Professional Audio Evaluation

[Matthew W. Phillips]

I recall some years ago reading an article on the US porn industry in German magazine 'Der Spiegel' where they interviewed this veteran director. He was complaining that 20 years ago he was paid 40K to do a film, on 35mm, with a crew and everything, whereas now he gets paid a mere 400 and he's all by himself with just a cheap video camera.

 

I'm sorry but after reading this, I just can't stop laughing. It seems that Max always has humorous information to pass on, not to mention a funny way of saying it.

[John Sprung]

I don't think I would be at all comfortable with a recording system where there was no absolute guarantee that the sound and picture stay in sync at all times.

Loss of sync all over the place has been endemic to HDTV for the last dozen years or so. It's not just a recording system, it's everything.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Keith Walters]

Loss of sync all over the place has been endemic to HDTV for the last dozen years or so. It's not just a recording system, it's everything.

 

-- J.S.

Maybe so, but I guess I'm still caught up in the Old-School TV Station Prime Directive: "It was all right when it left here!"

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the RED is the only Broadcast Quality camcorder setup that does not have a fixed audio data rate.

 

It would be interesting to do some tests involving a Zone Plate attached to a clapper board, and see how the sound-sync reacts to really complex and rapidly changing picture material. The concern is that extremely "busy" R3D coding might make the system "lose count" on the audio processing.

[Keith Walters]

I recall some years ago reading an article on the US porn industry in German magazine 'Der Spiegel' where they interviewed this veteran director. He was complaining that 20 years ago he was paid 40K to do a film, on 35mm, with a crew and everything, whereas now he gets paid a mere 400 and he's all by himself with just a cheap video camera.

Maybe we should contact Digital Playground's production people and ask if they'd like to share their RED experiences here :rolleyes:

That would certainly increase the hit rate on this forum :lol:

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Maybe so, but I guess I'm still caught up in the Old-School TV Station Prime Directive: "It was all right when it left here!"

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the RED is the only Broadcast Quality camcorder setup that does not have a fixed audio data rate.

 

It would be interesting to do some tests involving a Zone Plate attached to a clapper board, and see how the sound-sync reacts to really complex and rapidly changing picture material. The concern is that extremely "busy" R3D coding might make the system "lose count" on the audio processing.

 

I looked at what was available and I couldn't find it in the documentation. Plenty of guesses or marketing media promosing things. Why I was very interested this test, Sound Devices, know what their doing.

 

I don't see why syncing is such a problem? laziness? A master clock on set, with modern sync generators, taken as ephemoral data should be able to initialize and sync any slave devices, camera, recorders, etc, etc, You should be able to sync up everything uncable and let slaves free-run for a few hours without degradation of the time coherency.

 

Are people just not taking care of the system delays?

[John Sprung]

Are people just not taking care of the system delays?

Yup, I'd guess that's most of it. Not specific to Red, but all over the damn place.

 

 

-- J.S.

[Keith Walters]

I looked at what was available and I couldn't find it in the documentation. Plenty of guesses or marketing media promosing things. Why I was very interested this test, Sound Devices, know what their doing.

 

I don't see why syncing is such a problem? laziness? A master clock on set, with modern sync generators, taken as ephemoral data should be able to initialize and sync any slave devices, camera, recorders, etc, etc, You should be able to sync up everything uncable and let slaves free-run for a few hours without degradation of the time coherency.

 

Are people just not taking care of the system delays?

I was not talking about fixed timing errors, which are easily correctable.

I was talking about "dynamic" sound-sync errors which may occur because the CPU is tripping over its feet trying to encode some really complex video data. The sound may well fall back into sync shortly afterwards, but that is no real help.

 

Audio does not come with built-in timecode!

[Guest Glen Alexander]

I was not talking about fixed timing errors, which are easily correctable.

I was talking about "dynamic" sound-sync errors which may occur because the CPU is tripping over its feet trying to encode some really complex video data. The sound may well fall back into sync shortly afterwards, but that is no real help.

 

Audio does not come with built-in timecode!

 

 

That's why there are atomic functions along with 'fork' in the threading libraries. You're talking about poor programming not poor audio.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Glen Alexander

[Keith Walters]

That's why there are atomic functions along with 'fork' in the threading libraries. You're talking about poor programming not poor audio.

Well yes, I was. Well, the POTENTIAL for poor programming at any rate. Your point?

I was not saying that there necessarily IS anything wrong with the RED's audio recording software, only that I personally would do some serious testing before I trusted it with all my audio.

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Well yes, I was. Well, the POTENTIAL for poor programming at any rate. Your point?

I was not saying that there necessarily IS anything wrong with the RED's audio recording software, only that I personally would do some serious testing before I trusted it with all my audio.

 

The point is about degradation in the audio chain not the PROCESSING chain.

 

The audio chain involves the selection and performance of preamps, D/A, A/D, filters etc NOT whether you have a poorly designed OS or crappy programming.

 

A poorly designed audio chain is hopeless and indicates sloppy overall design of the rest of the system. Unless you feel like unsoldering chips and Frankensteining the boards, which I have done before and never again.

 

A poor implementation of threading/fork/CPU management can be fixed with patches, so Microsoft would have you believe.

Edited June 27, 2008 by Glen Alexander

[Carl Brighton]

A poorly designed audio chain is hopeless and indicates sloppy overall design of the rest of the system. Unless you feel like unsoldering chips and Frankensteining the boards, which I have done before and never again.

 

A poor implementation of threading/fork/CPU management can be fixed with patches, so Microsoft would have you believe.

 

A lot of Audio processing Algorihms are written in an esoteric programming language called TEENSPEEK. TEENSPEEK is a derivative of the late 1970s language VALGOL, specifically developed for ingenuine fork management (IFM).

VALGOL was praised (by its developers) for its highly flexible repertoire of conditional branch statements.

 

To the usual conditional variants of IF, THEN, ELSE, ELSEIF

VALGOL added the IF, LIKE, YOUKNOW and WHATEVERRRRRR statements

 

TEENSPEEK among other refinements introduced the modifiers YEAH, YEAHRIGHT and ASIF in the late 1990s and is optimized for two-thumb keypad entry in place of two-finger.

 

TEENPEEK is noted for its easily accessible positive and negative exception handling heirachy eg:

 

EXCEPTIONLEVEL 1

ON ERROR GO "OHMYGOD"

 

EXCEPTIONLEVEL 2

ON ERROR GO "OHMYGODOHMYGOD"

 

EXCEPTIONLEVEL 3

ON ERROR GO "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD"

 

etc

[Guest Glen Alexander]

A lot of Audio processing Algorihms are written in an esoteric programming language called TEENSPEEK.

EXCEPTIONLEVEL 1

ON ERROR GO "OHMYGOD"

 

EXCEPTIONLEVEL 2

ON ERROR GO "OHMYGODOHMYGOD"

 

EXCEPTIONLEVEL 3

ON ERROR GO "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD"

 

etc

 

:lol:

 

Carl, where you have been?

 

if ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO EOF

if ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO EOF

.

.

.

if ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO EOF

[K Borowski]

:lol:

 

Carl, where you have been?

 

if ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO EOF

if ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO EOF

.

.

.

if ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO EOF

 

This is why I hope digital cinematography NEVER becomes mainstream, because then I am going to have to listen to this same poop I heard nonstop in my former life as an aspiring engineering student :blink:

[Jeffrey Cirbes]

 

There are currently over 20 features being shot on RED and a major network TV series has just switched to RED. There are countless commercials and music videos being shot on RED.

 

 

Which TV series?

[Matthew W. Phillips]

Which TV series?

 

He could tell you but then he would have to kill you. B)

[Guest Glen Alexander]

This is why I hope digital cinematography NEVER becomes mainstream, because then I am going to have to listen to this same poop I heard nonstop in my former life as an aspiring engineering student :blink:

 

:lol:

 

You'll just to quit cinema and just hang out at the photo.net forum.... just hand over the last remaining HIE stock from your fridge and any Nikon 250 backs... :P

[Carl Brighton]

:lol:

 

Carl, where you have been?

 

if ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO EOF

if ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO EOF

.

.

.

if ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO EOF

Same place I've always been.

When there's something worth commenting on here, I'll comment on it.

Hasn't happened all that much recently :P

 

So how are you enjoying France?

(As in "how is it possible"?)

 

According to Marianne Faithful, Lucy Jordan jumped off a rooftop when she realized she was never going to ride through Paris in a sportscar with the warm wind in her hair.

 

Sad-arsed bitch. No wonder Mick Jagger dumped her. What's the big deal? I've driven through Paris in a somewhat lackluster Renault rental car, and OK it wasn't a sports car, but I can't really see how the experience would be worth jumping out of a window over.

 

If I really wanted to I suppose could drive through Paris in a sportscar, with the warm wind in my car, but somehow it's not on the top 37 things to do before I die. (Bit of a silly statement that, I mean you can't really do a lot after you die).

 

But also keep in mind, it's a dubious pleasure that will be forever denied to Jim Jannard, and fellow billionaire Ron Perelman :lol:

[Phil Rhodes]

> With older tape-based formats such as HDCAM (or even mini-DV!) the sound and

> picture are recorded in distinct "packets" for each field or frame

 

Point of order - this is not quite the case.

 

On mini-DV, the audio clock is not phase locked to the video clock. On DVCAM, it is.

 

This is not, repeat not, repeat not an issue with regard to sound sync; both are still crystal timebased. It may be an issue with phasing audio and producing seamless per-frame cuts between stuff that's been (otherwise losslessly) bounced around miniDV a few times and stuff that hasn't.

 

P

[Keith Walters]

> With older tape-based formats such as HDCAM (or even mini-DV!) the sound and

> picture are recorded in distinct "packets" for each field or frame

 

Point of order - this is not quite the case.

 

On mini-DV, the audio clock is not phase locked to the video clock. On DVCAM, it is.

 

This is not, repeat not, repeat not an issue with regard to sound sync; both are still crystal timebased. It may be an issue with phasing audio and producing seamless per-frame cuts between stuff that's been (otherwise losslessly) bounced around miniDV a few times and stuff that hasn't.

 

P

Yes, but since editing of both systems largely consists of simply copying and pasting different streams of discrete data packets, there is little opportunity for the sound to lose its way with respect to the picture. This incidentally is why I try to tell punters (with little success) that MiniDV is still by far the best home movie option. If you damage a couple of inches of a miniDV tape, you lose the few frames that were crunched. Other whizz-bang formats are nowhere near so forgiving

 

I could be totally wrong, but I imagine that R3D files are constructed more like .wmv where the video and sound data are shoehorned into the output file on an ad hoc basis, which gives ample opportunities for fouling up the video/audio sync.

[K Borowski]

:lol:

 

You'll just to quit cinema and just hang out at the photo.net forum.... just hand over the last remaining HIE stock from your fridge and any Nikon 250 backs... :P

 

Did you plug my name into a search engine? :blink:

 

That's even worse than techo-babble, internet stalking. . .

 

Just FYI, I also used to play baseball for Chicago, and Joe Borowski is my little brother. I taught him everything he knows about throwing a 90 MPH pitch, but he learned how to blow so many saves on his own. Probably caught some curse from Jose Mesa that was still hanging around in the air in the shower rooms at the Jake's locker room. Maybe he has Mesa's old locker, or maybe someone made a voodoo doll, put a pin through his arm, and burried it.

 

But back on-topic, I'm sure there can't be more than one person with the same name on the internet :unsure:

[Jeffrey Cirbes]

Which TV series?

 

 

 

"Law & Order" (the "Mother ship")...

[Keith Walters]

"Law & Order" (the "Mother ship")...

Seriously?

I'm waiting for a reply to an email to someone who works on one of the "offspring" shows, but I'm sure if he knew about this, he would have mentioned it by now!

That would certainly set the cat among the pigeons...

Edited July 3, 2008 by Keith Walters

[Guest Glen Alexander]

I do wish Red had put some sort of digital audio input on the camera, so you could digitize audio using some nice external device with its own power supply, but still get the workflow benefits of single-system sound. (This should be theoretically possible to do with the current hardware though the USB port, with an appropriate firmware update, but I'm not aware of any plans to Red's part on do this.)

 

it would be easy integrate an optical coax or fiber interface for external audio interface.

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Did you plug my name into a search engine? :blink:

 

That's even worse than techo-babble, internet stalking. . .

 

:lol:

 

i happen to be research some photographic elements and it doesn't take a rocket scientist/engineer, oh yeah i used to be one.... ooops.. to connect your posts here with posts on photo.net

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Seriously?

I'm waiting for a reply to an email to someone who works on one of the "offspring" shows, but I'm sure if he knew about this, he would have mentioned it by now!

That would certainly set the cat among the pigeons...

 

Did all of the 'offspring' shows get banished to cable? Isn't that like channel 58, out of "57 with nothin' on"

 

Did you find out if they bypassed the red audio altogether? and went straight to a mixer?