would choke at varying times into a transfer and give the error message eventually each time.

Transfers I tried were:

Eliminate the cables and camera – use card reader on Mac:
A1) one clip from inserting the card into the Mac reader.
A2) multiple clips from inserting the card into the Mac reader.

camera connection:
B1) one clip from camera
B2) multiple clips from camera

So, all transfers failed when the other drives were on and connected to the target drive. However, all worked when the other drives were off!

Slightly wonky, but, I’ll take it.

Thank to everyone for their helpful suggestions, I appreciate it and this forum!

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Hello Jeff,

Thank you for the suggestion. I like the idea of having a back-up to start with (one of the good things about tape).

~Shea

Follow-up:

I created a camera archive and I am getting the same behavior here as well. Interestingly enough, single files seem to import OK, but 2 or more as a group keep getting the following window after a few minutes of hanging:

Apple lists the camera as being vetted for FCPX…

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Excellent news, thank you!

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Hello Jeff,

Thank you for the suggestion. I like the idea of having a back-up to start with (one of the good things about tape). Can I do this just with FCPX and basic Mac OS tools? I am not sure how to create a camera archive, but time to look into this right now!

~Shea

[Shea a.j. Comfort]

Thank you T. Payton for the response and tip.

Per your advice, I did hover over the clip and it did give me the tip to reimport the clip off of the camera. I did this and it worked, but now my clip seems to have turned into a h.264, Linear PCM format (was AVCHD 1080p30 on the camera). Is this normal/the best way to do this? My main fear is that I may have lost any quality during this change in format?

Thank you again for the clarification! I appreciate your time.

~Shea