[Thomas Yong]

Thanks Oliver. It works like a charm!!

[Thomas Yong]

Thanks John!

[Thomas Yong]

Hi Dan,
Thanks for your reply. I guess my problem is that I can’t seem to select all the clips in the timeline. I can only select one and thus render out only one MXF file.

I can’t find the white paper. Do you have a link?

[Thomas Yong]

Hi there,
I thought I wanted to follow up after the gig with a little feed back of how it went and what did work and what didn’t work.

The mixer I got was an old work horse SQN 4S, but the model had oddly 2 XLR out along with the hirose out. Of course the DP didn’t want me to feed audio directly into the Sony F900, which was Ok for me sine I had the DAT recorder which by the way was a HHB PORTADAT PDR1000TC.

I knew that the director had a tight deadline for editing, and feeding directly to the camera would have saved a lot of post production work. But no producer was on set to make the call, so the DP did. I could only advice that it would be be cumbersome to convert the DAT to WAV files and then synch them up. But I was overruled.

At times it was very dark on set, and on my DAT recorder I could activate lights in the display, but not on the mixer which was so annoying.

The wireless lavs were excellent, I can’t remember the brand, but they were awesome.

In the very wide shots I wired up the to actors with wireless lavs, and got OK results. Sometimes a litle clothing noise, but I had a good lav mic kit to make adjustments with.

When we punched in on one actor I boomed to get clear and crisp dialogue since I still think the best audio comes from a shotgun or something similar. On the other track I still used the wireless lav for the other actor and when they turned around I swapped.

Mixer wise I was happy to see that this old SQN had both hirose out and two XLR out. So I pluged the 2 XLR out to the DAT and the hirose I wanted to run to camera but since this wasn’t an option, I unplugged them again.

I had some problems with the DAT. When I ran 1Kz tone, I usually set levels at 20db. But for some reason, The DAT wouldn’t allow me to adjust beyond this level. So therefore I ran tone in at the maximum 12db. So all dialogue was recorded up to 12db. which I find odd. I hope I didn’t screw anything up since there were no peaks beyond this 12db level on the DAT. Perhaps it was because of its limiters? I did some tests what I had recorded and played it back and it sounded OK in headphones.

As for the other part of this DAT machine it also had a TC generator. I didn’t know how to use it so I didn’t use it. Plus we didn’t have a TC slate. But perhaps it could have been a help to get the TC from camera??
I relied on just hit record and wait a little bit and then recorded the clap from the slate to synch up later in post.

But all in all I was a happy camper. Of course, the real exam is when an editor or a dialogue editor gets the material and listen to it. I have on my last jobs, insisted to get feed back on the sound I have recorded good and bad, since this is the only way I really can lean plus of course on this awesome website.

One question I have i what do you do when one character speaks very loudly at times then suddenly almost whisper. In some books I have read that once you have set your levels, you shouldn’t fade up and down (or what the right term is). But I did, since otherwise the almost shouting would clip (perhaps not since I used limiters), but then you wouldn’t be able to hear when the character whisper. The problems with that is of course that the noise floor also increases as with the fading up.

What do yo guys do at these situations????

Best regards,
Thomas

[Thomas Yong]

Not entirely sure what kind of mixer they are renting for me. It will either be a SQN 5S or a Sound Devices 442. But I will probably be the SQN since most rental companies have many of those lying around.
Thomas

[Thomas Yong]

Thank you guys for your advice. It helped a lot.
I just wanted to let you know how it went down.

I sat the camera audio levels to 20db for my Mixer tone.

Of course when you are on a set with four talking actors, things changed in the last minute. For the the wide master shot, I decided to wire them all up using our old EV100 wireless which I believe used a Shoeps MK4. But regardless I mounted the mics on talent, I heard a lot of clothes noise, which was beyond use. I tried to use a little gaffa tape cup to protect the clothes interfere with the mic but nevertheless it didn’t work.

So I would of course be interested in other microphones which are smaller and better for this kind of job. But perhaps it comes down to experience and of course have the right mics with you depending on the talents clothes. For example there was an actor with suit and tie, and his wireless mic was fine.

When we punched in I simply discarded the wireless lavs and used a boom instead which gave great sound.

In the first couple of shots, I couldn’t get the 2 camera XLR inputs to accept LINE, so I choose Mic which seemed to work. Of course two takes later I found out that the harness had switched the knob in the back of the SQN mixer to I/O or Mic out put. So I changed it back to LIne and then of course the camera took LINE.

I must admit I am very disappointed with the wireless lavs. It all come down to the microphone perhaps and how experienced you are setting it on talent. But the sound I got was a nightmare.

With the wireless lavs I did manage to use the back side of the SQN 5S to manage the mixing of what input goes out to what out put. So thanks for the posts all!!! But when I used the book, I cloned the mono signal into both Cameras XLR inputs.

This is just meant as a little info from a not so experienced production sound mixer.

Thanks again.
Thomas

[Thomas Yong]

Thanks for your reply!!

When I see the photos of the mixer. Here is a link: https://www.sqn.co.uk/5Sspec.html
I don’t really see this kind of knob, but I do see on the back a switch for panning. Perhaps this is the one??
Thomas

[Thomas Yong]

Debe,
Thanks for your response.
QuickTime was in QT 6.5.1 so I took it to QT7.02. I used your links to take it down to QT7.01 and then to QT6.5.2.
But I still can’t load my FCP projects. Not even from the AutoSave vault.

Help………

[Thomas Yong]

I made a typo before as I am running OS10.3.9. I upgraded recently from OS10.3.8 that worked great for months and months. I wonder if there is a bug in the OS10.3.9?