PT LE and Audio For TV Post Advice Needed...

[The Weed]

I have a friend of mine who is using PT LE/Digi 001 on a P4 for radio production. System is very stable, he's very happy. He has been asked to put together an 001 or 002 with DV Toolkit to do audio for TV post work.

Already established that a small mixer for no latency talent headphone monitoring and playing in audio and laying back to tape will be needed.

However, will it be possible using DV Toolkit to synch PT LE and a Beta SP deck in order to lock the audio? (The Beta SP deck would also provide TV monitoring for the talent and the audio editor.)

Also, since plug-ins will be used on the audio, probably Waves, and these will induce latency, how can the audio be kept in synch with the video? Would it be best to determine the sample delay and nudge the track(s) back by that amount? Or would it be easier to bounce the final mix out to a stereo track, import that into a new session, line it up at the proper time code mark and then lay it back to the video tape?

Any and all help and/or advice appreciated.

Cheers,

[The Weed]

Mmmmm?

[The Weed]

One last bump. I guess no one is using PT LE for post work.

Cheers,

[Cliffy_Boy]

Bruce

Don't feel neglected. When I get caught talking to myself I just say that I enjoy talking with an intelligent person for a change.

[The Weed]

Oh, I know. I just don't like the answers I get from myself, sometimes. Too smart a**.

Cheers,

[Bastiaan]

I think you can get to happen with a MOTU Digital time piece. It isnt cheap though. List price according to Motu is roughly $1000. It connects using the 9 pin connector found on every beta. You do it this way, and you'll be able to lock to any professional videodeck.

www.motu.com

[gerax]

Try posting this same question in the "Pro Tools for post" forum, they may be more skilled on the subject; I use PTLE on a 001 for A/V post of DV features and the likes, but so far I haven't had the need to sync it to Beta decks, and I suspect you'll need some kind of MIDI/SMPTE device to hook it up, since PTLE doesn't have machine control; as far as latency and plug ins, it depends on how many and what kind of plug ins you use: some introduce just a few samples of latency and that's almost non noticeable with sync, while others are real hogs and if you load multiple instances of them on the same track then you may need to nudge the track ahead of time to get it in sync again.
How can you judge which? If you're working at 48KHz (standard in A/V post) and 25 Fps then each frame is 1920 samples, once you are over that amount of samples you are off by a frame; you can set Pro Tools to monitor latency on each track (don't remember where in the preferences, but you can), and see how many samples a plug-ins is offsetting (the manual also talks about how many samples of latency are introduced by inserts and aux sends).
I prefer to keep everything in sync by nudging as needed and putting a 1 KHz reference tone at the start so that you can align levels and sync with a reference point with the video later when the audio will be rendered to stereo (or any other format).

Hope this helps

L.G.

[Bastiaan]

The MOTU box i described will take care of the sync-stuff. It will make it possible for ptle to chase the beta using MTC MMC and sony 9pin protocol.

[Bastiaan]

The only thing you get extra from the DV-toolkit in this scenario is the added timecode display, and the ability to nudge by frames. And the plugins ofcourse.

[The Weed]

Thanks Bastiaan and gerax, great advice. I will post in the other forum and see what they have to say.

Cheers,