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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 :)

Need SIMPLE Audio Playback solution

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Mark Allen

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Doing another RED shoot (though this Question has little to do with RED itself) and I need have audio playback with time code slate.

Now, in the past I've tried a few options for this, what seems like it should be a simple issue) and it's always been trouble. So I'm looking for suggestions. I will rent the equipment.

I just need to playback an audio file with the time code reading from the file and spitting out to the slate for synching. However, we always run into trouble with the getting the time code and the audio file. Is there some super simple user interface hardware to do this? There are only four on the crew for this and we're going to double someone up for it thus it needs simplicity.

Thank you
 
Music Video?
Record LTC at the appropriate Frame Rate with a TC generator on to one track
of a Digital Audio Work station. (44.1k)
Record or import the audio, and make it mono on the other track.
Make a CD
Play CD with player only hook up audio track to one speaker.
Take TC track into slate.
 
That is an interesting solution. We'll have to be more non linear than that, but I wonder if I could do something like this from a laptop. Is the output on a laptop clean enough for that?

Anyone know of any recordings of timecode on the web that I could download? Would save the step of the generator, If I knew what time the code started I could just line them up in FCP and export it that way, play it out the lap top.

More suggestions welcome, that was a good start.
 
You only asked about an easy way.

if you want to shoot certain shots halfway thru the audio.. it must be prepared as separate track IDs. Also any count off to begin.

It would help if you would be forth coming with more info about what you are doing.

You can do it from a laptop.. it doesn't have to be 'clean' for it is only scratch.

Keep on mind your sample rate... audio is 44 and video is 48.

Actual TC numbers are not that important.

I would advise you to rent a TC generator/reader. Do not trust unknown TC off the web.

That is all my free info for today.
 
Could you put the file in Final Cut and use the window burn filter to make the code visible and then lay off the project off to media that you could playback on set? Give the file some leader with a countdown long enough to sync it and shoot a monitor then pan over to the talent?

I did this years ago with video tape and made sure I used the same tape for playback as my source audio for edit and it worked great. Window burn a song and play it back on a TV monitor - shoot it like a slate, black field with timecode and audio outs going to speakers. It was only a 30 sec commercial so I wasn't really pressing the time sync continuum.
 
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Brian - I had to read that twice to understand, but now I get it.... that's really interesting.

I suppose we could just play the QT movie on a powerbook in QT (which might be what we source with anyway) and thne use that as our slate. (btw yes this becomes the PERFECT job for an iPad.... which should have been called iSlate anyway).

That's an interesting solution too. Wonder if that would end up being awkward though or have any kind of delay.
 
Yes essentially instead of a TC slate you use a video monitor (or computer) with visible TC as the slate. I guess you could playback from the FCP project itself if you render the visuals (window burn) and don't bog down the processor. You might want to do a quick and dirty test to see if there is any latency issues.

I am not even sure if there were smarts slates yet when i came up with this solution. I wonder when Mike Deneke made his first TC slate. He was a great guy btw he mixed a couple of films for me. He passed before his time.
 
I did some searching and this iphone app seems it would be very easy to set up and if I used it as the music source, very easy all around, anyone have any experience with pure blend software's movieslate? Saw and enthusiastic review.

http://www.pureblendsoftware.com/movieslate
 
While I have no experience with that iPhone slate, I do have experience with music videos. You will want your playback to be heard by the band, and if doing drum parts you will want something that the band can hear over the drums. For what it's worth, I don't use my time code slate when shooting something like this, although I do my own edit.
I generally prep a CD with all the music cues from the song with count-ins and give to the band a couple weeks in advance for them to practice to. Then we record with playback audio to camera for easy sync in post.


All the Best!
 
I've done lots of music videos the standard way, prepped music with TC slate. TC slate usually with a wireless receiver because often the camera(s) move around a lot resp. don't want to refocus on the slate numbers.

Playback nowadays is always from a laptop as it's so easy to change speed and change TC speed with it.
Then, I've worked on 2 big Bollywood movies and learned something new:
a) I got the music delivered on a 1/4 tape (!) so I had to bring my Nagra to the set and b) they (the masters of ceremony) couldn't care less about timecode.

The assistant to the choreographer did a short count-in together with me starting the tape about 2 bars earlier and that was it. Bollywood dance numbers tend to be quite elaborate and after I eventually had the chance to watch the finished movie, well, everything worked, everything was in perfect sync.

Morale of the story: KISS (keep it simple stupid) always works - and often enough better and faster ;-) Your choice!
 
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I would recommend Courtney Goodin's little program BWF-Widget Pro as an excellent way to play back sound on set and change speed as required. It'll run on a little tiny netbook and has just about every feature you need.

If you're doing a complex multi-track project, you'll need a mobile Pro Tools rig and an operator (in my experience). But for 99% of simple music videos and so on, BWF-Widget works great.
 
Never seen a Bollywood dance number that was in sync. Too bad Widget doesn't work on a Mac.
 
Mr. Trailangel, I don't know what you're watching and how many Bollywood movies you've seen.....I doubt it were a lot though ;-)
Maybe they need to run 192khz to make it happen, omg.

PS. this board is supposedly a 'real name' board....?
 
Trailangel said:
Never seen a Bollywood dance number that was in sync. Too bad Widget doesn't work on a Mac.
Click to expand...
I'm 99% a Mac guy. BWF-Widget and Lectronet (to control the Lectrosonics Venue wireless receiver) are two things for which I have to run Windows. I do whatever I have to do to get the job done without compromise.
 
Just got finished with the shoot. I was hoping to use the Movie Slate app - but there is still a little bit of latency in the music video mode. So, we used the 2nd channel of audio as time code going into the TC slate played off an iphone. Worked great. Thanks all for the thoughts and suggestions. (I got the audio file of timecode from coffeysound.com as well as the gear. They were great!)
 
I want to add a little helpful hint here. I've heard from people that when you use this method of Timecode on channel two you can get bleed and this bothered me because digital files should not bleed. While I tested this one of my techs did tell me that when he used iTunes, it did in fact bleed. I didn't believe him until I did it myself and low and behold it bled. So, I thought it was the compression being introduced when iTunes copies it to disk. But no, even an uncompressed file did it. The answer is that there is a preference of Sound Enhancement in ITunes. you must turn that off or you WILL be bleeding.

Just a tip I put out into the internet in case someone runs into this situation and googles.
 
The music for this one was also done on an iPod..... not my choice BTW, as I don't own one and don't like iTunes. No TC or clapper, on board camera mic provided sync. The shooter was the editor, creator as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LVrHT1M764
 
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