The Case of the Two Licenses

A question came up recently about what sort of licenses are required when marrying music to motion graphics (or any imagery edited or animated in time with music). It so happens there are two, which you may or may not need to worry about:

Review: Rode NTG-3 short shotgun microphone and Blimp windshield

The Rode NTG-3 microphone, shown here in the Rode Blimp mount sans windscreen, delivers great performance at a moderate price.

Users of short shotgun microphones can be sorted into two categories. Those who complain about spending $250 to $500 on a mic, and those willing to spend $1000 to $2000 on one. Into the first category you can place students, hobbyists, many camera operators, and just about every producer. In the later you’ll find professional sound mixers and...well, that’s about it. So what mic choices do those restrictions translate to?

NAB 2009 Video - Beachtek DXA-5D and Blackmagic Design

At B&H’s booth, Beachtek showed their audio adapter unit for the Canon 5D MarkII, a box that offers two XLR inputs, level controls with VU meters, headphone monitoring, and a AGC-Disable switch that can defeat the 5D’s audio auto gain control. Check out the video for the details on how they accomplished this.

NAB 2009 - Wilt’s Wrap-Up

An Akeley Audio Camera at the ASC booth.

When it comes to cameras and production gear, I saw three major themes at NAB this year: 3D, storage, and digital cine accessories. I’ll discuss these, look at what the “big 3” camera suppliers had on offer, and mention other things of interest at the show.

The Missing Video: Sonicfire Pro + After Effects

A few years ago, SmartSound commissioned us to create video training on how an editor or motion graphics designer could start in their Sonicfire Pro intelligent stock music software to select a soundtrack for a commercial, edit the source clips in After Effects (or any NLE, for that matter) to match the music, and then go back into Sonicfire to massage the music to work better with the now-edited video and voiceover. This video is theoretically still available on SmartSound’s web site, but has become hard to find since they updated their site to tout their latest version (SFP5). As we think it still contains some very useful advice on how one can work more effectively with music and video, we got permission to re-post it here. Although it is specific to Sonicfire and After Effects, the concepts it contains have broad application (especially the middle section “Spotting and Editing to a Soundtrack"). Click the PLAY VIDEO link below to view it.

Professional Audio Podcasting seminar, April 14th in Miami

Now is your chance to attend a seminar about professional audio podcast production. You will learn the fundamental differences between tradtional radio broadcasts, live Internet radio, and audio podcasts… and the advantages of the latter; how to design your audio podcast format; the standard elements (intros, outros, bumpers, etc.); hardware and software to produce your audio podcast; how to conduct high-quality telephone interviews; audio editing of your podcast; compression versus normalization; how to add chapters and graphics to your enhanced audio podcast; how to upload your podcast; and how to create an RSS feed which is compatible with iTunes and other podcast aggregators.

The date is April 14th, and the place is Miami, Florida. Although there is a charge of US$100 per person, attendees will receive a coupon good for a 40% discount off of the recommended audio podcast production software for Mac. Click here for more information, or to register.

PVC Pipeline | Distribution

This coming Monday, we’ll be releasing our third newsletter: PVC Pipeline | Distribution. As you can guess from it’s name, this one will be focused on the broad subject of alternate ways of getting your creation out into the world - from podcast production (including an insightful article from Alex Lindsay on the Pixel Corps’ experience producing podcasts for themselves as others, as well as Allan Tépper’s review of a tool he uses for his podcasts: Übercaster), to getting distribution for your independent movie (a great roundtable discussion led by the FreshDV folks, including award-winning producer/writer Jerome Courshon, and Scott Kirsner of Variety), to a tutorial by Michael Vitti on creating buttons for a custom DVD. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, do so now - it’s free, and you’ll get to enjoy these articles weeks before anyone else.

Recently Added: Article on Composing Music Using “Loops”

For many years now, artists have been creating music using loops - musical phrases that can be repeated or strung together as building blocks of a song. This technique opened music creation to a large number of artists who may not be musicians themselves, but who had strong musical ideas: they could arrange these blocks into new compositions of their own without having to play all the instruments. However, being handed a tool does not mean you instinctively know how to get the most out of it - a touch of background in music will help you get more out of them so you can create scores that sound “just like real music.” In this timeless article I wrote several years ago, I’ll cover some of those fundamentals, as well as several of my favorite tricks.

Click here to jump straight to “Straight Advice on Loop-Based Music.”

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