Blooper beeps
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DadinWestchester
Well-known member
How about just a simple 1k tone generator. I've used those in the past.
Luis_
Well-known member
53 seconds into this video I put a really corny simple beep, is something like this what you mean? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUhgIAag0rY
I'm looking for something similar to the two beeps at the beginning of this video. Thanks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7l9ESnIJ-o
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
FYI those are Nagra beeps. 1K tone. In the good old days when recording to analog tape it was common practice to put a few beeps like that between takes so that you could identify different recordings while fast forwarding. I think the practice was two at the head and three at the tail but I'm not sure it was set in stone. On FX recordings I've heard anywhere from two to six or seven. You always do at least two so you don't mistake it for something you actually recorded. You make them by pressing a momentary switch that patches in the tone generator. SD and Sure mixers also have this switch (probably all production mixers do also).
Luis_
Well-known member
here's like 8 different ones, 2 dry, 2 same with echo, 2 lower pitch, 2 of those with echo.
hope they work for you, good luck!
you can download the single wav file with all of these in it --->>> here: https://www.onlinefilefolder.com/4svUzGDLncUQ00
let me know if they work for you!
hope they work for you, good luck!
you can download the single wav file with all of these in it --->>> here: https://www.onlinefilefolder.com/4svUzGDLncUQ00
let me know if they work for you!
I just use the tone that comes with "bars and tone" in FCP
Ted Spencer
Veteran
Sounds like what you're describing is "two-pop" - the 1K tone at the two second pre-roll point on a film, usually coincident with white "punch marks" (holes) in the film.
The fast forward/rewind-audible tone thing is something else altogether. That was a 60Hz tone (which as you know, but some might not, is a very low frequency), usually called "slate tone". It was used very commonly in audio studios. A switch on the console (sometimes combined with a talkback/slate mic) would feed it onto whatever tape you were recording onto. It would usually be applied at the beginning of a take. Later, when a tape was fast-wound, with the tape held somewhat closer to the heads as it spun, the 60Hz tone would be audible, but vastly sped up so it sounded like a much higher pitch, which was easily heard. I believe the reason 60Hz was used was that it was the lowest frequency that could be generally counted on to be audible from the generator originally, so you'd be certain when you were applying it.
Pretty much gone these days...
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Actually no. The MixPre and Sure portables and Nagra recorders have a slate tone switch that inserts a 1K tone. It goes as long as you hold the switch. I'm not sure what production practices were since I deal mostly with FX but when recording FX on the Nagra (and old school folks no mater what they are recording on) use the beeps to separate takes. It's not all that useful most of the time now but on a Nagra roll that might have tons of recorded FX it was indispensable for finding things. You fast forward and you hear the beeps and know your into a new recording.
Two pops or more accurately head pops since it only falls on the 2 on video (SMPTE leader) on film with an Academy leader it's on the 3 (3 feet = 2 seconds of 35mm @24 fps), is a different beast all together and is used for checking/ maintaining sync with picture in postproduction.
The only 60Hz tone I know of in film production is pilot tone, and I may be off on the freq., but I believe pilot tone was a 60Hz sine-wave used with crystal sync Nagra recorders.
Thanks to you all for the help and interesting history. It turns out that the 1k tone was really what they used in that video clip. I just had to get the timing right. Thank you Luis for those beeps you made. I really liked the ones with the echo. Now I have to decide whether to use that one or the 1k tone.
If you're going for authenticity or technical accuracy, use the 1kHz tone from FCP.
Actually, not quite so much on the Shure FP mixers, at least the 32A and the 33. If you hold the slate button down, you get 1 second of tone and then the built-in slate mic is left open for aural slating. To get constant 1kHz tone, there's a 1kHz switch as well for tone alignment.
Steve House
Veteran
Depending on the software you're using for editing it can be easy to build your own, just FYI. For example, in Sony Soundforge there's an option in the Tools menu labelled "Synthesis." It provides a signal generator that will insert a tone in your timeline of any waveform, frequency, and duration you want. There's are also a tool to add silence of any length. So put your cursor just before the first sample of audio and insert 1 second of silence at the cursor position. Then synthesize 1/30 second of 1kHz tone to insert at the new cursor position and it will insert in front of the silence. Repeat for each beep needed. The result will be a series of 1 frame beeps at one second intervals with the audio starting 1 second after the last beep. Most other NLE software has a similar set of tools.
Ted Spencer
Veteran
Well..."slate tone" as I've always known it (and used it many times) pretty much *has* to be a very low frequency because it gets "read" (meaning heard) at accelerated speed, which multiplies the apparent frequency. So a 60 Hz slate tone zipping by at ~15x fast-wind speed would certainly *sound like* ~1K, but isn't. If it was 1k initially, it would sound like 15K under those circumstances, which is most decidedly *not* what one would want. So - yeah - I will respectfully reiterate - slate tone, at least the kind that is used to audibly scan for takes at high speed, is in fact ~60Hz.
I've used Nagras for exactly zero hours, but Nagra "Pilot Tone" is (was) at least *carried on* a 14KHz signal as I understand it. It may be 60Hz as modulated within the carrier, but the actual tone itself, as heard by the operator, is 14KHz. 99% certain on this...
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Bob, I think the discrepancy here is that the term probably means different things in different industries. Nagra's don't FF at 15X so that isn't an issue. I don't know much about music studio practices but I got into film when Nagra was just loosing out to DAT and I have a fair amount of training and experience on Nagra's and production tapes and FX recordings. I have transferred probably over 5,000 Nagra reels and the slate tones used by film field mixers/ recorders is 1K. If you look at SD site and look at the mixPre you will see the slate mic switch. Move it one way and it will lay down 1K tone. If you move it the other way it switches on the slate mic. The tone was used both for a level reference AND to signal new takes.
And from a Users manual for the Nagra 4.2
"...
the playback level of the Nagra should be set so that the -8 dB head tone on the tape plays back at -8 dB on the Nagra, and is rerecorded at 0 VU on the mag or other recorder.The REF GEN is also used to mark the end of every recorded take. After the Director calls to "Cut!",the mixer should wait another second or so (the editors appreciate the extra tail length to work with in case offade-outs), and then depress the tone generator twice to mark the end of the take. The presence of the two beeps makes it easy to delineate between takes when fast forwarding or rewind-ing. (I have been known to record series of beeps to indicate the take number on sequences of very short takes.e.g. one beep, two beeps, three beeps, four beeps, five beeps.)However, two beeps after a take is the norm for studio production. Note that while two audio beeps denotes the end of the take on the Nagra, two blasts of the stage bell indicates a "cut" when using a "flashingred light and bell" soundstage warning system"
Well according to this site, and it jives with my memory, there were a number of crystal feq. but 60Hz was for 24 frame film. If you think about it 14K is pretty high to record reliably on the thin center stripe on 1/4" tape and 24 doesn't fold into 14k evenly.
Ted Spencer
Veteran
Noiz2:
A little further poking around reveals that the 14KHz carrier frequency thing was on Fairchild field recorders, not Nagras. It was also called "pilot tone", and was recorded into a tiny center track between stereo channels just like the Nagras were, which is where the confusion came from. I stand corrected.
Regarding slate tone, apparently we're talking apples and oranges here regarding Nagra versus other similar technologies. The consoles I worked on in the early days of my career in music studios all used the 60 Hz variety (or it could be 40, 50, 100 Hz - whatever, but always low). There was usually a switch to select whether the tone was added into the talkback mic slate-to-tape or not. Once it was on tape, we would rock the ff/rew buttons on the transport to moderate the wind speed, and could hear the tones very easily even at pretty high speeds, counting them as they went. We could access takes all over a half-hour reel very quickly. I'd say the 60 Hz tone usually sounded like it was between 500 and 2K, so we were probably fast winding at roughly 10-20x. Full fast wind on a typical studio tape deck was much faster than that though.
I hope we haven't bored too many others with our digression into this extraneous subject... : )
Oh...and my name's not Bob, btw : )
A little further poking around reveals that the 14KHz carrier frequency thing was on Fairchild field recorders, not Nagras. It was also called "pilot tone", and was recorded into a tiny center track between stereo channels just like the Nagras were, which is where the confusion came from. I stand corrected.
Regarding slate tone, apparently we're talking apples and oranges here regarding Nagra versus other similar technologies. The consoles I worked on in the early days of my career in music studios all used the 60 Hz variety (or it could be 40, 50, 100 Hz - whatever, but always low). There was usually a switch to select whether the tone was added into the talkback mic slate-to-tape or not. Once it was on tape, we would rock the ff/rew buttons on the transport to moderate the wind speed, and could hear the tones very easily even at pretty high speeds, counting them as they went. We could access takes all over a half-hour reel very quickly. I'd say the 60 Hz tone usually sounded like it was between 500 and 2K, so we were probably fast winding at roughly 10-20x. Full fast wind on a typical studio tape deck was much faster than that though.
I hope we haven't bored too many others with our digression into this extraneous subject... : )
Oh...and my name's not Bob, btw : )
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