Is there a field recorder that can do this?
- Thread starter ironpony
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Gregg Juke
Well-known member
Hey Scott,
More cool info; thanks. I used to be pretty good at cutting tape, but the film scrapes you're describing are wild concepts indeed. I wonder if it could be done with standard 1/4" (Scotch, Ampex, etc.)????
Is there a standard rule-of-thumb on how far to scrape for what type of fade, or was/is it all guess work? Lots of safety dubs?
GJ
More cool info; thanks. I used to be pretty good at cutting tape, but the film scrapes you're describing are wild concepts indeed. I wonder if it could be done with standard 1/4" (Scotch, Ampex, etc.)????
Is there a standard rule-of-thumb on how far to scrape for what type of fade, or was/is it all guess work? Lots of safety dubs?
GJ
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
I don't think it would work well on 1/4", way too thin. Also it was done on "stripe". A type of 35mm that has a "stripe" of mag and a balance strip so it would wind evenly. It was a one to three track version. "Full coat" was 35mm that was coated edge to edge and went up to six tracks. In theory you could scrape any of them but practically you only scraped on stipe.
1/4 frame was your general de-poping type of fade. Your not doing "mixing" with scrapes just the kind of end of clip fades to keep things from popping in and out.
I think it was loosely standardized like digital is. But I never actually edited on Mag. We were mixing to it and I had to cut "loops" on stripe and "join" reels, some conforming, but that was about it. And then analog was gone.
Kind of sad. There is a huge adrenaline rush to be in the machine room when they "roll the buss" on the stage and 50+ dubbers crank up to speed at the head of the reel. The rush wears off but it's still very cool to be in the "heart of the beast" when the whole room cranks up.
now it's like a server room. Quiet, air conditioned, and no visceral connection to the stage at all.
1/4 frame was your general de-poping type of fade. Your not doing "mixing" with scrapes just the kind of end of clip fades to keep things from popping in and out.
I think it was loosely standardized like digital is. But I never actually edited on Mag. We were mixing to it and I had to cut "loops" on stripe and "join" reels, some conforming, but that was about it. And then analog was gone.
Kind of sad. There is a huge adrenaline rush to be in the machine room when they "roll the buss" on the stage and 50+ dubbers crank up to speed at the head of the reel. The rush wears off but it's still very cool to be in the "heart of the beast" when the whole room cranks up.
now it's like a server room. Quiet, air conditioned, and no visceral connection to the stage at all.
Allan Black
Veteran
Well I was reminicing here till ....
WOW! me too Ampex sucked next to it, a cold sound indeed.
Some of the last 996 I used was 5,200' on 15?" reels. Later it shed oxide like the others. Didn't Qantegy buy the 996 formulation from Scotch?
In the late 60s, the late Ron Purvis at Natec Sound here, built a 4 track @15ips only on 1/2" we beat EMI to the punch and got the music jobs.
One time we kept getting a click/click/click on Tk 3? on every brand new roll, even just playing it. Turned out to be a tiny sliver of magnetised metal
embedded in the pinch roller, drove us nuts! till we found it.
He also built a 3tk master recorder and 6x35mm mag dubbers running at 24 or 25fps. We got adept at moving things 2 or 3 frames correcting lip sync,
just by looking at the picture.
Yep, then analogue went away, still got my Nagra 4S and all its accessories tho.
Cheers.
WOW! me too Ampex sucked next to it, a cold sound indeed.
Some of the last 996 I used was 5,200' on 15?" reels. Later it shed oxide like the others. Didn't Qantegy buy the 996 formulation from Scotch?
In the late 60s, the late Ron Purvis at Natec Sound here, built a 4 track @15ips only on 1/2" we beat EMI to the punch and got the music jobs.
One time we kept getting a click/click/click on Tk 3? on every brand new roll, even just playing it. Turned out to be a tiny sliver of magnetised metal
embedded in the pinch roller, drove us nuts! till we found it.
He also built a 3tk master recorder and 6x35mm mag dubbers running at 24 or 25fps. We got adept at moving things 2 or 3 frames correcting lip sync,
just by looking at the picture.
Yep, then analogue went away, still got my Nagra 4S and all its accessories tho.
Cheers.
Richard Crowley
Veteran
Indeed, and in slightly newer times one of my fond memories is from the great sprawling machine room at CBS Television City. Pairs of Ampex 2-inch quadruplex video tape recorders for as far as the eye could see (or at least it seemed to me). At around 3:15pm a guy came in with six reels of tape in blue plastic locking Scotch shipping cases. He threaded up three pairs of machines with the tape and switched them into remote-control. Then at 3:29:30 all six machines started up, recording the evening news over the coax from New York. (This was around the mid 1970s when only PBS was using satellite distribution). 30 seconds after the show was done, all six machines went into rewind, also under remote control.
Then the tech came through and dismounted two of the reels, putting them into the blue shipping cases. Meanwhile, a motorcycle courier had arrived and was standing there in his leather jacket and helmet and he took the two cases, put them into the saddlebags on his Harley and headed off to LAX where one tape went on a flight to Anchorage and the other to Honolulu. Then the tech re-cued the four remaining tapes to 10 seconds before the title came up out of black. Then at 5:29:53 and 5:59:53 and 6:29:53 a pair of machines was started to feed the west coast CBS affiliate network. They timed it so that the program started at :03 to give the local affiliates 3 seconds to squeeze in the legal ID between commercials. Seconds after a pair started, the tech came over and switched the backup machine out of sync-lock and hand-tweaked the capstan servo to match up the sound track (by ear) listing to an Altec A7 hanging over each machine (facing down). No genlock or timecode.
S.Blanchardon
Well-known member
From my personal point of view as a sound man : wanting to record to tape "sounds" like a total hipster bullsh*t. Do you also want to use a film camera ?
Sorry for being blunt or rude but I don't see any point in doing so, it may sound nicer indeed (it adds some pleasant distortion), but at some point you will need to digitalize your reels (forget to do this with a cheap sound card) and all in all, if you consider the hassle and cost of the workflow you will probably regret it. Also don't forget that you won't got a lot of recording time on small 5" reels.
My advice : get a good production sound mixer with a nice equipment list and a good boom operator and trust them to do the sound of your feature.
Cheers.
Sorry for being blunt or rude but I don't see any point in doing so, it may sound nicer indeed (it adds some pleasant distortion), but at some point you will need to digitalize your reels (forget to do this with a cheap sound card) and all in all, if you consider the hassle and cost of the workflow you will probably regret it. Also don't forget that you won't got a lot of recording time on small 5" reels.
My advice : get a good production sound mixer with a nice equipment list and a good boom operator and trust them to do the sound of your feature.
Cheers.
Gregg Juke
Well-known member
>>>>From my personal point of view as a sound man : wanting to record to tape "sounds" like a total hipster bullsh*t. Do you also want to use a film camera ?<<<<
Many folks are going back to film, at least on a small scale (8mm and Super 8 are pretty hot right now), and I for one don't think it's "total hipster bullsh*t," as there is a major difference in the look and feel of film, which is why there are so many plug-ins and tutorials out there on getting the "film look" for digital; because people want it. I think the same is true of using analog gear for sound-- it depends on your wants, needs, desires, budget, and finances. There is a reason that people like JJ Abrams like to shoot films like Star Trek on, ah, film-- it looks great. But like we used to say in the Army, "You can have it Good, Quick, or Cheap-- Pick any Two." There is a serious cost commitment and a major time investment in using film or tape.
>>>>My advice : get a good production sound mixer who got a nice equipment list and trust him to do the sound of your feature.<<<<
Of course. But we shouldn't automatically assume that exploring an aesthetic decision to use analog is "total hipster bullsh*t," without knowing why the OP might want to use a different (albeit more costly, time-consuming, and possibly aggravating) method.
GJ
Many folks are going back to film, at least on a small scale (8mm and Super 8 are pretty hot right now), and I for one don't think it's "total hipster bullsh*t," as there is a major difference in the look and feel of film, which is why there are so many plug-ins and tutorials out there on getting the "film look" for digital; because people want it. I think the same is true of using analog gear for sound-- it depends on your wants, needs, desires, budget, and finances. There is a reason that people like JJ Abrams like to shoot films like Star Trek on, ah, film-- it looks great. But like we used to say in the Army, "You can have it Good, Quick, or Cheap-- Pick any Two." There is a serious cost commitment and a major time investment in using film or tape.
>>>>My advice : get a good production sound mixer who got a nice equipment list and trust him to do the sound of your feature.<<<<
Of course. But we shouldn't automatically assume that exploring an aesthetic decision to use analog is "total hipster bullsh*t," without knowing why the OP might want to use a different (albeit more costly, time-consuming, and possibly aggravating) method.
GJ
Gregg Juke
Well-known member
RC,
Wow. Pretty intense; did you work for CBS, are were you just observing? I used to work for a PBS radio station, and I thought meeting the network on-the-hour was a big deal!
On a good day, I only had to push one switch, and turn one rotary pot!!!! (There was a bad day once, where I busted a set of $500-each locking switches on a sattellite demodulator, but we won't get into that)...
GJ
Wow. Pretty intense; did you work for CBS, are were you just observing? I used to work for a PBS radio station, and I thought meeting the network on-the-hour was a big deal!
On a good day, I only had to push one switch, and turn one rotary pot!!!! (There was a bad day once, where I busted a set of $500-each locking switches on a sattellite demodulator, but we won't get into that)...
GJ
Richard Crowley
Veteran
I was just an observer for the day. That was a condensed version of my original recollection which is posted at the bottom of this page:
http://www.j-shea.com/TVCity/Anecdotes.html
S.Blanchardon
Well-known member
One of my personal commitment is not to judge any artistic or esthetical choices as thing in our crafts are matters of pure subjectivity, but there is a limit where I feel myself obliged to barge in, just to put back some sense.
Choosing film over digital is a pure matter of aesthetics as I prefer the later by a large margin for a lot of reasons I would not develop here not to be off topic.
But believe me, choosing to record analog on set (I'm not speaking of the musical studio world) is an heresy for the sound man I am. For me it's like throwing back something like 30 years of advancements and I don't mean it from a purely technological point of view but from the whole chain that made a tremendous progress, think of timecode, metadatas, workflow, ease of manipulation offered by the digital medium, etc...
I apologize to have rushed in but the initial question translate a lack of understanding of the audio domain. Fine, let's do analog if one has time and money for it, it can even be a good lesson learning from trials and errors but for heaven's sake please, just don't do something because of hype or trends !
And one last thing : digital audio nowadays equal or surpass analog from both a technical and a subjective sounding point of view in my opinion.
Want to be inavative ? Try to record your next feature in 24bits/96kHz and you will make your sound team a happy bunch of fellows ! ;-)
Choosing film over digital is a pure matter of aesthetics as I prefer the later by a large margin for a lot of reasons I would not develop here not to be off topic.
But believe me, choosing to record analog on set (I'm not speaking of the musical studio world) is an heresy for the sound man I am. For me it's like throwing back something like 30 years of advancements and I don't mean it from a purely technological point of view but from the whole chain that made a tremendous progress, think of timecode, metadatas, workflow, ease of manipulation offered by the digital medium, etc...
I apologize to have rushed in but the initial question translate a lack of understanding of the audio domain. Fine, let's do analog if one has time and money for it, it can even be a good lesson learning from trials and errors but for heaven's sake please, just don't do something because of hype or trends !
And one last thing : digital audio nowadays equal or surpass analog from both a technical and a subjective sounding point of view in my opinion.
Want to be inavative ? Try to record your next feature in 24bits/96kHz and you will make your sound team a happy bunch of fellows ! ;-)
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Gregg Juke
Well-known member
>>>>...don't do something because of hype or trends!<<<<
Yes! That, definitely.
>>>>PBS radio station...<<<<
No such thing. Of course I meant NPR. And I used to hate when people would confuse the two. Doh!
GJ
Yes! That, definitely.
>>>>PBS radio station...<<<<
No such thing. Of course I meant NPR. And I used to hate when people would confuse the two. Doh!
GJ
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Actually I was remembering Skwalker sounds main machine room from around 1997.
In general I have found that new technologies in sound come first to music, then to theatre, and finally film. With five to ten year gaps between.