Help! I need a file. Avid DS op here!

[Clubsoda]

I am trying to get to understand the whole surround sound thing, I have been upgraded this new machine that can handle 5.1. It is the Avid DS Nitris, I come from a Symphony and Smoke background and I need to figure this thing out. But need help...please. If anyone has a sound file (or files) that I can use to practice with, I would be forever grateful.

Also, is D5 the only format that Surround can be mastered to? Our D1 and Digibeta can only handle 4 channels, but the D5 we have, I believe can do 8 @ 20 bit. Purley a sidenote, really most interested a little help With the Surround file, really sounds of cows moooing would be fine. Even tone! Thank You,

Patrick [email protected]

[Clubsoda]

No one to help?

[DigiTechSupt]

Dear Patrick,

I am not sure if you realise this but you have posted your request onto the Digidesign user conference. As a result of this I doubt there will be many DS users on this forum.

Can I suggest that you go to the following link and add your query on the Avid DS Forum? You may have more luck there.

http://www.avid.com/cgi/forumscgi/Ul...i?action=intro

Yours sincerely,

Digidesign Technical Support

[Clubsoda]

Certainly there will be few to no DS users, but many sound folks who I'm sure feed mixes to the online guys all the time. I may not know much about surround but I do know that the people of this forum might have a tidbit of a 5.1 mix lying around somewhere that they can share for educational purposes. In exchange I can offer any help one might need with an Online situation, should the need arise, thank you.

Patrick

[rhumphries]

A--If you are just trying to test your system out, you can use any audio file. Use tone, or music, or narration, or whatever.

In the DS Mixer window, you have a routing section at the top, with eight possible routes. Typically a surround setup would be: 1)Left, 2)Right, 3)Center, 4)LFE, 5)Left Surround, 6)Right Surround, 7)Stereo Left and 8)Stereo Right. Just make sure you have your outputs routed to the correct speakers.

It's vital that you have your speakers calibrated propperly. See the thread in this user group about calibrating your speakers-- there are even links to audio files you can use.

I wouldn't recommend doing any Surround mixing in your DS any more than I would recommend editing your video in a mix suite. A) your environment probably won't give you an accurate sense of how it truly sounds, B) The DS's audio tools are pretty limited compared to an audio suite's.


B-- You can get all out your surround tracks on a Digibeta or a HD Digibeta if you use a Dolby E encoder. The Dolby E encoder takes your 6 surround channels and an additional stereo channel (or any other combination of 8 channels) and turns them into a datastream which can be recorded on channels 3 and 4. You need a Dolby E decoder to play it back (otherwise it just sounds like noise).

I hope this helps.

-Richard

[Clubsoda]

Richard -

Thanks a million, taking the time to write this post. Very helpful. Take Care.

Patrick

[Tiago Silva]

Certainly there will be few to no DS users, but many sound folks who I'm sure feed mixes to the online guys all the time.
Patrick

I usually make pretty damn sure that I'm the one that inserts the audio after the online master is made. Especially after the random drifts and dessyncings my online buddies used to get in the Avid Symphony when I sent them anything other than an OMF 25fps AIF embedded with quantized edits to frame boundaries - which required consolidating the files, and that the Digitranslator machine was available to do it.

How's your DS working? Our DS is prone to locking up, loosing Machine settings, changing Insert by Assemble, demanding to render where it shouldn't need, taking all day and night to export a 2K film reel, and all kinds of neat, off-topic stuff.

[Clubsoda]

It is interesting, your workflow that you describe, i would think that for anything long format, you would mix in 12 minute reels, max. at least this is how we did it back when I did long format, which was not that long ago.

I am frankly shocked to hear you speak of the Symphony as being the one responsible for the drift. I have been a sound mixer for long and short format, then migrated to Online Editor, so I know Pro Tools well, and I know Symphony even better. Symphony was one of the most solid machine Avid ever built, or ever will build. While Pro Tools is a fine piece of software, I'd have to say that I found the sync issues back in Online to usually be the fault of the Sound dept. But again, with all due respect, there could be so many other fishy things in the room, right? And I really do believe in finishing with the "reels" workflow, even if to tape.

Our DS is cool, quite a step from the Symphony, so much more capability. The language is very elegant and the philosophies, while strange at first, gradually graduate to genius. I hve had no problems like what you describe, no problems major, except one HUGE HUGE issue. Auto save doesnt seem to work. Every five minutes it does something, but it certainly doesnt sace my sequence nor does it seem to write an attic or session backup file anywhere else on the computer! I have gone white knuckled and angry at loosing many hours of fine work!

[Tiago Silva]

We did restorating work for DVD releases of old films and when I arrived at my current job, the workflow involved bouncing the sound to AIFF in the ProTools machine (with all reels glued ("butted") to make continuous video and audio files like DVD authoring suites demand), burning a CD, importing it into the Symphony, and then DigitalCut to Beta. What I heard was that sometimes there was a frame or two of drift, but I have to say that it was before my time.

But yes, the DS is a lot more powerful than the Symphony. I hear a lot of happy giggles because of the way the titles come out a lot prettier, for example, and they finally have a processing tree to play with; took some time to get used, though, and it's not an Avid (no Avid bins, relinking works differently, things with the same name mean different things, etc.)

[Clubsoda]

I don't know much about DVD authoring at that level, but do you then give the beta to the DVD people? or are they the ones with the symphony doing the digital layoff?

Titles are so much better, yes. The tool and everything is so much more versitile. But you are right, a whole different school of thought that gives different meanings to same name functions going on here. I still have not found a way to successfully substitute the lack of a gang command though. Things I've done sofar work, but not efficiently as it could with that simple function. Bummer.