Keep Your Audio In-Sync!

I once had a film cameraman tell me that sync was not important only to get a call later to fix his production.  That was many years ago when audio was recorded on a medium called magnetic tape or film.  Remember?  Now it’s all digital. I really thought that digital audio would resolve issues but now there are a few more details to consider.

Digital audio is recording in slices or audio samples regular time intervals. This is called the sampling rate.  The standard for recording digital audio for picture is 48 thousand times per second or 48K.  The 48K rate is used because it is mathematically compatible to picture formats. If  there is a variance in the audio sampling rate then the sound can drift in relation to the picture and create chaos in the editing room. Even minor drifts can create problems. Basically there will be more or too little audio for a given scene. I am pretty sensitive to this and I see one or two TV commercials weekly with bad lip sync. 

 Here are some common causes of drifting audio:

1. The recording was made at the wrong sample rate, not at 48K sample rate.
2. Multiple cameras and audio recorders and no external master sync source.
3. No time code is used.
4. Delay induced by a digital console without external sync.
5. A mistake in the editing room.
6. An unexpected equipment failure.

We all know things go wrong so some proper planning and redundancy may save the day.  Always test your setup before recording the final product. Digital recording does not mean good recording.  I have had to fix many digital recordings that were noisy or distorted.  After you do a test recording make sure your location sound man listens to what is being recorded in headphones and listens to the recording of each scene after a take.

If problems do arise, the drift may be resolved by adjusting the playback to match the picture in an audio post house or editing room.  Some productions require frame accurate recording and this adjustment is not acceptable if there is budget to re-shoot the scenes. Happy shooting and may the sync be with you.

Chaos in Surround Sound

The following email exchange is real – The names have been changed …
(my responses are in blue italics)

Subject: CHANGE HOUR MEETING Hola, We may change the date scheduled for  3pm Houston time? I only have 3pm to 4pm available. Another session starts at 4pm. If we can get your session done in 1 Hour, then no problem. But we cannot go past 4pm. Ok. We take. The talent meet at 3:15pm to 4pm. I hope is possible finish today, if not, we can found another early day. Do you mean TODAY? I thought you meant changing the time for your session TOMORROW! Yes, I thought TODAY at 3pm beguins.. I cannot do TODAY! We were booked for Wed, Jan 14th at 11:30CT and I moved to 3pm same day, not today. You think we can do today? in your afternoon? We cannot do today – Sorry. Sorry for the stress. Really is for TOMORROW. And then we confirm the meet for the talent; Tomorrow Wednesday 14th at 3pm to 4 pm. Ok? No worries – that schedule change has been made – Session is Wed 1/14/09 at 3pm CT. THANK YOU!

We all know media production is a stressful activity. It’s the perfect storm: the clash of left brain/right brain; the stereotypical art versus commerce conflict; entertaining, creative ideas collide with motivated, monetary goals. Our blessing/curse is that no one day is the same as the previous…

But meanwhile back at the farm… the music’s playing so loud I can’t hear myself think, the phone’s ringing constantly and I can’t remember who I just spoke to 5 minutes ago! Oh, yeah – It was our banker who gave me a different story about how to receive payments from overseas clients than the bank’s customer service rep did yesterday. Now I’ve got to decide who’s right & who’s wrong. And no amount of email can get the client in Barcelona to try the PayPal account again after I made changes to our credit card profile…

Sound familiar? Just another day in paradise for those who coordinate production activities with little or no timeline. But somewhere there’s levity. Can we really be serious all the time without going completely bonkers? Comedy is all around you with the right perspective.

 

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Are you Analog or Digital?

Are you in the analog or digital camp? In other words, do you prefer the sound of analog (LP’s) or the sound of digital (CD’s)?

Before you answer, let’s get geeky and look at some definitions and also a list of pros and cons for both types of recording:

 

Analog: An electrical signal that continuously varies in strength as related to some form of input.   Analog Recording: A means of recording audio or video whereby the recorded analog signal is a physical representation of the waveform of the original analog signal. Some examples of analog sound mediums are vinyl records or LPs, cassette tapes, 2” 24 track tape, 8-track tapes, VHS tapes etc..

 

Digital: A reference to a system whereby a continuously variable analog signal is reduced and encoded into discrete binary bits that establish a mathematical model of an original signal or other information.   Digital Recording: A method of recording in which samples of the original analog signal are encoded on tape or disk as binary information for storage or processing. Some examples of digital sound mediums are CDs, DAT tapes, Digital Betacam tapes, MP3’s, WAVs, AIFs, etc…

 

Blah, blah blah
So, an analog recording is a signal that’s actually stamped upon a recording tape or medium.

A digital recording is actually snapshots of the signal captured in intervals, much like a moving picture can represent action over time when the sequence of pictures are played back in sequence.

 

Digital one’s and zero’s are stored on mediums such as a compact disc or hard drives.  

  Now that we have a little background, let’s discuss some of the pros and cons of each:

Analog Pros

1. It’s a an accurate representation of sound but is limited by the device and recording medium.
2. Many people find analog sound warmer and more pleasing to the ear.
3. Distortion caused by over driving the recording with volume saturation can deliver a more pleasing result than digital methods.

Analog Cons

1. Recordings are susceptible to degradation.
2. Copies of the original recording are noisier and more distorted. 
3. Editing is more cumbersome and time consuming.
4. The background noise of the media (tape hiss) and recording device become a part of the recording.

Digital Pros

1. Easier editing.
2. Duplicates are an exact copies.
3. Noise floor usually exceeds human hearing ability.

Digital Cons

1. Recording at too loud a volume results in a harsh unpleasant sound.
2. Conversion from analog or one digital format to another must be done carefully to avoid loss of fidelity or gritty sound.
3. Most people feel that digital recordings are colder or more sterile than analog.

Ok, made up your mind yet? Did the techno-babble above change your position? Or are you more conflicted?

Let me throw another wrench at you. Most people, even most sound engineers, have a hard time differentiating between the sound of analog and digital. 

Take a few minutes to watch this Wired Science episode that ran recently on PBS and you’ll see what I mean. Audio Files Vs. Audio Files.

 

Tech Note: Analog tape saturation offers a natural compression, lowering the audio peaks causing softer sounds to seem louder, smoothing high-frequency content (cymbals) and boosting the low bass frequencies.

Ok, here’s my two cents worth – I prefer analog sound because it’s artifacts are more natural and actually pleasing to the ear. Analog distortion is warmer and more acceptable. But digital recordings are easier to manipulate and each copy is an exact replica of the original.

Today there are a variety of tools (Plug-ins) available to the audio professional that can add an “analog” feel to digital recordings.

It’s possible to get the best of both worlds, the ease of digital editing and the warm sound of analog. People will always debate Analog and digital recording methods. Today the best sound engineers use both.

Please post your thoughts and comments below. Look for a future blog entry on this topic including some wild stories …

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Bob & Weave: Houston’s Creative Throwdown

Join Houston’s top creative professionals as we come together to mix it up August 25!

What a great gimmick! Groupon hits Houston

Once in a while you find a great concept and think “I wish I had thought of that”! That’s how I felt when I found Groupon.com – what a great gimmick!  They started in Chicago and added new cities as they got advertisers. Now they are rolling out Houston, today was the first Houston Groupon offering. Groupon uses social networking to funnel people and use it to get the customer to drive more biz…great concept.

How Groupon Works

Groupon is a combination of the words group and coupon. Each day, they offer an unbeatable deal on the best of Houston: restaurants, spas, sporting events, theater, and more. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, they offer great discounts. For the consumer it is “collective buying power”!

If you want to get the deal, just click BUY before the offer ends at midnight. If the minimum number of people (20 for today’s deal) sign up by the end of the day, you’ll get a printable gift certificate in your inbox the next morning that you can use whenever you want (well, at least until the deal expires-today’s expires in six months). If not enough people join, no one gets the deal (and you won’t be charged), so invite your friends to make sure you get the discount!

It’s nice to wake up to something new every day. Some people get their daily fix from desk calendars with a cute puppy and a funny caption every morning. Groupon is like a desk calendar, except the puppy is an unbeatable discount and the funny caption is a profound reflection on the flowers and needles growing from life’s cactus. Like some of the other local search sites they allow people to review food, entertainment and more.

Details

I just got today’s Groupon (Houston’s first Groupon) and it offers $35 worth of organic and all-natural food for 57% off at Ruggles Green, Houston’s first certified green restaurant. Ruggles Green, a casual bistro in the Upper Kirby area, serves organic and all-natural food made from quality ingredients. The menu is a collection of comfort food that keeps omnivores and carnivores content; try spicy fish tacos, warm goat cheese salad, 98% lean buffalo burger, tomato basil soup, or wood-fired pizzas (organic margherita pizza and more).

I don’t need to sell you on organic … it reduces the amount of pesticides and chemicals in the environment (and in your food), and it tastes better because organic fruits and vegetables have higher levels of antioxidants, lower average crop yields, and flavor crystals. If enough of us demand organic I think the premium price in the grocery will come down,

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Can Music Copyright Exist on the Web? Part IV

Battle Lines

“There’s battle lines being drawn… Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong.”
For What It’s Worth – Buffalo Springfield

Now a rational person would surmise that REALLY – You can’t win. Copyright law was written FOR the content creators and copyright holders. But this hasn’t stopped an atmosphere of sheer insanity from developing. In the matter of Lenz v. Universal Music, a California mother posted a short video on YouTube of her toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Get Crazy” for around 20 seconds. Universal, following guidelines from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, sent a takedown notice to YouTube and YouTube complied. Case closed, right? – Oh No! Lenz sent a counter-notification to YouTube claiming “fair use” (see Part II of this series) of the copyright and demanded the video be re-posted. YouTube reposted the video and Lenz filed suit against Universal seeking monetary damages from them, claiming they had no copyright infringement claim! This case is certainly going to be one to watch…

To avoid copyright infringement when playing/streaming music on the internet, music licensing is the normal path to follow. But when it involves rate negotiations, normal gets thrown out the door. After becoming frustrated in negotiations with Google, Warner Music Group pulled its music videos off YouTube in the U.S. in December 2008. Then, in March 2009, frustrated with the U.K.’s Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS), Google took an equal & opposite approach and began random removal of major label videos first in the U.K., then in Germany. This prompted the ire of U.K. artists and music publishers to side with PRS and internet interests like last.fm to publicly side with YouTube. And in the midst of both actions, YouTube instituted a system that automatically removed unlicensed music tracks from posted videos before even receiving DMCA takedown notices. So add YouTube content posters and, no doubt, multitudes of YouTube fans to the unhappy fray. And it’s only a matter of time before MySpace, Pandora, and others enter into the fray. The whole affair begins to resemble the remark, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”

If you’re thinking that progress is being made by either side, nothing could be further from the truth. The album release date, once sacred among major labels marketers and their artists, is now just gone. Album “leaks” have so saturated the internet, they have become “de rigueur” for any major music release. Indeed, tech-guru and Wired magazine editor, Chris Anderson, has introduced us to the “freeconomics” concept. But to rationalize that simply because your album is leaked (and based on that factor alone) that your sales will be greater, requires a great leap of marketing faith (and many other commodities and merchandise for-sale to the public). Anderson does make one primary point to ponder, “The moment a company’s primary expenses become things based in silicon, free becomes not just an option but the inevitable destination.”
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

So where does all this leave us? My little dissertation here is not going to solve any problems where all the parties involved are behaving like out-of-control children. So what are reasonable solutions to this modern mess? For a moment, let’s review “the truths we know to be self-evident”:

From the moment a compact disc was able to be ripped into an mp3 and digitally transported to someone either via P2P networks or email, copyright and control of distribution could no longer be contained and controlled by traditional standards.

Taking property from creators, be they artistic, financial or both, without payment is theft. This is not really an arguable point from either a legal or social point of view.

The current and prevailing penalties for digital copyright theft on an individual basis, are unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination unless accessed at, or near, the lowest values statutorily allowed ($750 per infringement).

Laws are NOT going to be changed through the court system! Attorneys listen up and please quit wasting the taxpayers’ money!

ISP’s and file sharing networks can no longer turn a blind eye to thieves of intellectual property within their digital borders anymore than foreign trading partners can ignore the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) within their geographic borders. Get over it!

Now can we consider some reasonable compromises?

Ultimately, software can be written to not only monitor P2P file sharing infringements, but to remove/block them when they occur. You do not have to disconnect the violator from the ISP after 3 strikes, but if they become a constant pain in your backsides, maybe you’ll consider that!

Reasonable penalties will command reasonable respect for the law! After all, laws are the glue that we all agree to abide by to prevent chaos as a society.

The “rockstar” image cultivated by major labels has done irreparable harm to music and art. Musicians and performers need to be portrayed as the hard-working individuals they are. Major labels need to return to their roots, hire people who understand music and turn out quality product. And not just for young people – Boomers will, and always have, paid for the music they love! (Note to major labels – don’t forget who “brung you”).

Educate yourself! You do not have a god-given right to use anyone’s music for your home videos, especially when posted to the web! It is not Fair Use! In turn, copyright owners should consider making reasonable allowances for situational uses – It just might help them sell more product!

Now, can we all just get along? Nothing else seems to be working!

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Can Music Copyright Exist on the Web? – Part III

A Modern Mess

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind… The answer is somewhere in the wind.”
Blowin’ In The Wind – Bob Dylan

And, indeed, answers to Music Copyright existing on the internet do reflect prevailing winds. I’ve attempted to complete the third part of this series since April 2009, and every time I felt I had a succinct conclusion, the winds changed direction. And many facets of this debate will change after this article has been finished and posted. But much like the swing of a pendulum, it’s the back & forth shifting that began to make sense and explain the modern mess that currently surrounds copyright law issues.

As discussed in Part II, the historical legal precedents for copyright infringement carry stringent federal statutory racketeering charges involving the possibility of both criminal and civil penalties. With legislation introduced in the latter part of the 20th century, Congress sought to loosen hard-clad exclusivities of the author’s rights over their creative works. What Congress didn’t see coming was a computer revolution that gave everyday people the ability to quickly and easily violate copyright statutes before being aware of the law itself! And record companies didn’t invite public sympathies as they built irresponsible rock-star images for themselves and their artists (Many of these artists were actually broke after the record company “dole” ended).

Year 2000 was not only a new decade, a new century, but a new millennium. And the expected chaos of that date change, for the most part, came and went unnoticed to most of the world. But to the RIAA and the record industry they represent, it WAS the feared meltdown. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in October 1998, tried desperately to stem the free-flow of mp3’s by introducing Digital Rights Management (DRM) protections with the net effect of trying to extinguish a four-alarm fire with a garden hose. The greatest harm came from a file-sharing network launched in June 1999 named Napster, who foreshadowed the present-day loss of product distribution control. In fact, there was a period of debate over whether Napster was actually GOOD as a promotional tool for record sales (in one form or another, this debate continues today). Somewhat ironically, the RIAA filed suit against Napster on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7th, 1999, but did not  gain an injunction to stop file-trading until March of 2001. But the stage was set. Subsequent Napster-imitation platforms proliferated in various guises like eDonkey2000, Kazaa and The Pirate Bay, to name a few. And peer-to-peer (P2P) download technology was vastly improved with the BitTorrent protocol, a distributed-data method whereby a single file can be pulled in parts from many peer computers.

Loss of control of distribution is a knife to the heart of everything that copyright law holds sacred. In this new millennium, there was no one better to pursue copyright infringements on behalf of the record companies, distributors, music publishers, artists and copyright holders than the RIAA, who touts themselves as “the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry” and whose mission is “to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality.” Since 1999, the RIAA has initiated lawsuits against file-sharing networks, portable audio device manufacturers, internet service providers, colleges and universities, as well as numerous individuals who either posted, downloaded or provided assistance in the illegal transfer of music files. Because of in-exacting methods used to identify infringers based on ISP identification of an IP address, the RIAA has embarrassingly sued dead people as well as people with no computer at all.

Early this year, the RIAA announced that it was no longer going to pursue NEW cases against individuals and announced a new campaign of cooperation with Internet Service Providers world-wide based on a “three-strikes” doctrine of notifications to violators, then disconnection of service upon the “third strike”. One major problem – No negotiations had taken place and no ISP’s anywhere were on-board with the RIAA’s plan. To say that the response from ISP’s has been mixed would be an exaggeration. So far, only the French and Irish governments have expressed what could be termed as a momentary interest in the plan and there have been outright rejections from New Zealand, Norway, Germany, and Spain while most state-side providers have simply denied knowledge of any such agreement.

Meanwhile, the RIAA continues to win previously-docketed cases in the U.S. In the matter of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota single-mother of four was ordered to pay 1.92 million dollars for infringement of 24 songs posted to Kazaa (Before you get outraged, consider she was offered a pre-trial settlement for less than $5000). Arista recently prevailed against Usenet after a long, drawn-out battle. And why shouldn’t they? The attorneys representing these clients somehow think that a court, somewhere, somehow, is going to change punishments that are statutory ie. they are written into the law! These attorneys are barking up the wrong tree – Laws are changed by CONGRESS, not the courts! In the matter of Sony BMG Music v. Tenebaum (a Boston University Grad student facing 30 infringements), the U.S. Department of Justice ruled that statutory damages sought by Sony ARE constitutional because of THE LAW (from $750 to $150,000 per infringement). My friends, you can argue all you want, but until you change THE LAW…. You’re just wasting everyone’s time and money.

On the international scene this past April, Sony Music, Warner Bros., EMI Music and Columbia Pictures prevailed in a Stockholm district court against Pirate Bay, a Swedish-based BitTorrent P2P who had defiantly thumbed its nose at major labels for years. The fines accessed were $3.56 million dollars and the principles, each sentenced to one year in prison, remain out of jail only due to the appeal process and recently sold the company. With precedent at hand, at least two other countries are now set to launch further suits against PB. Semi-ironically, Sweden recently passed an anti-piracy law, IPRED, requiring ISP’s to reveal the identities of repeat infringers.

*Part IV of this article

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Media shapes your belief ~ part 5 (the power of a story)

We are told that every picture tells a story and they are worth thousands of words. However, looking at images alone can make us feel rather than think.  Think about it, the printed word is primarily processed in the left side of the brain along with logic and linear thinking. While images are primarily processed in the right hemisphere of the brain. When you see an image the brain processes it all at once. Describe the same picture and it is described in a linear process, word by word.

Some researchers believe that too much TV can make your brain lazy. Does TV make you hyper? dumb? lazy? distracted? What was the question? We love images, especially moving images, kind of like we love sugar. Sugar is enticing, tasty and eating it is a great sensual experience. But too much sugar is bad for your body, just like too many images without other input can remap and restructure your brain to think differently. There is a difference in the manner that electronic media saturated generations perceive the world compared to generations or people groups not exposed to to it. We must reach our image saturated culture with stories to satisfy the right brain preference people have today. Stories are well received by readers and non-readers.

Like it or not we are affected by the forces of our digital age. Stories echo with greater intensity than ever before. A friend of mine recently went to Africa to bring clean water to areas in Sudan. Most of the people he visited did not read or have TV but communicated with stories. They even had the ability to repeat a detailed story after heating it one time. Perhaps more messages can be communicated in story-form to bridge generational gaps and people groups. Stories could be an effective method of teaching. It’s really a blast from the past because pre-medieval people taught their history through stories. Several savvy marketing companies have already realized the power of stores and I predict we will see more messages communicated in this manner in the future.

This post was inspired from the book “ Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith” by Shane Hipps

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Media shapes your belief ~ part 4

The printing press existed some 800 years in China prior to it’s European debut in the 1400’s but it did not have the same effect on people of the east and west. The Chinese language is written in pictographs and not in the same linear fashion as in the west. For example the single character to the left represents “woman”.  Western writing on the other hand is made up of individual letters that are formed into words. With just 26 letters in the alphabet it’s possible arrange them in many combinations in order to create any word. In Chinese, one word or thought must be represented by a single character and this results in a huge number of characters.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the western printing press by creating a new use for a wine press. Prior to the press and the printed word, history was passed on in the form of stories verbally or written down with pen. Printing made writing repeatable and uniform. The printed word affected learning for the entire western world. The printing press was the first assembly line and also made possible the industrial revolution. The invention of the printing press led to a restructure of our imaginations – our very way of thinking and even our beliefs. It formed conditions that led to how linear thinking is entrenched in western thought.

Linear reasoning and belief through reason and fact – was a result of the printing press.  Printing makes us prefer cognitive processing of ideas in a linear fashion while at the same time diminishes imagination, intuition and emotion. It can even make us suspicious or fearful of feelings if they run contrary to “logical” reasoning found in the printed word.

ON May 24, 1844 the first electric communication was sent between Baltimore and Washington DC by Samuel Morse – the famous message was “What hath God wrought?” and the telegraph was born. Prior to the telegraph, most information was shared in books but with the telegraph information was a commodity whose price was determined by how big the message was and how far it traveled. This led to shorter pieces of information or the modern news story. We marvel at the internet and TV but these are simply an extension of the telegraph. Today’s news stories are seemingly random non-associated pieces of information resulting in a mosaic of facts thrown at us at the speed of light.

This post was inspired from the book “ Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith” by Shane Hipps

… to be continued

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The ultimate phone that beats the iPhone

I was hanging out with some friends who had just bought the new iPhone 3GS. They loved the speed and the huge amount of memory.

 Then, candidly they admitted that the phone was not perfect. I took the opportunity to agree with them that there was indeed a phone out there with more features than they could imagine.  This phone was so useful that it would become indispensable while having a cup of coffee or shaving. It’s called The Pomegranate, have you seen it? Then I smiled and gave them the web address ~ http://www.pomegranatephone.com/ . This is also one of the best pieces of marketing and Flash design I have ever seen!

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