Midlevel Audio Advice

[TVSound]

unless you are recording effects, 96khz is waste of space and resource( if your editing on a computer, why have unnecessary junk slowing down)

Good ears are lucky to hear 20k. Recording at 48k satisfies nyquist. Its not to hear that high! 96? Unless your slowing sound for effect or recording music and ferverently believe that those overtones make a difference and will translate down to your 44.1 CD, its waste

I'm a believer in its better to have than not, but I also think the infintestimal benefit vs the much greater resources needed that maybe, MAYBE .001% of the population MIGHT notice, is to much for me.

 

[jls4]

What is the ATL?

ATLanta

Anyway I would repeat the others that your better off with a sound person, but you know that.

Equipment and software is not as important as skills. If your post has problems it's probably not the software that is lacking, it's the operator. That may seem like a dig since I take it you are the operator but it's just a fact.

Actually, I'm not the sound guy, but I might as well be. My "group" if you want to call it that, is basically 4 people. Myself (Direct/Write/Produce/Editor/Jack of All Trades), my DP/Editor, Audio/Assistant director, and a Associate Producer.

Everybody in my group wants to do this and the DP and Audio guys actually get paid to work on small pieces around the city. Unfortunately, most of the projects they are working on are kinda like most of what I see on line, many uber small budget movies that rely on "professionalism". to give you an example, I've been doing Wedding Photography for almost 5 years (on the side) when I started out, I was far from professional. In fact I messed up more people's weddings in the first year than I can tell you. But I always pushed myself to learn and now I've won two awards for Photography. That being said, most people I run into are not going to do any "extra study" if they are making money as is. So I've decided to find out as much as I can and kind of force them to study and learn the missing pieces.

Getting more production equipment is probably not going to make as big a difference as getting some good post done. Unless you have serious equipment related noise problems. If your actors are flying all over the place in performance, DIRECT them, or get a GOOD mixer/boom operator who can follow the antics. Post will add the polish one expects from a "Hollywood" film, and almost never sees in indies. But it has to be done by someone who knows what they are doing. If your going to do it then hire or trade sexual favors or whatever to get someone who knows what they are doing to give you a day or two of training. If you want the polish it takes time and lots of tracks. You WILL have to go out and record stuff and do Foley. You won't be able to just download free sounds and use production. You can't use just one background track etc. If your not doing those basics your not going to even get in the ballpark.

I agree. Like I said before, I'm looking and hoping to find midrange people who are good that want to be involved with a series of projects. Unfortunately, I haven't found them yet. So I just try to work with what I can find and up the quality of the person. But what i'm trying to do, is eliminate the whole "I don't have the right equip" excuse, so we can get down to people.

My audio guy after we shot the last movie told me he was on another set and just almost died when he was back on - $350 microphone attached to BROOM pole piping into camera. He liked being able to use the prof equipment that I had. But see that's my delimma, he's good. But always working on bad movies is not making him Hollywood quality. I plan on buying the Audio DVD on dvxuser for him.

As for Foley - funny. I've done foley on each on of my movies. since I have been the main editor on all of them and the sound editor. On average it takes me about 3 weeks to have the audio mixed with sound fx, foley, music, noise removal, etc. I've gotten better, but I'd love to have someone in the audio mix category as well. :beer:

 

[jls4]

unless you are recording effects, 96khz is waste of space and resource( if your editing on a computer, why have unnecessary junk slowing down)

Good ears are lucky to hear 20k. Recording at 48k satisfies nyquist. Its not to hear that high! 96? Unless your slowing sound for effect or recording music and ferverently believe that those overtones make a difference and will translate down to your 44.1 CD, its waste

I probably won't record like that again, based on what everone is saying. but when you don't know it's better to go overboard. So thanks. 96Khz doesn't bog down my computer at all though. You guys need to upgrade!

I'm running Dual 2.0GHz with 2 GB of RAM and 2.5TB Hard Drive and I've never had problems with Audio. In fact I don't have many problems with video. My main problem is that I shot with the Sony V1U and it doesn't really have true 24p, so I had to convert the 30p to 24p and I use a program called ReelSmart Motion Blur to smooth out the gitters from one stage to the next. This process takes about 1 hour for every 1 minute of footage.

On the next movie I plan to upgrade to a Quad 2.8 GHz with 4 GB of Ram so that the video processing will be better, andI 'm hoping to up the camera to a Sony EX1 which should eliminate the whole Motion-Blur-1-hour thing to begin with.

 

[Hxd Ped]

unless you are recording effects, 96khz is waste of space and resource( if your editing on a computer, why have unnecessary junk slowing down)

Good ears are lucky to hear 20k. Recording at 48k satisfies nyquist. Its not to hear that high! 96? Unless your slowing sound for effect or recording music and ferverently believe that those overtones make a difference and will translate down to your 44.1 CD, its waste

I'm a believer in its better to have than not, but I also think the infintestimal benefit vs the much greater resources needed that maybe, MAYBE .001% of the population MIGHT notice, is to much for me.

Recording at 96k tends to move aliasing noise above human hearing. Aliasing can happen at any frequency, but it happens more in the higher frequencies. Higher sample rates help eliminate aliasing in the audible spectrum, but quality converters help too, maybe even more. You’ll hear differing opinions on the subject. Only you can decide what’s right for you.

But I think everyone can agree, higher bit depth is always better.

If using 96k doesn’t bog down your system, feel free to use it. You’re not hurting anything.