When Holophone announced the H4 SuperMINI some time ago, I was very intrigued by this unique product offering. The SuperMINI is a on-camera microphone system that captures six discrete channels of audio and mixes it down into two channels on your camcorder. Holophone also offers true multi-channel surround recording products, but those of course require some method of recording all the channels discretely…this solution puts relatively affordable surround sound recording in the hands of a single videographer in the field with a minimum of hassle. There was a review by Carl Mrozek in DV recently, you can read it online. Looks like a very interesting niche product.

Editor Harry Miller has shared two audio editing/mixing tutorials for Avid NLE users. It’s great to see more and more user-generated instructional material for the Avid platform as of late.

(Via Norman Hollyn)

Techthoughts has pointed out a handy little audio tool that can help save 3.5mm audio ports from death by cord snaggage. Whether it’s a laptop, camera headphone jack, or the front of your Mac tower, 1/8″ mini jacks can be particularly susceptible to damage when cords are accidentally yanked. We’ve all done it. The Replug device is a $18 break-way inline adapter that might just save your ports. Looks like a great solution to a common problem.

Snapper is a unique application for Mac users that allows you to do a number of useful things with audio files on the fly. By simply selecting audio files in Finder, you can quickly pull out snippets of audio, export files to various formats, split stereo channels, drop a selection into Pro Tools, and much more. It’ll convert files on the fly to AIFF, WAV, BWF, mp3, or m4a (hello, Wedding and Event iRiver users!). The best way to understand is to watch Snapper in action, check out the 100-second demonstration video.

(Via MultimediaShooter)

Thanks to Flippant News for pointing out this great article by accomplished film editor Walter Murch. It delves deeply into the underlying motivations and cues in great sound design. Not to be missed! Here’s an excerpt.

“This metaphoric use of sound is one of the most flexible and productive means of opening up a conceptual gap into which the fertile imagination of the audience will reflexively rush, eager (even if unconsciously so) to complete circles that are only suggested, to answer questions that are only half-posed. What each person perceives on screen, then, will have entangled within it fragments of their own personal history, creating that paradoxical state of mass intimacy where—though the audience is being addressed as a whole—each individual feels the film is addressing things known only to him or her.”

ProRemote is a application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows you to wirelessly remotely control your ProTools LE workstation with realtime feedback.

“ProRemote will be going into beta next week…currently the server is Mac only but will be an easy port to Windows later on (one thing at a time!) It is nearly feature complete now and runs on jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches.”

While the Beta will be available soon, they won’t ship the final application until Apple certifies the software when the iPhone SDK is released. In a later revision the developer plans to use the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer for panning. Video of this unique one-two combo below…
Continue reading ‘Pro Tools + iPhone = Remote Control Sweetness’

Owyheesound has three detailed and thorough articles on Sound For Film, Sound Studio, and Location Recording. The articles discuss the basic process of each situation, explain terminology, and offer a few tips for handling specific issues. Here’s a quick synopsis of a few topics covered.

Sound For Film
Production Technique, Dealing with Dynamic Audio, Synchronizing, Post Production.

Sound Studio
Equipment, The Room, Mixing, Compression, Multi-band Dynamics, Equalizers, Reverb, Simulated Stereo, Exciter, Noise Reduction.

Location Recording
Equipment/Gear, Room Tone, Ambient Noise, Synchronizing, Mic Type and Placement, Booms and Blimps.

This is sort of offtopic…it’s a very interesting and funny list of the most outrageous ripoff “audiophile” products. Things like the $417 Furutech RD-2 Optical Media Demagnitizer, Cable Elevators Plus which protect your speaker wires from the horrors of carpet, and of course a nice set of OPUS MM Speaker Cables to the tune of $30,750.00. This is also a good time to mention that the James Randi Foundation is offering 1 Million dollars to anyone who can tell the audio difference between common audio cables and a $7,250 “Anjouâ€? pair. UPDATE: A journalist has accepted the $1Mil audio test challenge. We shall see if there is really is an advantage to using the Anjou cables.
Another UPDATE…Pear Cables has withdrawn their support of the test, and will not loan the journalist a pair of $7250 Anjou cables, as they initially said they would. JREF has all the details on this.

While his film is still in (select) theaters, John August has shared a Director’s Commentary audio track online. The idea is that you load it up in your MP3 player of choice (*cough iPod*) and go watch the movie in theaters again, but this time with audio company of John August and Ryan Reynolds. Two points he makes that are worth noting here:

2. Don’t try to listen to it on your first viewing. The movie is confusing enough. Hearing me blather on about some esoteric detail will increase the bewilderment, not lessen it.
6. Be respectful: If you’re listening to the commentary, sit away from other people, so they’re not hearing it. Yes, that’s just common sense and common courtesy, but I thought I’d point it out.

This is not the first time an in-theater commentary has been suggested…as Kevin Smith recorded one for Clerks II but was prevented from sharing it online by the distributing studio. So this looks like a movie first. John is also running a trailer competition on his site, has shared intimate production details, and the first nine minutes of the film are available online…looks like they are leveraging every viral buzz trick in the book to market the movie. Smart filmmaker.

(Thanks for the tip, Rick!)

LFIHD noted today that the Motu V3HD has been released. We first mentioned it not too long ago. It has a staggering number of features and capabilities, and looks like a very useful tool for Audio and Video ingest and monitoring (and much more). If you’ve been eyeballing this one, you’ll be happy to hear that Bimi & Herschel has the V3HD in-stock and listed for just under $3000. And if you aren’t familiar with the new magic box from Motu, read on…
Continue reading ‘Motu V3HD Magic Box Now Shipping’

For the sound effect junkies, here’s an extensive archive of animal noises and sounds.

Moody is a free Mac OSX application that works in concert with iTunes to intelligently tag your library of music based on mood. It uses a floating window with color-coded mood scale, so you can quickly tag songs as you listen. This enables you to find certain moods easier, and create more intelligent playlists. This is handy for me as an editor, because I can find sound effects and background music much more intelligently (once I have tagged the library). Additionally, there are those that use iTunes as the repository and organization tool for audio in a editing project (Shane Ross has a DVD tutorial on that topic in fact), and this could be used to further organize that media in iTunes. Handy tool.

Mike Curtis has written two fantastic articles for DV Magazine that cover audio monitoring options for both Mac and PC editing workstations.

*Upgrade Your Images with Audio - A primer on audio monitoring for (Mac) HD video editors.
*Upgrade Your Images with Audio: PC Edition - A primer on audio monitoring for Windows-based HD video editors.

You’ll find discussion on the two articles as well as a few updates and notes over at HD For Indies.

Sound Dogs has an extensive collection of on-location videos that show how they capture realistic SFX in the field. Several really creative rigs and audio solutions are shown.

Here’s a neat little free FxFactory plugin for Apple Motion users, it uses Motion 3’s Audio Behaviors capability to generate a dynamic and unique audio meter. Very cool. You can use it in previous versions of Motion, but you’ll have to manually adjust the effect. Get it here. Thanks to The Editblog for pointing this one out.