Mixing live in 5.1

[monstermixer]

Here's the thing:

I'll be mixing a live show next week in an OB-van (with Nuendo and a Lawo MC266). So far nothing spectacular. However, I'll be mixing in 5.1, and my mixes will be sent -live- to a number of cinemas where people will be experiencing the concert with live video and audio. I think this is a nice challenge, and I'd love it if people who've done similar projects, share their experiences..

Cheers

~H

[huub]

Hi!

What truck? Alphacam?

The main thing is of course delay time... You can't put surround mics at FOH and put these in the rears as the delay will be too huge..
Will you be going out on dolby E? will it be converted to AES at the receiving side?

Tell us the details!

Welcome b.t.w. from another huub

[surflounge]

NAB in April will have info on the subject
NAB Show - Digital Media Industry Event for Audio, Video, Film & Communications Professionals

[monstermixer]

Hey fellow Huub :-)

It's going to be the OB24 from alfacam, in which I've worked a lot for (stereo) music. But this is a whole new ballgame ofcourse. I haven't gotten any technical details yet, but I was thinking the same thing with audience mics- also, I've mixed music for film before, and I was talking to this guy who mixed in all the dialogue afterwards, and he told me cinema surround is rather different from your regular home setup. Center speakers behind the screen and all. And apparently, it differs a lot between cinemas.

I'm pretty interested in knowing what the standard is for cinemas, level-wise.

Cheers!

~H

[Remoteness]

Please let us know how everything went.

In the meantime this thread may help...
Standard mixing levels for movie theater, DVD, broadcast TV, commercials etc

[monstermixer]

as promised, I'll share my experiences with this job;


Friday the 13th (everybody bring their black cats) was startup day, and we would do a complete runthrough of the show. The team consisted of a system tech, an audio assistant who would be on stage and myself, mixing. also, there was a video-van, where the intercom-guy would setup the satellite connection for transferring the audio and video to the cinema's.

I had requested a UPS because of a job I had done earlier where we had a power-failure during opening night (yes) of a 128-channel musical recording. However, for some unexplicable reason, the UPS CAUSED a power failure 3 times that day, so at the end of the day, we changed both our power source, and threw out the UPS.

We recorded everything 24 bit, 48kHz on to 2 nuendo systems through MADI. 1 system was linked to timecode, the other wasn't for safety reasons.

We used 10 ambiance mics: a standard ORTF centre stage, cardioid and hyper cardioid mics just below the speakers on each side of the stage, 2 omnis in the back next to the FOH and 2 figure of 8's at 2/3 of the room, with the rejection-point facing the PA. Those last two were meant for placing solely in the surround speakers, which works nice when you want to avoid stupid delays. The room sound pretty good actually, not being overly big, and housing 5500 people.

As I mentioned at the start of this thread, the catch for this job was sending out a live 5.1 mix through satellite to 6 major movie-theatres throughout belgium. We had everything set up; the uplink, dolby D encoders and decoders for listening back, surround processing in the TC6000, surround downconversion to stereo, I even had my assistant get a ticket to visit one of the theatres, and then came the telephone call:

"the people at Kinepolis (the movietheaters) don't know sh*t about dolby, and we're afraid that our signal will get messed up, so we'll just be sending out in stereo".

So much for 5.1!! dfegadstike

The next day, the producer and I sat with the mixes for a while, and made adjustments to the balance I had made with the soundcheck. Then, they did another runthrough of a couple of songs, and we were ready to go!

The show went pretty good, although there was a problem with the lights, which gave us a problem for the DVD-song-selection.

On the next day, my assistant dumped everything to protools, and edited out all the shit, so we would have a fresh start on monday.

The mixing went pretty well, given the fact that we had only 2 days to do 12 tracks- wednesday morning 4 a.m. we shut down protools and went home...

It was a nice job, but I hope next time we'll get the surround thing going!!

Cheers

~H

[MBishopSFX]

Next time, ask Dolby for tech support. They'll often send someone to keep things together in the encoding/transmission.

.

[huub]

Nice idea, the figure of eights, will try that!

Well, I guess it's better to have a nice stereo broadcast than a screwed up surround one...
Did the alfacam truck have the new Lawo software? The current software is far from ideal for surround.. We hope to update our Lawos in the next few weeks..

[monstermixer]

to MBishopSFX: I believe Kinepolis tried to send us through to Dolby, but all in all it was a rather complicated mather communication-wise. Since Alfacam was the contracter, they talked to all parties involved, and in some cases, that just wasn't the right solution. Anyway, thanks for the tip, if something like this comes along again, I'll make sure to contact Dolby myself...

to Huub: I'm not really sure whether they have the new software- surround panning was pretty straightforward, although my front to back panning was controlled by some weird controller, of which I've ofcourse forgotten the name. The system tech prepped everything beautifully though, so it all felt pretty natural.

Cheers!

~H