[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Could be the file became corrupt.

Have you checked for the last saved version in the Autosave Vault?

I have my system set to autosave every 10 minutes (or even sooner on some complex projects.)

It can be a real life saver!

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Terry Brown] “i’m curious if anyone knows how this was made, “

Nothing that $20,000-$50,000 (give or take) worth of CG and CG artists couldn’t handle. 😉

A “quick and dirty” method is to start with an undamaged car,
shoot it “clean” on a lock-down,
then manually damage the heck out of it,
making sure to keep rolling as you alternately step out of the shot,
then, step back in, and do more damage.
Repeat until satisfied.

Then, in post, use masks and wipes to reveal/hide the damage.

Much more complex than that, but the basic idea is there.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Sure.
“Stereo” (in the case we are discussing here) is actually two mono signals already.

The “left” channel will be fed from the TIP of the “stereo” plug.
The “right” channel will be fed from the RING of the “stereo” plug.
The SLEEVE will carry the common ground/shield for both channels.

Here is a cable that will fit the bill-

https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3452165

There are many, many more.

If you you wish to feed your recorder from line-level source(s,) you need to choose the “Line-level” input.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Use the Video Filter> Key > Luminance Key.

“Key Out Darker”

Adjust to taste.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Why not just use DV camcorders?

You can buy them from pawn shops, etc. for about $100 each.

Sony and Panasonic camcorders playback miniDVCAM tapes perfectly.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Depending on the relative music to non-music mix-level, and the kind of music vs. the kind of audio you wish to “save” you are looking at a sliding scale from “extremely difficult” to “completely impossible.”

Using a Noise Gate and/or Decompression, or an active digital noise-recognition filter might be a place to start.

But if the music and non-music tracks are close to the same level and timbre, they may be virtually inseparable.

Best bet is to entirely replace the audio (sans music) via foley, dialogue replacement, or a complete re-shoot.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Drop frame and Non-Drop Frame are the exact same “speed.”

With DF, no actual recorded FRAMES are dropped.
Only certain of the Time Code frame NUMBERS are dropped.
But, even in DF, every single video and audio frame remains on the recording.

DF and NDF are simply two different ways of NUMBERING the TC track.

DF will yield a TC that is clock-accurate, NDF will yield a TC with no numbers “missing.”
But neither of those will in any way affect the speed, quality, or length of the recording playback.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Jean-Christophe Boulay] “every time the song is started, TC goes to the camera and all takes can be aligned to audio for editing in seconds, without having to go back to the beginning of the take all the time.”

Couple of ways to make that work better for you.

1- Change TAPES with every take. Each tape can be captured separately.
If you need to recapture the tapes, it’s a piece of cake.

-or-

2- If you do record multiple takes on the same tape,
be sure to carefully SLATE each take and then
capture the tape manually, capturing each take as its own separate clip.

And, if you have, say, 10 takes on the same tape, each with the same time code repeated over-and-over, and need to RE-CAPTURE the tape (to Up-Rez, or change editing locations, or for any other reason) and simply stick your one (multi-take) tape into the machine to batch capture…
Oh, man! You’re in for a mess! The edit system can’t tell one take from another…
They all have the same TC.

And, allow plenty of extra TC at the head of the CD before the music track begins.
CD should have some sort of audio countdown or click-track that counts the musicians
into the head of the song.
(I like about 15-30 secs. of good solid TC before the song starts.)

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Steve Kownacki] “So be sure to get 30 seconds of appropriate room tone on each situation, sometimes 2 or more times during a lengthy interview where refrigerators and air conditioners turn on and off. “

Agreed.

Now, if we can just find an effective way to keep everyone (especially the talent) to be QUIET for those 30 seconds at a time.

😉

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Nicholas Johnson] “I’m only shooting with a GL2 but I know they’re decent in low light “

Not really, in my experience.

There are far better camera for low-light shooting.

You might want to rent another camera.