Spanspek

Last week, my institution held a music festival. There were 6 concerts in 5 days. Students and teachers from the TV course brought their portable hi-def studio and cameras. It was our job to record multitrack sessions but also provide them with a stereo mix.

The stereo mix was generated in Pro Tools in real time. We took a timecode feed from TV (sent over an analog cable run of 80 metres (amazing!), set the session start time, put Pro Tools "on-line" (receiving sync from timecode), and hit record. During one act, Pro Tools threw an error message. I didn't see it but my students said an error dialog flashed very quickly and recording stopped. They took Pro Tools off-line and tried to put it on-line again but the timecode reference jumped about 3 hours ahead. It was over a minute before they could get it all working again.

TV's timecode feed didn't miss a beat. The timecode display on the SYNC I/O box was apparently maintained.

I suppose for 6 concerts, each generating 11-12 GB of data, one drop-out is not too bad.