I found this list which could be helpful in making a decision on a lens purchase.
Archive for the ‘Review’ Category
List Of Highly Rated Lenses for Canon EOS Cameras
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Griffin iMic 2 USB Audio Interface
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008I was finding my MDD G4 to be so noisy when monitoring during audio editing. I changed some things in my setup that brought it to a head and I sought out an inexpensive audio interface option just to get away from all the digital hash being created by my jam-packed MDD.
I went with the Griffin iMic 2 figuring it should at least get me away from all the interference happening inside the G4, and it surely did. I have no methodical measurements to offer but suffice to say if you’re finding the stock outputs of your MDD (or any computer) to just be too blasted noisy, give the iMic 2 a try. I don’t know if it’s all the stuff crammed in the thing or what but even the headphone output on the front panel is annoyingly noisy.
Audio Batch Processing With Amadeus Pro
Thursday, March 20th, 2008I was on the warpath today for batch processing options, as I have been many times before. Amadeus Pro ($40) is not an app that I remember getting a hit on before when doing these searches, but I hit it today. I already had Amadeus Pro in my toolbelt, thanks to Geoff Hankerson, so I thought I’d check out these features (honestly since I have Peak I just didn’t do much exploring to start with.) As I mentioned in this post, I have a workflow I follow to generate the two different quality Mp3 files for my churches sermon downloads. I’ve been looking for a way to cut Peak out of the picture, just for the sake of doing it. Today I think I hit on another option, all things being equal. I discovered the batch processing options in Amadeus Pro. Here are some screen shots of the setup I used, the -a arg in the LAME window forces mono (even though my source files are mono I had to do this to get Amadeus to recognize and output as such, there is no option in the main encoder section for number of channels.) This also means that the bitrate selection appears to be of the output file, after channel conversion, whereas in my example with iTunes, all bitrates are stated as stereo, you just do the math to pick the one for the desired mono bitrate. Translation; I wanted 24k mono, so rather than setting it to 48k (and divide by 2) like I would in iTunes, I set it to 24k.
Encoding options showing the LAME command line args.
Adding an AudioUnits plugin to the action list, my parametric EQ setup as a high pass.
The parameters in the Parametric EQ.
There are a ton of things you can do in batch mode. After I researched the command line args for LAME I added the -a for mono conversion so I didn’t have to do it as a stereo to mono conversion though you can do that as an action item too. I also experimented with normalizing, there are a couple options there including RMS normalize and fixed percentage (or dB) normalize. You can retain the input file format, however if you want to change the bitrate of a source MP3 file, you have to specify MP3 as the output format and set your encoder options there as shown. There are more expensive options ($70) as well for the hardcore production user, unfortunately the demo does not allow batch processing so I couldn’t “let the machines speak” for themselves. Comparing it to my Peak & iTunes workflow it took 1:22 to process my test file – open in Peak, apply Parametric EQ (as low cut), export as AIFF, re-encode with iTunes. Using Amadeus Pro it took 2:38 for the same source file and the same operations. This is on the same MDD 2 X 1.25GHz G4, 10.4.11, 1.75GB RAM machine. Based on sheer speed, Amadeus was not a runaway winner. But for a large group of files and a persons sanity (or schedule), Amadeus Pro is a viable option. Granted this is an extremely narrow test (I didn’t set out to do a review, just to find a better mousetrap), other functions may be faster, and if there were more gyrations to be done that had to be done serially in Peak I wonder if Amadeus wouldn’t show a gain there as well. Tests were done on the latest version 1.2.1. Bottom line; if you’re on a budget and need to do production-like processes with audio files, Amadeus Pro has a lot to offer, especially for the money.
Some additional how-to pages on Amadeus.
First Day With Fission
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
This Sunday is the first service where I recorded without the automatic splitting feature turned off on our Marantz PMD570 and instead did the splitting using RogueAmoeba’s Fission product. The thought being I would spend less time than waiting for Peak to open the MP3 files and then save them out as AIFFs. I wasn’t sure how much of a gain it would be because I am still opening each file in Peak and running a high pass filter (which is quite fast) on it which is the source file I then use for my low bitrate versions which are intended to provide our dial-up users with quicker download times yet still acceptable audio quality. Maybe I’m obsessive, but I can’t (yet) bring myself to just use the 24k versions for everything. It is, after all, still quite intelligible. It’s the thought that those with broadband can still quickly download the 64k versions and enjoy very high quality (gotta have that FM thing goin’.)
Great, how’d it work? It was fast, it was smooth. I think those are RogueAmoeba’s main intentions – to give you a tool that frees you from the (currently) existing confines of using a MP3/MP4 as your source file format (or being all you have to work with as a source file.) What I’ve been doing is opening each segment generated by the split feature of the PMD570 and patching up the breaks it makes since it has no regard for the actual content, just the time. This is mainly for the sermon as most of the other events are split manually by the sound tech using a foot pedal, and these are typically very well placed. But, even so, for the times when they’re not Fission would still save me time by allowing my to specify a split point and then save. Now I have (in my case) a 160k mono MP3 source file that’s properly edited, all I have to do is re-encode down to the target bitrate. Operation was very intuitive, I defined my split points then selected “Save Audio” from the File menu. The result is individual file segments, saved in the same bitrate as the source, almost instantaneously. I’m guessing that there are practical limitations that working on an encoded file imposes, but if I could ask for one thing, it would be the ability to patch in at least one AudioUnits plugin that is executed upon saving, that would keep me out of Peak almost entirely save for more complex situations. The software does what it promises and does it well.
Gear Review: Marantz PMD-670
Saturday, January 5th, 2008This is a review I did years ago on the Marantz PMD-670:
http://rickpepper.com/PMD670.html
As I mention in the article the church I attend has since purchased a PMD-570.
I had a revelation today as I was thinking about RogueAmoeba’s Fission product, that I may be farther ahead by disabling the auto-segment feature (the name used in the manual escapes me right now) on the 570 which I have set to 15 minutes. What this does is break or split the recording every 15 minutes, resulting in a new file each time this happens. I already have a foot pedal wired to the input for the remote that allows me to do this at will, so I don’t lose that ability, but since I pretty much always end up tweaking the breaks made by this feature, using Fission would allow me to make these breaks in a simpler way, and then I can still do the final MP3 encode(s) for the website using LameBrain and iTunes (without saving as AIFF as a go-between, unless of course I have other issues to tackle in Peak.) Since I apply an additional high pass filter to my low bitrate versions, I will still have to open those in Peak to apply that filter and save back out as AIFF before using iTunes to do the 24kbps mono encode as outlined here.