A few more training videos....

Have produced getting on for twenty "training" type videos for my teaching over the past year or so and a couple can already be found on this blog. I thought I'd attach a couple more here: the first is on the idea of basic "workflow" which discusses aligning audio and video files within the NLE first before then exporting the whole sound mix to ProTools for further tweaking etc. The second discusses using the software "ADR Studio"....

More building works.....?

Have got my eye on a new house which contains an integral garage. If I manage to purchase the house (offer been more or less accepted, just waiting for my house to sell, but almost there I think), the plan will be to convert the integral garage again. This time, as the property is almost new and also as it is integral, the project is going to need full building regs and planning approval, so I am already researching a suitable design which will easily exceed current regs. The plan this time will be to create more of an Office / Studio / Games room, so this time I think the Vocal Booth will be left off the design in favour of a ceiling mounted projector and Playstation 3 :) with all AV cabling installed etc....

As permitted development rights to convert the garage have been removed for the property (this seems to be more and more common nowadays with parking at a premium), an additional parking space across the small front garden might be required. This is a bit of a headache as it also means getting the kerbside dropped by the Council too, however, worth it in the end I reckon.

Looking forward to getting the old jigsaw out again.

Multiclip editing in Final Cut

Recently been preparing an exercise / demonstration to illustrate the uses of merging clips and using multiclips within Final Cut Pro, synchronised using free run timecode.

A really good exercise will be to setup a two camera shoot, say to record an interview, with the audio being handled by a separate audio recorder with all three devices synchronised together using FREE RUN timecode.

Once the footage is captured, both clips can have the same higher quality audio attached by simply using the MERGE CLIPS (by timecode) command which is fine when dealing with single pieces of footage with separate audio. However, a neater method when using multiple cameras is to use the MAKE MULTICLIP (by timecode) command. This will create a multiclip containing the two camera angles and the higher quality audio file (the same method could also be used if one of the cameras was used to record the audio too). By using the MULTICLIP ACTIVE TRACKS command and setting this to VIDEO ONLY, it is possible to carry out a live edit, toggling between to the two camera angles, whilst still keeping the audio track constant. For an edit to be achieved in real time, one must remember to set the PLAYAHEAD SYNC to "OPEN" so that the VIEWER and CANVAS windows are ganged together.

As with all of my teachings, I have created a Quicktime tutorial file showing these methods, but the quality, once posted onto Blogger is not particularly great - however, it's here for reference if anyone is interested in viewing it....



Following on from what I said earlier about using the MERGE CLIP command, something to touch up here in relation to that is that of nesting sequences within sequences. Let's say that some footage has had its separately recorded audio file aligned to it using the MERGE CLIP (by timecode) function. What will have been created now is a clip containing BOTH the camera's on board audio and the separate audio; i.e. 4 audio tracks. To make it so that each time a section of this clip is used, audio tracks 1 and 2 don't have to be manually removed or muted, another neat trick to drag the clip onto a new sequence, remove the camera's audio and then edit this sequence into the main edit sequence, if that makes sense!

Text book again, again, again

Heard back from Focal Press about the text book and it appears that my proposal / idea is a little too vague for them and needs to be more concrete. I therefore reckon I will perhaps re-work the idea so that is something more along the lines of "ProTools for AV Post Production", i.e. making it more of a hands on ProTools training guide, with some supporting theory. I need to get my a**s in gear and have another go.... being a bit lazy at the moment.

Vice Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Awards 2008

At DeMontfort University, students can recommend members of Academic Staff for a Distinguished Teaching Award. Just received this email - as it says, I didn't make it into the final 10, however, I'm really chuffed that I was recommended by my students. It's even more important to me this year as 2007/08 was my first full year of teaching at DMU and with a brand new module too. Copy of email received:

Congratulations Justin!

You were nominated by your students for a Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008. This was a record year when over 400 student nominations were received for more than 200 staff. I am sorry that on this occasion you didn’t make it to the final 10 who received an award from the Vice Chancellor in June. Nevertheless, we wanted to let you know that your students think highly of you and your contribution to the student experience is valued as the following quotation testifies:

In the past months he has made more effort to help out each student, email replies to queries the same day and email information to students that don't even have anything to do with the module [...]. He has taken time out to provide help and information not just with the course and module but with the university as a whole in an enthusiastic and helpful manner. He always seems to have a smile on his face and helps out with any problem you may have ASAP.

It’s great to know that the students value your teaching. Keep up the good work!

Don't want this to appear as I am blowing one's own trumpet so to speak, just nice to know that my teachings appear to be going down well :)

BBC Radio Drama

A few weeks back I was involved in a BBC Radio Drama Training Day. The session was based around attempting to brainstorm ideas, write a script and then record two different dramas all within one day. Personally, it was great to be involved in the writing of something, as creating narrative is not something I have done a great deal of before. One of the "dramas" created was entitled "Short Fuse" (a title we had to use), so my electronics background helped a great deal with getting the odd physics type pun in here and there!

A rough mix, kindly edited by one of the students I was working with can be found here: http://www.audiotheque.co.uk/audio/download/97/

A very good day all in all.....

Summer School

Last Thursday I ran a couple of 1 hour studio sessions to a group of Year 10 students from local schools. To make the session as interesting and as fun as possible, I got them to have a go at re-dubbing the dialogue for a 20 second clip of The Simpsons. ADR Studio was used, in conjunction with ProTools and both of the sessions went extremely well. I was observed for the first session by a colleague who had been doing similar things both in and out of schools for the past 15 years and he commented on how excellent the session was. Most of the children engaged in some way, either by providing a voice, or by engineering the recordings and by the end of the session, the completed clips were played back to group which they enjoyed immensely. I plan to run further sessions throughout the next Academic Year.

Text book (again), (again)

Back in touch this week with Focal Press to chase them up about the original text book proposal. Now that marking and assessment is almost out of the way, thought I would crack back on with the project. They replied straight away telling me that the original proposal was forwarded to another commissioning editor who has since left. Therefore, they asked me to resubmit together with an example of my writing. Hopefully will hear back soon....

Summer School

I have been asked to run a "summer school" session for some children over the summer. The activity will be getting them to ADR a small section of a cartoon, which should go down really well.

Recent Coursework and PPM meters

Yesterday saw the main hand in for my module on Audio Post Production whereby I asked the students to create a complete sound track for either a 3 minute extract from a film, or for some of their own created footage. The assignment stated that every sound must be originally recorded and that any dialogue must be replaced using ADR techniques. The finished 3 minute piece then had to be submitted on DVD together with two other audio layers: a 5.1 mix and a stereo mix complete with supporting "directors commentary" added. Some of the students also investigated the use of "ducking" techniques whereby the commentary automatically dips down the level of the main soundtrack when present and then when not, the main soundtrack returns to unity.

One of the other main areas I wanted my students to ensure, was that their levels did not breach broadcast "safe" levels, which in Europe is PPM6 maximum (which equates to approx. -10dBFS), with the digital reference tone being PPM4 (-18dBFS). This area is important and it is something I plan to cover more on next year. It's simply not the case of checking levels on a PPM meter - calibration is necessary as otherwise, like with all uncalibrated meters, the readings are useless. A student asked me the other day, why, even though they had normalised their levels to -10dBFS (so that nowhere was their peak outputs higher than what is effectively PPM6) that the meter was overloading. This is an interesting area, as again, it's not as simple as generating a 1kHz sine wave at a digital level of -18dBFS and then adjusting the software's master fader until the meter reads PPM4. This method would produce a monitoring situation which did effectively show correct levels within the studio that it was carried out in, however, take the soundtrack anywhere else and it won't be. It is important to realise that the ELECTRICAL output level entering the PPM meter must be such so that for a sine wave with a level of -18dBFS it shows PPM4. If the sine wave is generated and then, say, the master fader within the software is adjusted, then the tone is obviously no longer -18dBFS. All faders within the session must be set to unity (i.e. 0dB) and then the actual ELECTRICAL output must be adjusted. Some professional audio interfaces (the Digidesign 002 for example) are set so that -18dBFS = PPM4 (or 0dBu, 0.775Vrms) so this is not a problem, however when using other audio interfaces, especially cheaper models, or ones powered solely by USB, the outputs simply can't output sufficient level. To overcome this, a small mixing console can be used to amplify the electrical level of the audio interface so that, for -18dBFS, the PPM reads accurately.

Text book (again)

After hearing nothing from Focal Press, have just received an email from John Wiley Publishers about writing a book with them. I will submit the proposal soon and then await to hear back....

Addition to post on synch'ing audio with video in FCP

***Addition (Feb 29th 2008) - the last paragraph discussing lining up the separately recorded audio with the picture from the camera, via timecode is not the best method. A much neater method is to use the MAKE MULTICLIP option within FCP and when asked how to align to audio with the video, simply choose MATCH BY TIMECODE. Once this is carried out, FCP will create a multi-clip with the separate audio perfectly aligned to the picture, regardless of whether it was started before or after the camera (the audio attached to the video file from the camera can then easily be removed from the multiclip). This method is also really neat when aligning footage from a multi-camera shoot to audio recorded on a separate device. If a clapperboard was used to align the cameras and audio recorder, IN points could be marked on each of the video files (i.e. at the frame where the clapper closes) and then the matching IN point could be marked on the audio file. By SHIFT+clicking on the same audio file with each of the camera angles one at a time and then creating a MULTI-CLIP and selecting ALIGN BY IN POINT, each of the camera angles will now have identical audio attached to them.

Alternative ADR software - "VoiceQ"

An alternative piece of ADR plugin software for ProTools is VoiceQ and a demo has recently been looked at, briefly. The software appears to be good, although integration with ProTools has not been tried as yet; only as standalone. What is nice about the software is that the actor's lines can be made to scroll across the video and also different colours and placements can be used for each actor.

"ADR Studio"

Recently I have been testing and teaching "ADR Studio" by Gallery. ADR Studio (as used by the likes of Skywalker Sound for the recent Star Wars movies), is a piece of software which manages and virtually automates the spotting of both Foley and ADR sounds within ProTools (and others). The software communicates with ProTools via a virtual MIDI interface, controlling its features via HUI (Human User Interface developed by Emagic / Mackie) and MTC (MIDI TIME CODE). It's a bit fiddly to setup, but once configured it works extremely well.

As well as automatically generating the standard 3 blips spaced 667ms (or 16 film frames) before the cue point, it also has a powerful matrix which lets the user decide what happens to each track during the PREVIEW, RECORD and REVIEW stages. For example, during the PREVIEW stage, the actor might wish to hear the reference audio both before, during and after the cue point. However, during the actual RECORD and REVIEW stages, they might wish to only hear the reference audio during the pre and post roll sections and then hear only their "live" input during the actual record stage; this is easily configured within the ADR Studio matrix.

Spotting of sounds / dialogue is also extremely easy as the line/s are simply highlighted and then upon hitting the SPOT dialogue box, a window appears where things such as the actor / character's name and line to be replaced can easily be entered. Then, an ADR cue sheet can be generated and printed out ready to give to the actor / Foley artist etc. A simple double click on the required cue automatically sets ProTools up at the required position within the timeline ready for previewing / recording or reviewing the cue.

An excellent piece of software - I plan to get hold of a copy for my own studio as this is an area I'd definitely like to move into / explore.