HD For Indies

Hey all - two articles I wrote for DV are now online:

Upgrade Your Images with Audio

I'd written a bit on audio acquisition in this article, where I stated that I basically don't know beans about audio field acquisition, just enough to know that it is important and you should get somebody good to do it.

However, I learned quite a bit researching for the DV article about the plugs, formats, budget considerations and whatnot for audio monitoring in stereo, and now with Final Cut Pro 6, surround (5.1 channel) audio monitoring. This article is really a follow up to my previous DV article a few months ago on building an uncompressed HD workstation. Read all about the various audio outputs that you have or can get, the same 3 tiers of Starving Indie, Moderately Equipped Individual, and Well Equipped Invididual/Small Facility Room. For each, I discuss stereo and surround monitoring options, what the interfaces and options and prices are, etc. I'm really proud of this one.

Similarly, for Windows specific info, I wrote a second article (exclusively available online, won't be in the print edition) here:

Upgrade Your Images with Audio: PC Edition

I discuss the more popular options on the Windows side (see? I DO try to cover The Other Side! :D ) - Avid, Adobe, and Sony's Vegas. I talk about the audio I/O hardware/software options available/appropriate to each, and run down some the Windows specific issues that weren't mentioned in the other article.

One mistake that was made in my own editorial process in that Windows specific article - in Group 3, I didn't come back and mention/recommend Avid Media Composer with Adrenaline, which is an entirely valid and appropriate choice for high end editorial individual/small facility setups as discussed in the article. Tomorrow I'll look into getting that fixed (it is well after midnight after an especially taxing few days).

Another area I don't know as much as I'd like to about is proper room setup for serious audio work - I was pleased to see as a companion piece to the articles I wrote there is a nice long article by Dan Daley (or the MUCH more experienced Dan could very fairly call my articles companions to his!) on how to set up a serious, "for real" audio monitoring environment to get accurate, unbiased sound reproduction. He discusses room dimensions, proper speaker setup, proper acoustic treatment of the room, etc. In my brief skim (I'll read the whole thing just haven't yet) I saw a lot of promising stuff, and already learned some good info on minimal room size to get good, accurate acoustic reproduction, etc.

The Sound of Science: Acoustical considerations for the DIY HD studio"

These three articles should give you plenty to work from to set up your own studio. Good luck, and as always, Comments welcome using the link below.

UPDATE/NOTE: One thing I glossed over and was eventually edited out along the way - YES, an SDI or HD-SDI CAN carry enough discrete audio channels to do stereo or surround - so when mastering, the audio flows with video for multi-channel work (want a multi-channel mix on HDCAM? Dolby E is your answer, but you more than likely can't prep that inhouse and will have to send out to have it done, but it "fits" on two channels of uncompressed audio while mastering). Anyway, point being, while audio DOES flow over SDI or HD-SDI, it isn't likely/viable that you have an SDI or HD-SDI deck, sitting around, all the time, such that you can do your audio monitoring through it/on it. If you've got an HDCAM SR deck permanently attached in the same room, GREAT, the HD-SDI can flow through that and (I believe but would need to verify) has enough audio monitor passthroughs that you could do it that way. While it is technically possible to de-embed the audio from an SDI or HD-SDI stream to discrete analog outputs, other than the Blackmagic HDLink Pro (mentioned in the article), I couldn't find a viably affordable means of doing that. So I skipped it.

OH! And big, BIG Special Thanks and Luv to Craig Negoescu, Stu Maschwitz, and SEVERAL folks EACH from Blackmagic, AJA, Avid, and Apple. I wasn't able to contact anybody specific at Adobe but would have loved to talk to somebody over there, simply because I don't have a good direct connection with them (yet).

If you are, or know somebody who should be my connection at Adobe's video group, I'd love to be in direct contact with someone at Adobe's video group to ping for feedback/answers/etc. to make sure I can get accurate, timely, detailed info out into the wild. And with CS3 purportedly coming out within a couple of weeks....

And OK, I am guiltly of headline pimping on this one, and there is no way to learn "everything you need to know" from three articles, but boy, (I maybe-not-so-humbly think) there is a LOT of useful info in there!

-mike

Labels: audio, FCP, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, hardware, NLE, studio

I don't know diddly about audio production. Well, here's what I know:

1.) Get good sound.

2.) Get somebody good on set to handle it.

3.) Once burnt or echoed, It R Gonn, just like video (many many similarities to running too hot in both)

...so I don't do audio related stuff, other than to recommend don't use the built-in mike on your camcorder, odds are 99% it isn't that great (it is a common place manufactuers cheap out on cameras...because buyers don't pay much attention to it.). And get somebody good with good equipment.

OK, so that's what I know about audio. Oh - and just like video, Compression R Badd, M'kay?

That's the fun way to put, but as always the truth isn't so pithy - careful and light compression can be OK, but it limits your flexibility in post. Nothing succeeds like good source material, well balanced/exposed/noise free, with as little compression as possible in order to yield best final results and maximum room in post to have creative and technical flexibility and control. Some kinds of shots, and some kinds of post production processing, can survive more or less compression, depending. YMMV.

That's not nearly so pithy, is it?

Which leads me to this - a sound guy, Christian Dolan, came up with his own Top Ten audio related list after reading my 10 Things Not To Do.

sync.sound.cinema: The Fifteen [drops tablet]...Ten! Ten Commandments of Sound for Picture! (Part One)

sync.sound.cinema: The Fifteen [drops tablet]...Ten! Ten Commandments of Sound for Picture! (Part Two)

which references this:

An Open Letter from your Sound Department - A Production Sound Manifesto written by audio professionals

Good audio is worth having. If you're shooting on good, professional cameras (that have XLR inputs and DON'T compress the audio), I'd...hmm....not so sure if I'd say I'd ARGUE the point that it is OK to get good mikes, mix/balance, then run tethered back into the camera to record sync sound, but I'd certainly like to have a conversation about it. 

UPDATE

I'd asked why not go into the camera on set, and Christian Dolan came back with good answers:

Mike,

Most of what I wrote in the list was proselytizing, with a dash of ranting. The majority of what I do is corporate, industrial and reality, which is single system all the time, so it obviously works, but for features, I really feel that people should go the extra mile, especially considering that it may not add that much to the budget overall.

A) There is the quality issue, as measure by Jay Rose in that article that Bruce Allen linked to. I've done some of my own, non-scientific comparisons, and camera ADCs always seemed far noisier than a dedicated audio recorder.

For (non-narrative) TV, docs, and other programming with simple mixes (or whose audiences have different quality expectations), I think single-system is absolutely the way to go. It's simpler, direct, efficient.

For movies, though, things get more complicated in the mix. Generally, you will be applying some amount of signal processing, and in the case of adding gain and/or compression, you end up also raising the noise floor of the signal. With 16 bit audio (the only option in most cameras), the noise floor is higher than it is in 24 bit audio-capable recorders; throw in the self-noise of the camera's AD converters, and you're fairly limited in your range of gain before the noise floor becomes audible. When you start summing multiple tracks (as you definitely will in the mix), you'll be adding noise to noise. The more tracks you have, the more noise you'll be adding, which is why it's imperative to start with as quiet a recording as possible.

I think that the greater bit-depth argument may even carry over from HD, in that choosing 10 bit over 8 bit gives you much more latitude and wiggle room in post. (Of course, I am a audio guy, so take that one with a grain of salt:).

B) Confidence. With single-system, I set my levels with tone, tape down as many of the camera's audio switches as possible, and then cross my fingers. While I can listen to the headphone return, just about every camera I've ever listened to has had an incredibly noisy headphone output amp, which means that I have to do my critical listening off the mixer, dipping in here and there to make sure I'm still reaching camera. The noisy amp may mask subtle background noises (people talking, AC rumble,etc.), that become issues in post.

Plus, in my experience, every Sony broadcast-level camera mixed its audio tracks to mono to monitor. If I hear a crunchy buzz hit the audio, I can't tell if it's the wireless on track one, leaving the boom on two usable, or across both, rendering that take useless (unless you roll the tape back and manually switch the monitor output at the camera itself to check).

And even with the level-setting and taping off of controls, there may be a chance that a well-meaning, but very hurried cam op may bump an input setting (track one from me, track two now from the cam mic, still got audio, just sounds weird, why?) or an input level pot, giving me one more x-factor to troubleshoot.

With double-system, I have the audio recorder right in front of me. I can set,and more importantly, see, all of my audio levels. I can solo any input I want to see where that weird buzzing is coming from, and I can roll back to any take to check it without having to bother anyone else, or risk the "tape return" feature not quite doing what it's supposed to (that isn't a dig at camera at all. I've just seen it happen more than once where even veteran cam ops have rolled back to check a take, engaged the return, and ended up recording over some material).

C) Track count. As far as I know, just about every major SD/HD camera out there only accepts two line-level inputs. While two tracks can take care of most audio needs (indeed, the venerable Nagra never had more than two tracks, and countless classic films were recorded with that little Swiss tank), today's demands are changing, skewing towards more and more wireless mics. With single system, you must do a live mix on-the-fly for shots with more than two mics, which means that you end up with what you end up with. What happens if wireless #1 gives you an RF hit, spoiling the track that it was sharing with wireless #2, even though #2 was free and clear?

WWCD: Imagine a multi-camera movie shoot, where you have four cameras, but only one VTR. You have to do a "live switch" that is committed to the recording medium, without the benefit of iso-records to re-edit later. While this is all well and good for live TV, it doesn't make much sense for a narrative, where you want all the options you can have in the edit bay.

Well, as usual, I've blathered on for quite a while. I'm pretty new to tech writing; I guess economy of words will come with practice, but I'm certainly having a good time with the blog.

Thanks again for the links, and let me know if you need anything else.


Thanks Christian!

-mike

Labels: audio, Production

Final Cut Studio 2 supports the preview and playback of CAF (Apple Core Audio Format) audio content.

CAF content included with Final Cut Studio 2 is compressed using the Apple Lossless codec. When you use this CAF content in Final Cut Pro, you can preview it normally in the Viewer, but it will need to be rendered in order for it to be played back in a sequence at full quality.


Sounds like somebody goofed in QA, or they had to do it too squeeze the content in. But sheesh, after a 55GB install, you STILL have to compress AUDIO to fit it on the disc?

-mike

Labels: Apple, audio, Final Cut Studio 2

What we hear and how it affects what we see. - DV Guru - how audio placement affects perception. Geeky, but good to know.

Labels: audio, post