Carlos Mills
07-09-2005, 12:06 PM
At 8:30 AM, I was waked up by my wife… my partner was in the phone… He was calling me for an emergency live recording gig…
After a quick bath and a fast breakfast, I was on my way to the studio to get all the gear, when I learned that we were invited to record the MultiShow award. This is a TV Music award sponsored by Globo, the biggest broadcast company in Brazil. The show would be broadcasted live and it was going to happen in the City Hall Theater (http://www.theatromunicipal.rj.gov.br), in Rio de Janeiro.
When we got there with our SS live rig (workstation + preamps), the staff was very stressed. They were having serious problems with their Mackie HDR 24/96 systems and also with the D8B console for the last couple of days, and that is why we were called about 8 hours before the show. So we would be using our rig not only to record directly from their splitter from the stage, but also to send 48 channels of LIGHTPIPE (TOSLINK) audio channels (via two RME 9652 outputs) to their HDR systems (that is, in case they worked :) ).
But there was something we were not prepared for… They wanted us to follow their SMPTE signal. The first thing we thought, was to make it throw a MTC converter box, but we hadn’t configured the workstation to work this way yet. We tried to use the onboard audio (throw a DB-MIDI adapter) as a MIDI port, but Windows XP would refuse to recognize the on board audio. Suddenly, I remembered the Trigger From SMPTE Sync option that was available since the old SAWPro days! But unfortunately, the option was still greyed out in SS… :( So we decided to just forget about the SMPTE (which made the TV guys a little more stressed) and concentrated in the audio. At this far, we were only a couple of hours away from the begging of the show.
To record everything, we found out that the best way would be to split the channels throw two drives, since we were recording 48 tracks of 24/48kHz files. So we armed all the recording meters, opened the setup in the record panel, assigned 24 tracks for one drive, 24 to the other drive, closed the setup panel, hit the Rec Ready button and happily SAW the peak meters activity… at this point, the audio guys from Globo were starting to relax… ;) After about two hours and a half of show, things went smooth for us… In the end, their Mackie HDR Back up Systems failed (don’t know why) and they kept the audio we had captured to mix in their Pro Tools rig…
Any comments about this "adventure" would be appreciated...
QUESTIONS FOR BOB:
1) I know you are not very excited about the SMPTE sync (me neither). But would you consider to implement the Trigger from SMPTE sync option? Many of the boxes that convert from SMPTE to MTC are not ready to the new 29.97 or 23.97 Non-Drop options… I am about to do a SAW demonstration to the TV guys (a prepared one!) and it would be very appealing to them if I could show such a feature…
2) Would it be possible to have an option to save the recording paths? Specially when assigning to different drives? It would be quicker and safer in a situation where you have 48 channels to assign...
Thanks for listening and take care,
After a quick bath and a fast breakfast, I was on my way to the studio to get all the gear, when I learned that we were invited to record the MultiShow award. This is a TV Music award sponsored by Globo, the biggest broadcast company in Brazil. The show would be broadcasted live and it was going to happen in the City Hall Theater (http://www.theatromunicipal.rj.gov.br), in Rio de Janeiro.
When we got there with our SS live rig (workstation + preamps), the staff was very stressed. They were having serious problems with their Mackie HDR 24/96 systems and also with the D8B console for the last couple of days, and that is why we were called about 8 hours before the show. So we would be using our rig not only to record directly from their splitter from the stage, but also to send 48 channels of LIGHTPIPE (TOSLINK) audio channels (via two RME 9652 outputs) to their HDR systems (that is, in case they worked :) ).
But there was something we were not prepared for… They wanted us to follow their SMPTE signal. The first thing we thought, was to make it throw a MTC converter box, but we hadn’t configured the workstation to work this way yet. We tried to use the onboard audio (throw a DB-MIDI adapter) as a MIDI port, but Windows XP would refuse to recognize the on board audio. Suddenly, I remembered the Trigger From SMPTE Sync option that was available since the old SAWPro days! But unfortunately, the option was still greyed out in SS… :( So we decided to just forget about the SMPTE (which made the TV guys a little more stressed) and concentrated in the audio. At this far, we were only a couple of hours away from the begging of the show.
To record everything, we found out that the best way would be to split the channels throw two drives, since we were recording 48 tracks of 24/48kHz files. So we armed all the recording meters, opened the setup in the record panel, assigned 24 tracks for one drive, 24 to the other drive, closed the setup panel, hit the Rec Ready button and happily SAW the peak meters activity… at this point, the audio guys from Globo were starting to relax… ;) After about two hours and a half of show, things went smooth for us… In the end, their Mackie HDR Back up Systems failed (don’t know why) and they kept the audio we had captured to mix in their Pro Tools rig…
Any comments about this "adventure" would be appreciated...
QUESTIONS FOR BOB:
1) I know you are not very excited about the SMPTE sync (me neither). But would you consider to implement the Trigger from SMPTE sync option? Many of the boxes that convert from SMPTE to MTC are not ready to the new 29.97 or 23.97 Non-Drop options… I am about to do a SAW demonstration to the TV guys (a prepared one!) and it would be very appealing to them if I could show such a feature…
2) Would it be possible to have an option to save the recording paths? Specially when assigning to different drives? It would be quicker and safer in a situation where you have 48 channels to assign...
Thanks for listening and take care,