Back on with the Text Book

Have now decided to try and crack on with the Text Book. Focal Press were approached in May of this year and they seemed keen so I have now drawn up a proper proposal and emailed it to them today. Hopefully they will be interested in the idea which is essentially to create a text book which is half theory and half practical, backed up by a dozen or so exercises on a provided DVD. The book is going to be primarily aimed at Media / TV and Film students who often have very little experience in the way of audio production and post production. However, there will also be some more advanced topics which should appear to the more experienced too. My proposed topics include:

• Introduction to soundwaves, signals and metering systems.
• dB theory.
• Studio installation and wiring (to include examples of both audio and video editing setups).
• Location recording: field mixers, field recorders, line up, microphones, synchronisation, cabling and interfacing to both camera and field recorder.
• Specifications: what they mean and how they are measured.
• Digital Audio Theory, including HD.
• Overview of MIDI.
• Dynamics Processors.
• EQ.
• Effects.
• Case study: conversion of a single garage into 5.1 post production studio.
• General introduction and overview of ProTools (and possibly Logic Pro and Apple's Soundtrack too).
• Routing within ProTools.
• Sound for Picture exercise (workflow: capturing Video into Final Cut Pro / Premiere, using ProTools for line up of tracks, editing, encoding video ready for picture edit, exporting audio back out of the NLE after picture edit, back into ProTools for soundtrack mix).
• Listening exercise: demonstration of different microphones used at different distances and recorded to different devices (to DV camera, solid state recorder, via a Field Mixer etc.).
• ADR exercise within ProTools.
• 5.1 in ProTools – in TDM and LE systems.
• Basic mastering.
• DVD Authoring for Audio exercise: stereo, creating and encoding 5.1, adding director’s commentary, PCM and AC3 encoding, basic bit budgeting, DVD scripting.

More on this as and when I hear back.....