[Ty Ford]

Hello Glenn,

Thanks so much for the compliment. I’m learning video and lighting every nano second and it’s not always easy for me. Sometimes FCP spanks me pretty hard. I shot 60i, 16:9. Standard XL2 lens.

I used a one panel mottled charcoal backdrop and brought the lights in close enough to the talent so the exposure difference made it look really black. You can see the left and right edges when I pull back because I didn’t have the full 10′ x 24′ background up yet. I think the f stop was 2.8 and the shutter about 1/75. I lucked out by having the biax 4 where it was because it allowed me to dig her black blouse out of the charcoal background.

(I know because I did a post mortem the next day and my wife was wearing a black sweater. I tried one of my Lowel Pro lights and it just didn’t have the right stuff — too small an area and not as white. When I put the biax 4 back up her blouse popped as the penny whistle players blouse did.)

I had three point lighting. A dimmed 650 Ianiro Red Head for the back light. A Lowel Pro for the camera left fill and a mole richardson biax 4 dimmable fluorescent as a key light.

The piece with just the guitar player is more evenly lit if color temperature matters. Having them both together meant I had to spread the light a bit and you can see some color differences between the left and right sides due to the different lights, but it’s not a deal killer. (maybe adds a bit of interest..I don’t know)

Import was 16:9, DV anamorphic 48 kHz audio

When I dragged the clips to the timeline, the FCP prompt asked me if I wanted to change the timeline settings to match that of the clips. I said OK.

Ken Stone Published an article about compressing for Youtube sometime back, I followed those settings as closely as I could but sometimes my choices were simply not the ones he was talking about. Maybe due to different versions of FCP, dunno. I used one of the quality sliders to get each clip as close to 100MB as possible, because that’s YouTube’s limit.

Thanks again for your kind comments. I hope this helps.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Brian and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Here’s the problem. Phantom Power is applied to both sides of a balanced mic, and not to the ground. Multimedia mics are generally unbalanced. If you apply Phantom Power to the shield and hot lead, you’ll toast the mic.

You need a mic with a balanced output to use Phantom Power properly. The Countryman E6 with XLR termination will work fine

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Michael,

Thanks for your kind reply and endorsement.

If you do get to NAB this year, I’ll still buy you that drink.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

You’re obviously doing something right. The Market Bin spot looks and sounds good here.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Thanks for the comments on my playing Donovan. As you may know, if you don’t play, it goes away.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Gotta be a little careful with live music. It can get loud and overdrive. It can get low and go into the noise floor. I’d ALWAYS want a mixer and listen during the performance so I could ride gain. I’d also want a limiter before the recorder.

Where do you put the mic? I could write a 3000 word article on that alone. If you’re using one stereo mic, you have to find a place where you can hear everything really well with as little audience as possible.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Jim and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

You present interesting problems.

First, I’m a little concerned about the use of multiple shotgun mics. Shotgun mics are not the best choice in most interiors when those interiors have hard, reflective surfaces. OTOH, if that’s all you have, then that’s the best mic. 🙂 You’ll see why when I send you the book. There’s a link to a video that demonstrates exactly why.

Big time talk shows like Letterman use a combination of lavs and Fischer Boomed mics; not both at the same time. Oprah uses lavs. The advantage is that, even though most lavs are omni, you can get them closer to the mouth than you can a shotgun. In some cases, the lav will win. In some cases a boom mic will, but it may be a hyper or super rather than a shotgun.

About your Presonus Firepod; I don’t know. The knob position isn’t as important as the amount of quiet gain a preamp can provide. Usually cheap preamps get noisy at the upper ends of their gain.

About the meter readings: Check to make sure the meters reading Peak and not RMS. Most devices read peak, but a few have switches that allow the operator to read RMS (average levels) or Peak levels. You need to be concerned about Peak.

There are also devices with sensitivity switches called pads on inputs. If inadvertently engaged, they reduce the input level and require the input knob to be turned up a lot more. You usually use the pads when close micing drums, that have very loud transients. Transients are very brief but very loud sounds.

But I digress. Regarding levels, peaks at -6 are good. I can’t imagine Jay suggesting levels of -60 to -25. Those figures are consistent with mic sensitivity figures.

To other readers: -6 is a good production level, but please be aware that many cable channels want final PROGRAM levels to be -12 to -18.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Donovan and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Try the AT 825 or Rode NT4.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Jeremy,

Bingo!

Thanks so much,

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello George,

Wow, sounds like a busy set. 🙂

As you may know, sitcoms (or many TV shows) on sets frequently use several Fisher Booms https://www.jlfisher.com/booms/index.asp, several boom operators and someone to mix the whole thing.

Neumann 81’s are great, but this is an interference tube shotgun mic. You can use interference tube shotgun mics on a set because sets typically don’t have ceilings and only three walls for sound to bounce off of and cause unwanted reflections.

If the shoot is not on a set but in normal spaces where Fisher Booms won’t fit, then there are several options. First, for the mixer. You can gang a Sound Devices 302 and a 442 to get seven inputs.

For iso recording six channels, try a hardware interface and Boom Recorder software https://www.vosgames.nl/ running on a Mac. One track of Boom Recorder will be for timecode. Boom Recorder can record Polywav files.

A polywav file shows up as one icon, but contains more than two tracks of audio, all synced together. In my own test last year, I recorded 18 track polywav files.

I would consider mixing to one or both cameras AND iso recording. The 442 has three sets of balanced outputs. Enough to feed both of your cameras. You can use the direct outs of the 442 and main outputs of the 302 to feed the audio I/O computer interface for Boom Recorder.

There’s a relatively new term; “aggregatable device.” On the Boom Recorder site, there’s a page that lists a lot of audio I/Os that Boom Recorder is known to work with. https://www.vosgames.nl/products/BoomRecorder/compatibility.shtml
On this page you can also see where some hardware can be ganged together for more inputs.

Make sure you sort out the possibility of interference among any wireless lavs.

How’s that?

Regards,

Ty Ford

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