2 THUMBS UP for the Olympus DS-30!

[Shaun Conner]

Originally Posted by Dave Anderson

I purchased one of the Giant Squids and it did a fantastic job. I only had the one ds-30 and put it on the groom. I picked up both the bride and groom as if both had their own. It even picked up the preacher.

Then during the lighting of the unity candle, both the bride and groom whispered their prayers and it picked that up also.

I think that's where I was leaning toward. You guys have no idea how of an much impact you all have made on the way I shoot and look at things concerning weddings and just everyday videography. Also just to add to something mentioned earlier. The DSS player software does work with mac. There was a mac file on the cd. That's all.

[George Bean]

will be purchasing a few of the olympus recorders, is there any advantage of the ds-40 over the ds-30?

will mostly be used for recording dialogue for ceremonies (officiant, groom, scripture readings) and music at the reception.

thanks

[Roger Shore]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Okay, this is VERY strange and annoying. I use a DS-30 on the officiant and one on the groom. Both are exactly the same with the same mics and all of the settings are exactly the same.

But after converting both to 48khz and figuring out the speed requirements, one needed to be at 100.12% and the other had to be at 100.17%. I don't understand why the speeds need to be different if they were both captured exactly the same. Bizarre.

The good news is that converting them to 48khz seems to remove the lag and negates the need to cut the sound clips every couple of minutes to resync them. That's a time-saver!

I see Alastair and you have linked to a procedure I wrote a while back to try and help with this problem. Hope you found some of the info useful!

What doesn't come across in that procedure is the fact that, even if the remote audio recorder makes a recording that is exactly at the correct sample frequency, you might still have to adjust the length to match audio recorded on the camera -even if that's slighlty wrong!

Because the camera audio is in sync with the video, it becomes the master track, even if the camera control crystal frequency is slightly off, and so all other audio tracks will have to be corrected to that reference.

I believe all the Olympus recorders sample at 44KHz, and DV (and DVD) require 48KHz sampled audio. Converting from one sample rate to another shouldn't change the length of the converted audio at all, but I believe it can change with some software converters. That can of course make things better (or worse). Each individual combination will be different.

Most digital recording devices, and certainly all camcorders and solid state audio recorders, have an oscillator that acts as a system master 'clock', and this is usually controlled by a crystal. (Some very cheap devices use ceramic resonators, but these are considerably less accurate!).
Crystals are manufactured to resonate at a specific frequency, but this can be affected by a number of factors -temperature, ageing, and of course manufacturing tolerances.

As a result, there is always going to be some variation between devices. These differences are small - a typical commercial grade crystal will be accurate to within 0.003% of it's stated frequency-- but can be significant.

Sadly, this is particularly true for wedding videography, where individual 'takes' can extend to 30 minutes or more. Crystal tolerances of the order mentioned above can cause out of sync 'drift' of up to 200 milliseconds over an hour for example.

It should be remembered that although this drift is not likely to be variable over this preiod of time -the crystals are pretty stable short term wise - so adding a correction factor calculated from a procedure like the one I described is fairly easy.
There are loads of other ways of doing the same thing, of course, depending on what software you're using.

Remember though, the camera track must be the master, even if it's has the largest error!

[Travis Cossel]

Roger, thanks for the informative post. I've now marked my DVR's so I can track which one is which (meant to do this a long time ago anyways). It should make syncing even easier in the future.

[Harry Lender]

Hi All:
I can't begin to tell you how pleased I am with using the Ds-30 recorder. In my previous posting I said that I would be taping two investment seminars for a local company. I just finished editing both morning and afternoon tapings. I had taped on Wed July 16th. I used two recorders. An Olympus WS-300m, which I have used for weddings and it worked great, and the Olympus DS-30 recorder. The DS-30 was the greatest. I found that the WS-300m had a slight hum in the background but the DS-30 had no hum. On the DS-30 I used the setting of "Low Set" for the Noise Cancel, and "Dict" setting as Travis had used in his setting. Audio was Great. When I edited in post I laid the track under the main camera audio track and sync up with the beginning with that of the video. Then I went to the end, picked a reference point, put a marker in at that point, and after some experimenting found that with my system I could change the Ds-30 audio clip by 100.19 and it synced up beautifully. Oh almost forgot, I converted the Ds-30 audio to 48000hz and 16bits stereo wav. I am using PPro CS3. No longer do I have to worry about interference from A/C's or anything else. I just ordered another DS-30 from Amazon.com. Also you can use your old mike from Azden or, I think, most others. Thanks Travis for starting this thread on the DS-30. It has opened a new door in capturing audio free from interference.

"Make that 5 Thumbs Up"

Good Luck to All
Harry

[Travis Cossel]

Glad it's working for you and glad I could help.

[Troy Davis]

Originally Posted by Warren Kawamoto

Travis, can you try re-sampling your audio file in Soundforge before you drop it in the timeline? Resample it as 48K, 16-bit and I think you should be in sync all the time every time.

Hi Warren,

I just received my ds-30 and wanted to know can the audio be resampled in Vegas Pro 8 or Soundforge Studio version? I have Vegas, but was thinking about purchasing Soundforge Studio 9.

Thanks,
Troy

[David Aguilar]

I just order a DS-30, minutes ago.

can someone recommend an affordable Lav Mic to go along with this...

thx

[Troy Davis]

Originally Posted by David Aguilar

I just order a DS-30, minutes ago.

can someone recommend an affordable Lav Mic to go along with this...

thx

Hi David,

I have tested my ds-30 with a $25 mic that I used w/ my iriver 895 recorder. It's the omni mono mic that you can get at http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs-mono1.htm and so far it works pretty good. I have a wedding this weekend so the real test will be then:-)
I will let everyone know how it goes.

Troy

[David Aguilar]

Originally Posted by Troy Davis

Hi David,

I have tested my ds-30 with a $25 mic that I used w/ my iriver 895 recorder. It's the omni mono mic that you can get at Omnidirectional Mono Microphone and so far it works pretty good. I have a wedding this weekend so the real test will be then:-)
I will let everyone know how it goes.

Troy

Thanks for the link,
What cable size length would work best? (to mic a groom, priest or podium...)
Will 5 feet be to long?

[Troy Davis]

5 feet is plenty. I believe that's what I have.

Troy

[Tim Gilbertson]

I bought 3 of these from the tone of this thread and the fact that they're less than a fifth of the price of a Sennheiser G2. I've done 3 weddings with them and am very impressed.

The only problems I've encountered were when I had one running out of a tiny 4-track P.A. directly (dumb move) and feedback caused it to shut off. It would cut in and out after that. It wasn't a big deal as I switched it during dinner and nothing was missed. But I just clip a lav mic on the podium after that.

The other problem is with a female officiant yesterday; no pockets. There's no clip on these and so nowhere to stick it on the officiant. Luckily there was a microphone set up to pick up the ceremony for the audience so I just clipped a lav on there and hid the DS-30 on the ground underneath.

Even so, the audio turned out fine. I'll have to eq it a little as it's understandably on the treble side.

T

[Travis Cossel]

Thanks for reminding me. I need to find some sort of a clip that will fit through the belt loop slot for situations like you mentioned.

[Troy Davis]

I used the ds-30 for a wedding I had this past weekend and it worked perfectly. I placed it on the groom and a iriver on the officiant. I haven't synced in post yet, so I'm not sure if this will be a problem. If so I will try the suggestion to resamp at 48 hz using vegas.

Troy

[Michael Kirinovic]

I've used the Olympus WM-311M recorder for the past two weddings and have found the audio to be outstanding. The 311 also uses the Stereo XQ mode that the DS-30 uses, however it only records to one channel (which I can easily fix in post.) The first wedding was a little nerve racking knowing that I couldn't monitor the recording or even check to see if it was still on. It was very easy to use - all recording options/settings are all buried in the menu and are retained in the memory even after changing batteries. So once it's setup to record in the highest record mode and dictation turned on - there is nothing else to set up. Just turn it on, hit record and switch the power button over to hold and you're good to go.

I've recorded close to two hours the other day in one take without a hitch (bride was an hour late to the ceremony - not her fault, motorcoach was delayed for some reason.) I was concerned with the battery life on it and even delayed starting the recorder some 15 mins after the official start of the ceremony thinking that she had to be arriving soon. So what I did record was the groom chatting with his guests and groomsmen - he may have been a little reserved knowing that he had a mic on, but there was a few good comments he made about his future wife and himself that may make the final wedding edit.

One thing that I do want to comment on is the use of the Giant Squid mics. I think that they record great audio, however I just don't like the way that the tie clip is positioned on the mic. It makes it stick out away from the grooms jacket and line up right over his shirt - black mic with a white shirt as a backdrop becomes a little distracting. So I position the mic lower so it blends in over the darker vest. I'd like to get rid of the permanent GS clip and get a new one. The one that came with my other audio mic is too small for the Squid and I could also use a wind screen for it, the shiny metal a the top of the mic is distracting also. Does anyone have any solutions for a windscreen or new tie clip for the Giant Squid mics?