For those in the media production industries, February 29th is a good day to revisit drop-frame SMPTE time code, because both leap year and drop-frame time code came into being for the sole purpose of reconciling two different time bases on which we do things with mundane regularity.
Take the calendar first: our calendar simply charts the sequence of the individual days that comprise a single year. The day is based, of course, on a single rotation of the earth on its axis, whereas the year is based on a single revolution of the earth around the sun. Rotation and revolution are the two different time bases on which our calendar is constructed.
Since it takes about 365.25 days for the earth to revolve around the sun, we collect four of those quarter days and add them together into a single day—February 29—that appears on the calendar once every four years.
We do this because there's no such thing as a quarter-day: you couldn't start a New Year at 6:00 a.m. After all, a day is a day and cannot be partitioned like that. It's an integer.
It's important to see that the concept of the yearly calendar comprises 366 days—February 29 is not imaginary. But rather than adding it every four years, what we are really doing is dropping it from the calendar in every year that is not a multiple of four. If the year is not divisible by 4, then we drop February 29 from our count of days in that year.
It's exactly the same with drop-frame time code, where frames are analogous to days, and hours to years. A video frame is a whole thing, an integer, and we count 30 of them in one second. But the rate at which they proceed is a bit less than 30 per second, more like 29.97 frames per second.
This is the same sort of fractional discrepancy that exists in the annual rate of 365.25 days per year.
We deal with it the same way, by dropping 2 frames from the count at the very beginning of every minute that is not a multiple of 10. In that first second, there are only 28 frames.
So frames 00 and 01 simply do not exist at the beginning of every minute of time code that doesn't have a zero at the end of it (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 00 minutes being the exceptions), just as February 29 does not exist in any year that can't be divided by 4. It's as simple as that.
Why go to the bother of doing this? For the calendar, it's long been considered important that the seasons start at roughly the same time every year: if we didn't have February 29 as a corrective, then the beginning of Spring, for example, would progress steadily back through February, January, December, and so on as the years rolled by.
For producers, it's important that the time displayed by your time code reader agrees with the real-time clock on the control room wall. Without drop-frame time code, a one-hour program as measured by your time code would actually run 3 seconds and 18 frames too long, and that would wreak havoc with broadcast schedules.
Note that what we are NOT doing is cutting out frames from our program and leaving them on the cutting room floor, as some of my former students at the Toronto Film School used to believe. Those "dropped" frames are simply never there in the first place, just as February 29 will not "be there" in 2013, 2014, and 2015. The calendar works as "drop-day" code.
The takeaway from this blog entry is that if you can intuitively grasp the concept of leap year, then you've already got the essence of drop-frame time code. Conceptually, they are one and the same.
Showing posts with label sound. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sound. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Good Sound at the new Helzberg Hall in Kansas City
The $413 million Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO, opened to delighted audiences on September 16 with performances by Placido Domingo, the Canadian Brass, and the Kansas City Symphony, among others. Designed by architect Moishe Safdie, the Kauffman Center houses the 1,600 seat Helzberg Hall, a terraced concert hall-in-the-round that is home to the Kansas City Symphony, and the 1,800-seat Muriel Kauffman Theatre that will serve as the performance home of the Kansas City Ballet and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
The two venues have been described as the yin and yang of the Kauffman experience—the exuberant Muriel Kauffman Theatre with its proscenium and illuminated acrylic balcony fronts ringing the hall stands in marked contrast to the sleek and ethereal oval-shaped Helzberg Hall, that some visitors have likened to the interior of a wooden ship, with its warm, muted wood tones that recall the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Noting this resemblance in both form and material, critic Steve Paul wrote in The Kansas City Star, “One important connection between these two concert halls was the work of Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, whose choice of shapes, wood and physical components was paramount in creating the aural experience.”
Toronto consultants Engineering Harmonics worked with Nagata Acoustics in both Kansas City and Los Angeles, designing performance sound systems to integrate seamlessly with the natural acoustics. Judging from the critical acclaim that followed last month’s inaugural performances in Helzberg Hall, the result is a resounding success. The amplified sound is “ambient and natural-sounding,” wrote David Mermelstein in Musical America.
Paul added, “Insiders will argue whether Helzberg exceeds even Disney, a slightly larger hall, though time—plus word of mouth in the music community—will tell.”
“This was our second foray into the design of a sound system in a terraced hall with Nagata Acoustics,” noted Engineering Harmonics president Philip Giddings. “In Kansas City, we further developed and refined our approach to this type of venue, and we are more than encouraged by the response of performers, audiences and critics alike,” he said.
The two venues have been described as the yin and yang of the Kauffman experience—the exuberant Muriel Kauffman Theatre with its proscenium and illuminated acrylic balcony fronts ringing the hall stands in marked contrast to the sleek and ethereal oval-shaped Helzberg Hall, that some visitors have likened to the interior of a wooden ship, with its warm, muted wood tones that recall the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Noting this resemblance in both form and material, critic Steve Paul wrote in The Kansas City Star, “One important connection between these two concert halls was the work of Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, whose choice of shapes, wood and physical components was paramount in creating the aural experience.”
Toronto consultants Engineering Harmonics worked with Nagata Acoustics in both Kansas City and Los Angeles, designing performance sound systems to integrate seamlessly with the natural acoustics. Judging from the critical acclaim that followed last month’s inaugural performances in Helzberg Hall, the result is a resounding success. The amplified sound is “ambient and natural-sounding,” wrote David Mermelstein in Musical America.
Paul added, “Insiders will argue whether Helzberg exceeds even Disney, a slightly larger hall, though time—plus word of mouth in the music community—will tell.”
“This was our second foray into the design of a sound system in a terraced hall with Nagata Acoustics,” noted Engineering Harmonics president Philip Giddings. “In Kansas City, we further developed and refined our approach to this type of venue, and we are more than encouraged by the response of performers, audiences and critics alike,” he said.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
When a studio won't release the tracks you've paid for
Songwriters and musicians who use the services of small, home-based studios—and, for that matter, established commercial studios—would be well advised to establish the terms, conditions and policies of the studio before undertaking any recording.
I’m writing this because a beginning songwriter has come to me for advice. He is having a hard time getting a home studio owner to release his tracks, even though he has paid his bill in full—over $13,000! The songwriter wants to take the basic tracks of three songs that he recorded at this particular home studio to another, larger commercial studio for editing, mixing and mastering, but the owner of the home studio is refusing to release the material.
By way of explanation, the home studio owner wrote to me saying that he is “not going to let him take the files out of this studio in the condition they are. How he is going to come up with a better mix than any one of our engineers is beyond me to imagine. The files simply aren't ready to be exported or given away. Many guitar and other instrumental parts remain unedited and comped so even if he wanted them they are in no condition to give away.”
(The songwriter has made it clear that editing and comping are among the tasks he wants to complete at the new studio.)
The home studio owner then goes on to say, “We are not willing to give the files out. This is not normal practice. If he really wanted the files he'd have to buy us out but at this time I am not willing to even consider this.”
I’m not sure I understand why the owner thinks that releasing tracks that have been paid for is not “normal practice.” It’s also not clear to me what he means about the songwriter having to “buy us out,” given that he paid his bill in full over six months ago!
The studio owner concludes, “If this project goes out of the studio I have no guarantee if it will be mixed to a certain standard and I've brought in some heavy players that [the songwriter] got at cost.”
Why the studio owner considers it his business that the songs will be “mixed to a certain standard” is beyond me. That is not his responsibility. And the part about providing players “at cost” seems to indicate that the studio owner is in the habit of marking up session players’ fees and then taking a piece for himself. Maybe that’s how the cost of three unfinished demos climbed to beyond $13,000!
This might never have become an issue if the songwriter had clearly established the ground rules at the outset. At this point, it looks like a case for small claims court.
Songwriters be warned: Make sure you know at the outset what policies, practices or procedures a studio considers to be normative before you record a single note there. Second, make it your business to pay session players directly. Don’t accept an all-in deal with the studio, where you pay everything to the studio. In fact, it should be your job—or your producer’s job—to hire the session musicians in the first place.
I know of one instance where a guitar player was unable to attend a session because his wife went into labour that morning with their first child. I was there when the studio owner actually called the rental department of a local music store (Long & McQuade in Toronto) to find an on-the-spot replacement. When the replacement guitarist arrived, it became painfully apparent that he couldn’t read the chart. In fact, he couldn’t even tune his guitar, and he was sent away with return cab fare paid by—you guessed it—the songwriter!
At that point, the songwriter should have called it quits, but he was too cowed by the studio owner to voice his displeasure.
My final recommendation is that songwriters should bring a USB drive—preferably 8 GB or 16 GB—to their sessions, so that they can take a backup of their recordings away with them—provided, of course, that their account with the studio is paid up to date. After all, possession of the recorded material is the only security a studio has against non-payment for services rendered.
I have not named the offending studio in this blog entry, but readers who wish to continue the discussion can email me at buzz@abcbuzz.com.
I’m writing this because a beginning songwriter has come to me for advice. He is having a hard time getting a home studio owner to release his tracks, even though he has paid his bill in full—over $13,000! The songwriter wants to take the basic tracks of three songs that he recorded at this particular home studio to another, larger commercial studio for editing, mixing and mastering, but the owner of the home studio is refusing to release the material.
By way of explanation, the home studio owner wrote to me saying that he is “not going to let him take the files out of this studio in the condition they are. How he is going to come up with a better mix than any one of our engineers is beyond me to imagine. The files simply aren't ready to be exported or given away. Many guitar and other instrumental parts remain unedited and comped so even if he wanted them they are in no condition to give away.”
(The songwriter has made it clear that editing and comping are among the tasks he wants to complete at the new studio.)
The home studio owner then goes on to say, “We are not willing to give the files out. This is not normal practice. If he really wanted the files he'd have to buy us out but at this time I am not willing to even consider this.”
I’m not sure I understand why the owner thinks that releasing tracks that have been paid for is not “normal practice.” It’s also not clear to me what he means about the songwriter having to “buy us out,” given that he paid his bill in full over six months ago!
The studio owner concludes, “If this project goes out of the studio I have no guarantee if it will be mixed to a certain standard and I've brought in some heavy players that [the songwriter] got at cost.”
Why the studio owner considers it his business that the songs will be “mixed to a certain standard” is beyond me. That is not his responsibility. And the part about providing players “at cost” seems to indicate that the studio owner is in the habit of marking up session players’ fees and then taking a piece for himself. Maybe that’s how the cost of three unfinished demos climbed to beyond $13,000!
This might never have become an issue if the songwriter had clearly established the ground rules at the outset. At this point, it looks like a case for small claims court.
Songwriters be warned: Make sure you know at the outset what policies, practices or procedures a studio considers to be normative before you record a single note there. Second, make it your business to pay session players directly. Don’t accept an all-in deal with the studio, where you pay everything to the studio. In fact, it should be your job—or your producer’s job—to hire the session musicians in the first place.
I know of one instance where a guitar player was unable to attend a session because his wife went into labour that morning with their first child. I was there when the studio owner actually called the rental department of a local music store (Long & McQuade in Toronto) to find an on-the-spot replacement. When the replacement guitarist arrived, it became painfully apparent that he couldn’t read the chart. In fact, he couldn’t even tune his guitar, and he was sent away with return cab fare paid by—you guessed it—the songwriter!
At that point, the songwriter should have called it quits, but he was too cowed by the studio owner to voice his displeasure.
My final recommendation is that songwriters should bring a USB drive—preferably 8 GB or 16 GB—to their sessions, so that they can take a backup of their recordings away with them—provided, of course, that their account with the studio is paid up to date. After all, possession of the recorded material is the only security a studio has against non-payment for services rendered.
I have not named the offending studio in this blog entry, but readers who wish to continue the discussion can email me at buzz@abcbuzz.com.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Studio Fatigue
Fatigue can creep up on you in unexpected ways. I had been in the edit room for over 24 hours, cutting sound for a TV show and a feature, both on a tight deadline. The scene I was working on was a 3-second establishing shot, and included streetcars passing each other. I was trying to sync the Doppler pitch shift of the sound effect (streetcar passing at 40 km/h) with the moving image on the screen, but couldn't get it right—when it's right, a kind of lock happens in the mind and the action comes together almost magically as a single event, and not as separate visual and aural cues. No matter how I tried, the sound was always out of sync with the picture, so I decided a break was in order, and took a walk up to Queen and John to get a chocolate bar and a coffee.
As I was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, a streetcar passed by. And it was out of sync. I was shocked. The sound and image did not coalesce as one to me. I realized that the problem in the edit room was me, that no matter how long I tried to fit the sound to picture, I wouldn't be able to get it right that night. I was just too fatigued from too many long days hunched over a monitor. And I realized that if I did get it to look "right" that night, I'd probably have to redo it all in the morning anyway.
After a good night's sleep, I went in the next morning, put up the scene, and had it looking and sounding right in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes the most efficient way to get things done right is to stop trying, take a break, and come back at it later—especially when you've been at it longer than usual.
As I was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, a streetcar passed by. And it was out of sync. I was shocked. The sound and image did not coalesce as one to me. I realized that the problem in the edit room was me, that no matter how long I tried to fit the sound to picture, I wouldn't be able to get it right that night. I was just too fatigued from too many long days hunched over a monitor. And I realized that if I did get it to look "right" that night, I'd probably have to redo it all in the morning anyway.
After a good night's sleep, I went in the next morning, put up the scene, and had it looking and sounding right in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes the most efficient way to get things done right is to stop trying, take a break, and come back at it later—especially when you've been at it longer than usual.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
