Is 16BIT enough vs 24BIT

I agree with all these points, i guess technology and the people who make the "standards " have made it that much harder to meet their specs.

And sometimes, some of us get caught up in that, "oh am i doing this to standards", "will they accept my film if i do 16bit" etc.etc.

I took two sound files, one at 16bit and one at 24bit, the 24bit file took way more plugins and abuse before sounding "unacceptable". Both sounded awesome with a generous volume range if you will, but the 24bit came on top.
I notice that some people will come up with theories and numbers, but in the end, its our ears that are the best judges.
 
Hey, careful, Noiz! I tried the same thing once, and got olEGGED - something like "no professional ever work with such sh*t equipment".
 
killfilm said:
good points everyone, SO, why is there a lot of features that have recorded into camera with major success such as the DVX (iraq in fragments), no seperate recorder, no 24bit, and the audio is nothing short of awesome. Some people advised never to use the DVX/HVX preamps, but are proven wrong again.
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Well talking about documentary vs narrative is apples and oranges.

The audio Iraq in Fragments has very little sync dialog. Of the little, it is mostly monolog interviews captured with on-camera mic. A colleague of mine recorded the final mix on that film and I can tell you the audio was a truly a work of genius. Most of what you hear is post music, fx, and b-roll ambient expertly edited and mixed together to form a masterpiece.

The proverbial monkeys with typewriters will produce Hamlet quicker then someone without decades of experience will pull off a mix of that quality.

Cheers
 
sorry wabbit, but it mostly a short shotgun with a lav

link: http://digitalcontentproducer.com/desktoppost/video_oneman_pipeline/



“I recorded all audio on the camera, using a Sony short shotgun microphone with a Rycote Softie wind-cover,” Longley says. “Sometimes, for interviews, I would use a wired Tram lavalier mic clipped to the subject. For recording music, I would occasionally use both microphones at once, recording onto both XLR channels of the camera. Because the DVX100 can record uncompressed 16-bit, 48kHz audio, the quality was excellent. I always set my levels manually, on the fly, to get a more naturalistic dynamic range.
“Then, in postproduction, I used a dense, layered approach to audio. I wanted to create complex, three-dimensional audio spaces for all scenes, so most of the time there is anywhere from eight to 24 channels of audio playing at once. At each filming location, I constructed several layers of location sound that we would later spread into the [left-right] and surround channels, and then, on top of those, there were multiple layers of music, dialogue, ambience, and so forth. We exported all audio as OMF files from our [Apple] Final Cut Pro timeline, and eventually brought it all to Bad Animals [Seattle], where they created a final Dolby Digital mix in [Digidesign] Pro Tools. The final mix lasted seven days, and whenever we ran into a section that felt a little empty, I would go back through my DV tape library and find location sound that fit the scene, prepare it in Logic Pro, and bring it to Bad Animals the next day, where they would add it to the mix. We wound up with huge folders of ambient location sound. It was probably a more complicated sound approach than most documentaries take, but I think it paid off.”
 
Yes, on-camera mic=shotgun on camera; not to be confused with built-in mic.

I was working a project at the studio when David was working on the final output. The raw dialog was quite rough, nothing to do with the equipment used to collect it, but the circumstances it was recorded under. Again, that whole film is a master class in creative editing and mixing. If you watch it again, pay attention to how little sync sound there is.

Cheers
 
i do see your point, its a documentary and viewers will usually forgive small audio slips since they know that this is a kind of "real" film.

I guess those slipups wouldnt be allowed in a major motion picture, cause the viewer knows that this was a written, filmed story, and all elements must be present to tell the story, so if audio is bad then the story fails too.

Now, if we could only get most idiotic directors to give audio more credit, instead of them weeping in the editing room about how bad the film's audio is and wondering why it is like that:nads:
 
Your quote is very interesting since they used basically a narrative feature many track approach instead of the usual very few track documentary approach. Doc. directors are usually very timid about having a lot of sound other than dialog.
Something that indi low budget directors also have a hard time embracing.
 
ya noiz, i find it very inspiring when someone takes a different approach than the usual. This multilayering approach is very interesting, distributing ambiences into different surround channels, not new, but its for a doc thats for sure. very interesting indeed.
 
i wanted to raise this thread up again for a reason, a hollywood sound mixer/designer actually stated that a camera such as a dvx100 realistically puts out a dynamic range of 67db, in which a nagra used on many feature films puts out about 73db for dialogue recording.

therefore using a 16bit camera along with a mixer gives you more plenty for a theatrical feature.
 
Question: 67 dB on DVX100 with

- built-in mic?
- XLR mic-in?
- XLR line-in?

I personally believe that line-in on DVX100 gives much better DR then 67 dB. Unfortunatelly I do not have a DVX100 at hand to test, with XH-A1 with line in from SD302 I can get almost 93 dB of dynamic range.
 
the info was taken from tomlinson holman's book "sound for digital video", he states that through the mic inputs and to the analog outs there's 67 usable db on the dvx100
 
killfilm said:
the info was taken from tomlinson holman's book "sound for digital video", he states that through the mic inputs and to the analog outs there's 67 usable db on the dvx100
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Hmmm... an interesting measurement, but sort of useless... the DVX is used for digital acquisition; I doubt that relatively much money and effort went into its D/A circuitry. Certainly the headphone amp is pretty bad! Much better to measure the captured digital signal rather than the camera's analog out... the analog out section is not intended to be used for much beyond rough field monitoring, and rarely is.
 
oh ya and the digital out (firewire), tomlinson states that its only 73 db!
then he says that its a little short of a mono nagra, that is used often for theatricals. So technically, a 16bit camera recording (if good preamps) is good enough for feature film dialogue recording!!
 
Yes. Could be used for feature film dialogue, as long as your levels are manageable and consistent. A second recorder is not always necessary, but usually a feature film has a big enough budget to accomodate a backup recording when possible.
 
killfilm said:
oh ya and the digital out (firewire), tomlinson states that its only 73 db!
then he says that its a little short of a mono nagra, that is used often for theatricals. So technically, a 16bit camera recording (if good preamps) is good enough for feature film dialogue recording!!
Click to expand...

This was never disputed at least shouldn't have been. Dolby Digital is 16 bit (compressed). DAT was standard (semi standard) for a number of years. All films that were done with pro tools (till the D24 cards ~~~ 98) or Waveframe (a LOT of dialog and ADR used to be done on waveframe) were 16 bit. And most films since. 24 bit didn't show up a lot till Deva captured a big hunk of american production work ~~ 5 ~6 years ago.
Analog tape (with the exception of MAG) has a number of serious drawbacks. Even with some pretty good DR you still have tape hiss to get rid of, so your bottom point is a bit soft. It doesn't just drop off at XdB, it sinks into tape hiss. So your bottom depends on how much hiss you allow. That was the big WooHoo with DAT. Even when they sounded harsh with early converters there wasn't the hiss problem. This makes it a bit hard and a bit useless to compare the two on tech specs. For explosive sounds tape sounds "better" to most people because it distorts in a "friendly" way that most people associate with LOUD rather than bad recording. Digital while "cleaner" has no built in over protection so to record the same thing you have to record very low and things like gunshots end up sounding "wimpy". The limiters on the MixPre and other "pro" mixers and preamps help overcome this issue.
If you want a mono Nagra I have one you can buy.
 
Oh and since were here I'll give a mini version of my analog VS digital reality check. Analog is often spoken of (by proponents) as if it were a "true" representation where digital is just "samples". In fact analog tape is not a continuous signal. Magnetism only goes so small. Each magnetic unit is either on or off. What appears to be a continuous signal is the averaging of a random and very high sample rate. So fundamentally it's all digital. "Digital"'s "harshness" and other complaints are mostly the fault of the fixed sample rate that creates an error that stays the same long enough for us to perceive it. One bit recording like the Korg uses is a "digital" imitation of the way analog tape records with the advantage of not picking up tape hiss. I haven't heard the Korg but it's reported to sound fantastic by folks who have.
 
no circles here barry, i think the point is, that 16bit is enough for dialogue recording, especially when the camera is used with a mixer for its superior preamps.

yes 24bit is better for more headroom in processing, but seriously, how much processing are you gonna do on a vocal track, IF it was recorded properly, perhaps noise reduction, compression, equalization, thats about it.
 
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