Click 2 Play

Well worth a watch.

Unfortunately the embedding the video no longer works as expected. Not sure where the problem is, in the mean time here is the link to the video.

Black Eyed Peas Chicago

Found this web-site Aviary offering free software tools.

Had a quick look and both the audio editing software and the image editing software look very good.

There are a few video clips which demonstrate what can be done with the software.

These two keyboard shortcuts come in handy. The arrow keys allowing jumping between edit / cut points.

It’s   ‘x’     to move forward 1 frame

And   ‘y’   to move back 1 frame

Just for reference the computer in the music studio is running

Protools HD1 Version 6.2.3

Apple Logic Pro Version 6.4.3

I found this new service.

Indabamusic

It sounds very interesting. It offers a browser based multi track recording and allows musicians across the world to work on the same session.

I wonder though whether bandwidth will be an issue and whether there is a talk-back facility via the web too.

Some of the major music software companies for some time have been keen to integrate some kind of online collaboration within their software. Ableton Live has Live Share. Protools have an online service which may cost extra. And even Garageband apples bundled recording software has an online collaboration angle.

Then I found this website Kompoz which looks interesting as musicians work and record using the software they own at home and then assuming the musicians you collaborate with have the same software they can add tracks to the recording session. Mixmatchmusic offers a similar but slightly different service. So too does Studiotraxx it’s a global musician for hire site where you pay musicians to work on your tracks.

Professional musicians and studios are always a bit suspicious of such web sites but it’s only a matter of time before a company offers a service like this and the technology exists to allow it to take off …

Maybe with the Indabamusic service and the others that time is coming closer.

I wonder who owns the masters though …

A couple of software programs that seem to be used for authoring blu ray DVDs are

1 Sonic Scenarist

2 Sony Blu Print

Adobe Encore can also author Blu Ray discs but at the moment it can’t handle all of the high definitions video codecs.

I’ve been reading through the BBC’s training guide on using the Sony PD150 and thought the following extracts were worth noting. :-

Autolock Switch

Moving the silver three-position switch to ‘autolock’ position means that Exposure, White Balance and Shutter Speed are set to automatic.

Timecode

In DV mode the camera timecode starts at 00 00 00 00 and counts up.

In DVCAM mode set the timecode to ‘rec run’ with the preset set to 01 00 00 00

You could then set the timecode for a new tape to start 02 00 00 00 and so on, which might or might not be useful.

Focus

In manual focus you can still use the Auto Focus button by pressing it and holding it to let the camera set the focus on a subject.

If the main area you want to be in focus is moving you can keep your finger on the auto focus button for the duration of the shot to hopefully keep things in focus.

Infinity you can set the focus to infinity by sliding the switch down to Infinity, this only applies to distances of over 30 metres.

Manual Exposure

It’s far better to slightly underexpose than over …

ND Filters

ND filters are like the camera’s sunglasses and should be used when it’s very light and sunny.

Sound on the PD150

The camera has a very limited range of auto level adjustment. BUT manual control increases hiss whatever the level is set to. I’m not sure if this would encourage me to select automatic as it strikes me it is more useful to have control over the sound level.

The BBC guide does not recommend using manual mode unless the audio cannot be adjusted in post production. However it does state that manual mode may be required is you are recording at a rock concert or another noisy environment, it suggests using the ‘mic atten’ switch on these occassions.

The line setting is for mixers or other external equipment with a line (or very high level) output. Tone should be at -20db

Sound recorded by the camera should be bouncing around the -12dB region.

 Conclusion

I’d thought the notes I’d made would be more useful than they read, but the holding the focus button might be a useful one.

Shane Ross on AVID vs Final Cut Pro

http://www.macvideo.tv/editing/interviews/index.cfm?articleId=101715

The hard drive in the click music studio which had all the sound libraries for the studios virtual plug in instruments stopped working. I managed to install a new drive and re-installed the instrument libraries. This was fairly straight forward but involved slightly different approaches for each of the three plug ins affected by the disk failure. Hopefully to make things easier if this were to happen again here is some information I found on the internet which may help :-

1 Synthogy Ivory

The library for              http://www.synthogy.com/support.html#03

Has the following advice :-

All you need to do is update an alias that needs to point to this folder. The alias is called ‘Ivory Items’, and in OS X it is located in:
/Users/{Home}/Library/Preferences/Ivory Preferences/

Click once on the alias, press Cmd-I for Get Info, click the Select New Original button, and select the Ivory Items folder at the new location. Alternatively, you may simply throw the alias into the trash. The next time you run Ivory, or the Ivory Library Tool, you will be asked for the new location of the Ivory Items folder.

2 Stylus RMX

These instructions are about moving your SAGE folder but essentially the Alias section sets up RMX to work once you’ve re-installed the software.
MAC OSX - MOVING THE SAGE DIRECTORY AFTER INSTALLATION
• Drag or copy the SAGE folder from your installation drive
(For Example: Macintosh HD/Library/Users/user name/Library/Application Support/Spectrasonics) to the hard drive location of your choice.

This can be another drive partition, a secondary internal drive or an external hard drive such as a Firewire or USB2 hard drive, etc.
• Next, hold (Apple key and Option key) on the keyboard, click and drag the SAGE folder to the desktop to create an alias of the folder named SAGE.
• Next, move the SAGE alias from the desktop to Users/user name/Library/Application Support/Spectrasonics

3 Logic EXS24 Sampler

This is quite old advice but it still seems to work …

Organising your samples is very simple and is achieved by creating and naming a number of new folders within your Sampler Instruments folder, each of which will eventually contain one category of samples. You can create as many folders as you like up to the maximum supported by the computer’s operating system. Where sub-categories are needed (for example, for a Strings folder inside your Orchestral folder), you create those in the same way. Then, all that’s left to do is to drag the desired ‘instruments’ out of the Sampler Instruments folder and into the category folders of your choice. Usefully, Mac OS Aliases or Windows Shortcuts relating to other folders can also added to the hierarchy — even the Sampler Instruments folder itself can be an alias leading to an audio folder on a different drive, if that’s something you need to do.

Once you’ve created your folders and moved the relevant sample sets into them, the folders will appear in the sampler patch selection window in place of the usual long list. Select a folder and a menu of its contents drops down, making it much easier to locate sounds. I was a little apprehensive using this at first, because I felt that if I ‘tidied up’ the locations of all my samples, songs I’d already recorded wouldn’t be able to find them. However (and I can only speak for the Mac version) everything worked perfectly.