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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Admit it: How often have you used on-camera audio for the final edit?

Stephen Pruitt

Stephen Pruitt

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Hi guys. . .

I was in a discussion yesterday about using camera-recorded audio in the timeline and was shot-down instantly by a few members of my crew.

Although we record double-system, I find it makes very, very little difference in sound-quality, but is much easier to just use the audio piped into our REDs via our 788T.

So now's the time for admissions:

How many of you look first to the camera audio before you take into your double-system audio files?

:-)

Stephen
 
Often.

Even my sound guy says for studio interviews the in camera feed should be hard to distinguish from his own capture.
 
As long as it is coming through my sound devices mixer before it hits the EPIC, all day! GOing back to the RED ONE. :)

David
 
I've done it with my old Epic Dragons. Pointed a pair of super-cardiod mics at the one doing the seated monologue and adapted down to the Epic interface. Even though it was done outside (on a still day) I barely got "room" background. Actually had to add foley to keep it from sounding canned.
 
I agree. If it goes through a 664 first... The only two people that'll be able to tell the difference will be me, and the sound engineer.
 
If you're going to have a decent sound design/mix, it blurs the lines even further... In my opinion the only hinderance with the camera audio capture is the monitoring (since it's so quiet and the DSMC1 3.5mm headphone jack is really loose) and the lack of physical knobs to ride levels quickly (it's definitely *not* the audio capture quality).

Actually, I've seen a sound designer revive on-camera scratch mic and use it in the final (rather than have an ADR session for two half-lines), and no one was the wiser. So getting a scratch track feed from a proper mixer would be even better! (You can do as much in post with audio as you can with picture (which is a hell of a lot).)
 
About 80 percent of the time for documentary and corporate sit-down interviews. I've gotten good sound straight in. I made my xlr to mini even though that shouldn't make a difference. Wireless into the camera body. Mixer if you need to ride the audio.
 
Akin, you can send audio out of the tascam via its headphone jack to mic1/2 on the DSMC brain. Not the most robust physical connection, but works. Conversely, if you have XLR adapters, you can convert from 3.5, but you'd potentially lose stereo (which could otherwise be used as two tracks).
 
I think there's about 4 different clusters of people that have totally different needs, while the camera leans to either the MOS photographer side or the production film side. For production film, I have my script notes that are joined to actors &lines, then have the sound reports with files referenced per scene and cut (also each sound file is named per scene recording, with data/time folders). This is a lot of data that is entered and really requires a couple of people being fanatical on keeping up with the metadata, which I seriously doubt happens outside feature film & drama tv. So for feature film following standard practice dual sound just makes sense as far as creating script and sound reports, keeping up with the metadata, and not loosing the gold of a performance. I'd lean that most of the people on reduser are not in the full production feature film & TV scene, I don't know the percentage of active redusers by thier primary genre/work type. I also have no idea if RED knows by camera purchases what is the genre/environment that the camera will be used primarily in, but my gut feel it's feature film & drama TV with a touch of the nature crowd, followed by the fashion click. Would be interesting to see the stat's per genre/film production type.
 
I was one-man-banding it yesterday and I still ran double system sound with a SD 302 going into a Tascam recorder. And that's the audio I will use.
 
I use it through my Sound Devices 442 when I'm using my sound kit. If we have a production sound guy we sync or I'll use a mic for production sound. As long as you set it up right, it sounds good.
 
All the time. Running a Schoeps through the MixPre-D into the Epic is a great combination. I've had many, many compliments on how good it sounds.
 
Last year we bit the bullet and spent money on a Zaxcom wireless Zaxnet system, Nomads, Qrx, Trx, etc. Its the perfect system for a small crew or one man band to record and monitor mixed audio wirelessly to camera while having multiple backups, perfectly synced time code and pristine sound. The system is not cheap, but its the best piece of mind you or your sound mixer will ever have. I used to record dual system directly to laptop and cam for years.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
Although we record double-system, I find it makes very, very little difference in sound-quality, but is much easier to just use the audio piped into our REDs via our 788T.
Click to expand...
I think you're trying to justify doing things in a cheap, slapdash kind of way. If you own a 788, why run anything but scratch audio into the camera?

Talk to a re-recording mixer and ask them what kind of tracks they would prefer to mix for a TV series or a feature film. If it's some crap production for YouTube or a test or something, I can understand it.

Really, the only issue is finding a warm body to a) operate the recorder (and change levels and do all the things a sound mixer does), and b) a different person to sync up everything for the editor. You need the latter anyway because you need to organize and back up the files, and syncing the material up takes only about a minute per take -- less if the timecode is identical. The people doing these jobs can be affordable​ if you shop around and make deals, so this need not take a lot of time and money. But each does require some experience and expertise.

I get that there are some situations where you have to run a "one man band," particularly for surreptitious surveillance or dangerous areas (like war zones). But for scripted productions, this sounds like penny wise and pound foolish.
 
Can anybody post specs and some photos of their "one man band" setups?
I haven't ventured into recording audio into the RED yet, but somewhere in the near future I foresee it coming to me. I'd rather be prepared....
 
Mark Phelan said:
All the time. Running a Schoeps through the MixPre-D into the Epic is a great combination. I've had many, many compliments on how good it sounds.
Click to expand...

And it is the Schoeps and the Mix Pre D doing a lot of the heavy lifting. The EPIC preamps are not great but when you feed them a decent signal, from a combo like that you don't get into the preamp issues that can arise when modifying the EPIC's gain. Going "direct" is most likely where one is most likely to run into problems.


David
 
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