[Stephen Muir]

As long as you have a computer that’s up to spec’, $500 will get you a shiney new Mbox2. Add $1,295 for the DV Toolkit 2 (SMPTE timeline, OMF import/export), and $150 for a set of Sony MDR-7506 headphones and you’re ready to rock. If you shell out another $300 for a DV transcoder (like the Canopus ADVC-110), you’ll be able to stream DV/DVCpro quicktimes out the firewire port and onto a standard NTSC television for video playback. Despite the modest price tag, I’ve found this particular setup to be incredibly flexible and stable.

PT HD… that’s another matter. As the saying goes “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Joking aside, the basic HD-1 system lists at $7,995. DigiTranslator (which will allow the import and export of OMF files) adds another $495 to the price tag. I don’t know off hand how much the SynchIO (SMPTE timecode peripheral) costs, so I won’t go into the requirements for slaving to external video devices via TC or machine control. You’ll still want a way of getting the quicktime file in your timeline out onto a TV screen, so don’t forget about pricing a DV transcoder or one of the AV output options listed on the Digidesign website. I strongly advise against going this route unless you either have extensive experience setting up and working with Pro Tools HD systems, or else you have an experienced Pro Tools Tech on your side. If you want to actually monitor 5.1 surround, you’ll have to start pricing 5.1 reference monitor kits, as well as accoustic treatment and rennovations for the room in question.

Bear in mind that although PT HD systems will give you the ability to work entirely in 5.1 surround, it won’t do you a bit of good if you aren’t working in a propperly set up monitoring environment. The DIY route is tempting, but the studio setup and renovation costs associated with surround sound mixing are far beyond those associated with setting up a stereo editing room. Unless you can keep that 5.1 mixing room busy with mixing work 7 days a week, it will likely be more cost-effective to cut the sound in-house on a PT LE system and contract an experienced mixer at an established mix house to finish things off.

The Digidesign website will give you full breakdowns of the various product lines. Find someone in your area that retails digidesign products and visit their showroom, just beware the hard sell.

[Stephen Muir]

It sounds as though you slowed down the sample playback speed for the clip, lowering the pitch in the proccess. 10% slowdown is a significant change, and will undoubtedly sound “off.” Unfortunately, no amount of EQ or High-pass filterring will restore the clip to its original pitch, since you’ve already changed the entire harmonic structure. My advice is to go back to the original recording and try a different tactic.

Try using a different time correction plugin. Look for time compression/expansion plugins that will allow you to change the length of a clip without alterring the pitch. I’m not that familiar with the plugins available for FCP or STP, so I can’t reccomend a specific plugin.

The standard audiosuite plugins are comes bundled with ProTools and ProTools LE include a time manipulation plugin that will leave the pitch unaffected. The algorythm used isn’t exactly the best out there, though, and excessive stretching will give you noticeable artifacting.

Since even high-end timbase correction tools will eventually introduce artifacting, if the sequence is short enough you may be further ahead simply rebuilding the track. Use the pitch-shifted version as a guide, and book some time for ADR, foley, and effects editing.

[Stephen Muir]

Pro Tools is the industry standard in audio post-production, but Pro Tools HD systems are quite expensive. I’d reccomend a PT LE system such as the Mbox2 or the Digi 002, which give you almost the same functionality at a fraction of the cost.

One of the biggest advantages of PT LE is that your sessions can be easily loaded onto the PT HD systems found on most dubbing stages. Essentially, you can edit and premix the show on an Mbox 2 (under $500), and then take it to an outside mixing theatre for the final mix.

There are two major disadvantages to going the PT LE route. The first is that PT LE does not allow you to use surround tracks, limiting you to mono and stereo only. This isn’t a big deal if you’re outsourcing your mix (which you should, since a propperly designed mixing theatre is a costly investment), since you can still lay out your surround material in groups of four tracks (two mono for C and LFE, two stereo for L-R and LS-RS) and quickly move them to surround tracks during the final mix. Although the Mbox2 is limited to stereo outputs, other LE products such as the Digi 002 will give you enough outputs to monitor surround with a little creative bussing. The other major disadvantage of PT LE is that you will be limited to only 48 active tracks (you can have many more tracks in the session, but you’ll have to switch off their voices).

To import sessions from FCP into Pro Tools LE (typically via OMF), you’ll need the DV Toolkit 2 option. The good news is that this handy plugin bundle comes with lots of great tools (convolution reverb, DiNR noise reduction, Vocalign, timecode and feet/frames functionality, as well as digi translator). The bad news is that DV Toolkit 2 costs more than the Mbox2 hardware. Its also important to note that DV toolkit 2 is for Pro Tools LE, not for Digidesign’s low-cost entry-level “M-Powered” products.

I can’t speak to the features available in Steenberg Nuendo, but I can say that it will complicate any outsourcing you do in your audio post. Contact the mixing facilities at which you’d be mixing, and find out if they can even load Nuendo sessions.

[Stephen Muir]

9(a) Really good mixers allow you to monitor the recorder via a headphone return, so you can hear any problems happening between the mixer and the recorder (eg. line inputs accidentally switched to mic level).

Just thought I’d add my $0.02 to a great thread.

[Stephen Muir]

Most of the “whoosh” and “shuwush” sounds that accompany flash-frames and other transitional elements in commercials and trailers are from sound effects libraries. Try going over to sounddogs.com and doing a search for “whoosh,” “fireball,” etc. A general-purpose sound effects CD set is an excellent investment for a picture editor, especially when there won’t be a sound editor working on the project down the line.

There are a number of ways to make these sounds yourself, but all of them require some degree of skill/experience in sound design and effects recording. The easiest one I can think of is to blow a short burst of air directly into an AKG D112 kick-drum mic. That’ll give you that low-frequency “whump” you’re probably after.

As for selecting music, most buy-out music publishers have extensive catalogues organised with ease of access and selection in mind. If the duration of musical cues is problematic, you have a number of options there as well. Software such as Smartsound will automatically re-edit proprietary music tracks to your specifications. They’re not perfect, though, and are limited to musical cues specifically recorded for the software. If you want to edit the musical cues yourself, you should look into software such as Pro Tools. Pro Tools, unlike most picture editing applications, will let you cut audio with the sub-frame accuracy needed for transparent music editing.

[Stephen Muir]

If possible, book some ADR time.

Otherwise, you may be able to take some of the edge off by EQ out a bit of the higher frequencies. If you were recording the on-camera mic to a second channel, you may be able to briefly rely on it during the worst of the distortion (mix judiciously to avoid making it overly apparent).

Do you know where the distortion was introduced? Were you just hitting the recorder’s inputs too hard, or were you overloading a wireless transmitter? Knowing exactly what caused the problem will go a long way towards avoiding it in the future.

We’ve all been there. The important thing is to keep it from happenning again.

[Stephen Muir]

If you’re using ProTools LE, the DV Toolkit option will allow OMF in/out in addition to other handy features. Its still overpriced, in my oppinion, but its a solid investment for post work.

Bouncing the entire timeline track-by-track as WAV files is certainly an alternative, but there’ll be a lot of extra work involved if you want to have handles on all audio regions. If you have to go this route, consider “checkerboarding” the audio regions in the picture edit, then pulling out the start and end of all regions a bit. That’ll give you the handles you need, although you’ll have to go in and tighten up all the regions by hand (using the EDL as a guide) once you migrate the tracks into ProTools. Oh yeah, don’t forget to have a 2-beep and tail pop on each and every track you export, or you’ll be setting yourself up for a real headache. Come to think of it, always have a 2-beep and tail-pop on every track whether you’re exporting via OMF, AAF, bounced WAV’s, or even analogue multitrack.

[Stephen Muir]

I remember an old DOS program called “Cthugha” which may be exactly the kind of thing you’re looking for. It kind of looked like an oscilloscope that had dropped acid and then burst into flames. Very customizable, trippy visuals, and very reactive to incoming audio signals. You’ll still have to overcome the VGA to NTSC issue, but there are plenty of ways to tackle that one. I think the website is https://www.afn.org/~cthugha/

[Stephen Muir]

Are you looking for a research and diagnostic tool or a visualisation tool?

[Stephen Muir]

First off, make sure that you haven’t printed in any processing (gain, normalization, etc.) If you have, try to provide an alternate “clean” version on another track. Next, ask whether they have access to Digitranslator (included in both DVtoolkit 1 and 2 for ProTools LE).

If so, you’re in luck. Simply output a self-contained video clip of the picture (whatever flavour your audio post folk prefer, just don’t forget the burn-in and 2-pop), and export the audio tracks via OMF (2 to 10 second handles on all clips). Digitranslator will in turn allow them to import the OMF session into a ProTools session.

Let the sound editorial team do their magic, and book yourself some time in a mixing theatre. Meanwhile, if you feel the need to further refine your picture edit, remember to provide the audio post team with a detailed change list along with new picture and OMF versions.