Audio Problems Anyone?

[Joe Russ]

ive never used fcp, so i dont know what kind of audio tools it has. but i basically roll off the low (below 120 hz) and the high (above 12 khz) frequencies with an equalizer...that will get rid of the canned sound for the most part...depending on what it is.

a gate basically allows you to select a point at which any sound below that level either gets louder or quieter....i use it to seperate dialogue from background and set background noise quiter then dialogue (fighting the effects of the AGC).

[Dustin Cross]

Aloha,

For those using the HD10u for short and feature length movies, how are you doing audio? Since the HD10u only has auto gain for audio, how are you dealing with that in production and post?

[Ben Buie]

Since no one else has chimed in yet . . .

We have done it 2 ways . . .

1) We used double-system sound utilizing a Fostex MR-8 and an Azden SGM-2X mic, used a slate, and sync'd in post. We used a boom and had someone hold the Mic as close to the subjects as humanly possible without being in the frame.

2) Using the same mic, boom, etc., we also tried running the audio directly into the camera and didn't worry about the AGC.

So far, #2 seems like the way to go. We were able to work at 3 times the pace and cut cut a ton of time in post (no audio to sync).

True, the AGC is slightly noticeable at times, but so far we have been able to work around it.

After we finish our work in post I will post an update and let you know if we ran into any serious problems with the AGC.

As an aside, the Fostex MR-8 is a great little unit. You can get one at Musician's Friend on-line for $300. Better sound quality than a DAT or MiniDisc, no moving parts, interfaces directly with the computer, professional inputs, etc. Get a really big Compact Flash card though, this thing records uncompressed so the WAV files are big. I'm surprised nobody seems to know about this thing. Can't use it for live events because there is not enough recording time, but for non-sequential stuff it is great.

[Heath McKnight]

While at the HDV Roadshow in Miami yesterday (man, what a LONG drive) and talked to a JVC rep (not a sales person, but someone high up), actually, two of the them. They told me to call up JVC because, and this is alleged until I make that call, they may have found a solution to a big, nagging audio problem the earliest adopters have.

And that is a really "canned," "tinny" sounding audio going through the XLR from a microphone.

I'll give JVC a call today and report back ASAP!

heath

[Paul Mogg]

My JY-HD1OU is in for repair right now, hopefully to have this audio problem (and pixels out on the CCD) fixed, so I'll let you know. Someone else posted that they have a software fix for the audio bug, I hope that's correct.

Cheers

[Paul Mogg]

Hmm.... that's very interesting. If you add a 2Gb compact flash card ($230) you'll get 8 hours of mono 44k 16bit recording time. Is this a new unit? Unfortunately doesn't look like it has Phantom power on inputs, but apart from that it looks fantastic! I wonder if it has some kind of physical HOLD button on the record?

Thanks for pointing it out.

[Heath McKnight]

Cool.

heath

[Ben Buie]

Yeah Paul, when I first saw this I was like "what's the catch"? So far we haven't found much of one. No phantom power, but like I said you would want a mic preamp/mixer, and a lot of those have phantom power (I think the Rolls one for around $100 has phantom power, can't remember for sure though).

Oh yeah, there is one bit of a catch (forgot about this) . . . since this was not designed as a field unit, the battery life is pretty poor; make sure to invest in at least two sets of rechargeable AA batteries and a charger.

Basically you just arm one of the 8 tracks, then press play and record together. Press stop at the end of each take, and repeat for each take.

Since we were always recording in mono, we would simply keep recording continuously on the same track until we ran out of room. I think we never used anything except track 1. The cool thing is that the thing actually creates a new .wav file everytime you hit stop and record again. So, all of your takes are automatically broken up into separate wav files automatically for you, you don't even need to use the different tracks.

Of course, the .wav file names are non-descript, so you have to go through the .wav files and log the shots (using the "id" recorded from the person doing the slate).

Some more little tips:

1) The MR-8 keeps an "undo" file in case you record over something and want it back; this is basically useless for our purposes and it takes up valuable space; there is a function in the menu to "delete wasted space" which basically deletes this undo file; remember to do this every so often

2) The manual makes a big deal about "DON'T TRY TO COPY THE INDIVIDUAL MONO WAV FILES TO YOUR COMPUTER . . YOU MUST ONLY COPY THE MASTER STEREO 8-TRACK MIX DOWN FILE TO YOUR COMPUTER". That is insane, and would make the unit useless for our purposes. Feel free to ignore this warning, it is a simple file copy operation, nothing on the MR-8 is modified, so it doesn't hurt anything. Trust me, we have copied the individual .wav files many, many times without problems.

Anyway, I'm really surprised more people aren't using this vs. a DAT or MiniDisc.

[Paul Mogg]

Sounds great, I was looking on their web page and they even have a Mac file transfer program, which would have been my other problem (if it only had windows support). It also says it only supports up to 512mb compact flash cards, but that would give you 2 hours of mono recording wouldn't it? I wonder if larger cards would work? About the batteries, the big rechargeable on my DAT only lasts 1.5 hours if you're lucky, so 6 AA's for 2 hours isn't so bad. I imagine the only minor down side is the design of the unit, for field work it would be better to have the controls on the top, having the record button on the side I might worry that it would accidentaly get pushed to "off" during recording. All in all it looks incredible though.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[Ben Buie]

It actually just shows up like a USB hard-drive or memory card reader drive in Windows . . . I've never even used their software (didn't know they had any to be honest).

File structure is kinda like a digital camera. Basically a bunch of folders arranged by song name; for our purposes there is usually just one song folder with a ton of .wav files in it. We just drag and drop the files to our hard-drive and that is it.

I imagine as long as a Mac can recognize it as a USB hard-drive, you can use it just like I can. I can't confirm that though.

[Paul Mogg]

Hi Heath,
Just to let you know I got my JY-Hd1OU back from the JVC repair center yesterday and they appear to have fixed all of my problems, including the "canned" sound when recording through the XLR's. I just tested the audio using a Lav and it sounds just great now, very natural and no short slapback echo, which is what I was hearing before. They were very quick in fixing it too, only one week turnaround. Thank you JVC!

[Heath McKnight]

Time to make a call!

heath

[Heath McKnight]

Just give JVC's tech support a call, it's that easy!

heath

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Oh hey, I didn't see this thread...thanks!!

Murph

[Heath McKnight]

No sweat.

hwm