[Ty Ford]

Dave,

thanks for shining a light into my problem.

and, of course, when I went down to the studio this afternoon, I hit the space bar and the files played just fine.

However, your insights were really valuable to me. Parts of that whole codec thing slip away from me if I don’t have my face in it regularly.

Thanks again,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Dave,

Thanks for the gentle nudge.

XDcam EX 1080p

Regards,

Ty

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[Ty Ford]

HI,

It’s a 2 x 2.6 GHz tower, no special video card.
Dual Core Xeon
12 GB RAM.

What codec?

I dropped the file onto the time line and got the usual, “do you want me to change the session to these specs?” and said yes.

Gotta say FCP7’s laundry list of resolutions and codecs is pretty impenetrable for me.

The files work fine on a newer mac with FCP X

Thanks for any advice.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hi Cyndy,

This just in from Rode…

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Hey Ty,

Happy New Year mate. This one definitely sounds like the phone if the mic still works fine on other devices.

Cheers and all the best!

Kind Regards,
Scott Emerton

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[Ty Ford]

Mark,

Right. It’s usually about time on your situation.

Audio sweetening is the last element thought about and the first to be left behind. 🙂

Maybe trying harder in the field will help.

Sometimes the location audio person gets bullied by the DP or producer into not getting what they really want. It’s a team effort and if that’s out of balance, you get what you get.

Maybe ask your audio person how he/she feels about what goes on. Maybe they are not as experienced as they could be, or maybe they just don’t get the support they should from the other team members.

I’ve been hired on shoots where there’s a definite “attitude about the audio.” It hasn’t happened in a while and it makes me wonder if I was exuding something in the past that I don’t anymore, or if I’ve just worked my way past that stuff. It could also be that the DPs I was working with then were clueless about audio and a little too fragile about their own craft.

Good tools make a huge difference. A Sennheiser ME66 is no match for a CMC641 Schoeps. Good headphones like the Sony MDR7506 allow the audio person to actually hear what’s going on. Lesser headphones or earbuds simply don’t allow the operator to hear obvious problems that they could address, had they heard them.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Mark and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

The answer is….it depends. 🙂

How much are quick turnaround times a factor?

How much work needs to be done (how bad is the audio)?

How much better can it be?

How much work is there in one show?

How much does it cost?

I had a local production company call me about fixing some problem clips. They put them on their server with proxy quality video. I downloaded them and brought each clip into Pro Tools where I have my restoration plugins.

There were different problems on different clips. They were typically shooting with a boom and a lav, split track to a camera. A few clips were totally unusable because they were feeding line level into a mic level input. The audio was very distorted. RX3 Advanced can help, but it has its limitations.

Other problems were easier. Boom on one person, lav on another and the sound differences were too obvious. In some of those cases, I had to dirty up one track a little and clean up the other one, then checkerboard the tracks and mix them to a 2Track mono mix so they’d sound right.

Getting levels right from one mic to another was also part of the fix, as was playing with the noise reduction without it sounding underwater and some EQ to make the most out of the audio.

They were so happy after hearing the first few clips I did for them that they sent me about 40 files, each from 20 to 50 seconds long. I fixed the audio tracks and post them back on my dropbox account, then send them an email. I think I spent about 10-15 minutes on each clip.

I wasn’t able to get some of them as good as I might have gotten had I been there to record it in the first place, but they were improved and mixed, except for the 2-3 that were horribly distorted. I was able to get them on my schedule and turn them around most of the time within 24 hours. Sometimes, within hours; depending on how many they sent and how much work needed to be done.

That’s one way to work. I’m sure there are others.

Best way to approach this is to try different people and see how the schedules and chemistry works out.

A line from Scotty (Startrek) comes to mind, “Captain, I’m doing the best that I can, but I’m only an engineer. I’m giving you all that she’s got!!!” 🙂

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

PS: if you’d like quotes, please reach out offline – tyford@tyford.com

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[Ty Ford]

Hi Cyndy and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

I sent a note toe my contacts at Rode last week about this , but suspect that the holiday season has disrupted communications.

Sorry,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Lucy and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Do you, perhaps, have the audio in Auto mode?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Ty Ford]

Hello James and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Noah makes a very good point. If you go that way, I’d want one mic for each of four rows and each mic would be on a separate track so that in post, you can mute any mic not being talked into.

I’d also want a dedicated person on a mixer for the mics because individuals have extremely varying abilities to work a simple mic. Some are scared to death and others will eat it every time. Most will wonder (and/or ask) why they don’t hear themselves over a PA when they speak into the mic.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Ty Ford]

Terence,

Nice of you to say. 🙂

I have seen people work without TC on camera and external recorder, using PluralEyes or FCP X.

Ultimately, it depends on how close the clocks are on each device. There’s also some data that suggests that the earlier FCP had a glitch (or user error) that changed the length of the imported audio, so the audio and video would not match.

Usually, the longer the clips, the less reliable the sync becomes. Productions with shorter clips amy wander some, but may not be noticeable. I recorded with a Canon XL2 and Sony M10 and was only out a few frames at 54 minutes. But, again, that was with THAT XL2 and THAT M10. YMMV.

I’ve found that the hard test is overlaying scratch audio and double recorded audio. In many cases you can’t use both because, while the slippage is small (perhaps 1-3 frames) that causes audible and unpleasant phase cancellation to occur. Stick with the external source and there’s no phase cancelation so you don’t notice the slippage until the mouth and words are not happening at the same time.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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