The Free Orchestra (potential documentary)

[Mattias Westlund]

Next up is cracking the audio/video synchronization nut. I need some way of recording video from may phone and audio on my PC so that they can be combined after the fact. I know this is problematic since capture devices that are not clock synchronized will drift ever so slightly, but like I said I have done this in the past with reasonable results. OTOH, I've only overlaid audio on guitar playing videos and such, and in that case it's probably far less noticable that everything isn't in perfect sync.

Secondly, I'll also need to get myself a better microphone. The crappy Behringer condenser I'm using now is far too noisy for this purpose; I had to use REAPER's ReaFIR to subtract the hiss which yields a lot of artifacts instead.

Makes me wonder if there are any decent condenser mics for Android phones? That would solve the above problems in one go. I think I have some googling to do.

[Mattias Westlund]

phonearena.com Wrote:The good news, however, is that handsets with Android 5 and above will accept any USB-connectible digital microphone via an USB OTG cable. This means limitless options from the gazillion microphones available for PCs.

Well that is definitely good news!

[Mattias Westlund]

I intended to get some work done this evening, familiarizing myself more with Movie Studio and so on. That turned out kind of difficult as a new(er) graphics card means I can play some games at full tilt that I have been running on medium settings with the old one. Guild Wars 2 with everything maxed out plus SweetFX at 60 FPS is really a sight to behold, and then suddenly it's 2:40 AM here.

I know, I'm behind the times, but the game performance thing was a really nice bonus to this free upgrade

[Samulis]

I have always had a lot of respect for Rode mics, particularly in their noise floor, and I know their shotgun mics are used frequently in film/TV. They have a few models designed for mobile uses as well as placement on top of cameras. Maybe one of these models will work for your needs? If not, check out the Zoom handheld recorders- the cheapest one (H1) is as cheap as $70 USD and you can run a 3.5mm headphone jack from there to your phone (so long as it isn't the new iphone, hahaha) and might be able to find a way to record the audio straight from the zoom on the phone if you want. The clocks on the zooms I have found to be quite reliable.

My usual trick for fixing clock drift after is a time stretch. Worst case scenario, you could try a very very small pitch shift that would do the same (may require a little math or a few attempts to get it to line up right), but may cause an entertaining chorusing effect if existing audio is left in.

[Mattias Westlund]

Yes, I have good experiences with Rode as well (at my old job we had a pair of NT1's which we used for almost everything with great results) and I have indeed been looking at what they have available for the mobile market. I haven't decided yet as they are a bit pricey, though with good reason of course.

First things first though I need to get myself a beefier power supply as it seems the new gfx card needs far more juice than the old. The current PSU is rated at 520W which should be plenty for this older machine but as it is a cheaper PSU (and it's several years old) I suspect it isn't delivering what it says on the tin. I've had several BSOD's/random reboots when playing more graphically intensive games, plus my screens going temporarily black when working in Windows. So this is priority one right now, a new mic might have to wait for later.

[bigcat1969]

Any movement? I'm waiting impatiently to see the documentaries.

[Mattias Westlund]

(09-14-2017, 03:03 AM)bigcat1969 Wrote: Any movement? I'm waiting impatiently to see the documentaries.

Well there is movement but not so much on the SSO documentary front. Still working on a couple of retrocomputing videos and learning more about video editing.

[Samulis]

I might try to make some content on the sampling process in the future.

[bigcat1969]

Cool. I look forward and since some things are retro backward to seeing what either and / or both of you put out.

[Mattias Westlund]

I have derailed this topic beyond repair so I decided to split the thread and move the Time Traveler-related bits over to Off-topic, where they belong. Any further discussions about a potential "Free Orchestra" documentary may now commence. Sorry.