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    The videos: live sound / music

    Hi

    VidDude and I have been discussing the merits of live sound and music on the videos. Sometimes, while there is live sound, it's boring or uneventful - it really adds nothing to the shoot. So VD puts in music. But then we get purists complaining that there's no live sound and it's all our fault (like we're supposed to prod the models with a stick to make them yelp a bit!?).

    So VD came up with the brilliant idea of having the live sound on the left audio channel, and the music on the right channel. You can choose to pan the audio to the left or right, and make your own mix of the live sound and music, or 100% of either one.

    Let's know what you think.

    abby

    #2
    "having the live sound on the left audio channel, and the music on the right channel."

    Solomon would be proud. It would certainly work for me.

    I suppose from a technical perspective you might want to play around with the mix so that there's a small amount of crossover for ambiance, but the left/right trick certainly lets us decide.

    And since you're looking for new suggestions you could always try prodding the girls with a stick -- gently! -- to remind them to yelp. Or give them sticks and let them prod each other. (Ok, pretend I didn't say it.)

    figleaf

    Comment


      #3
      Hmmm, I'll have to see how that works on my computer through headphones.

      Talking of sticks, anyone know the Monty Python self-defence sketch, "now today we're going to learn how to defend yourself against a man armed with a pointed stick"

      SF

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        #4
        As I recall it was defense against a man armed with banana.
        "Eat the banana, thus rendering him defenseless"

        Timbit

        Comment


          #5
          You're right Timbit, its when one of them suggests moving on from learning to defend against a man armed with a banana to fighting off a man armed with a pointed stick, he gets told off for getting all high and mighty.

          SF

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            #6
            This seems like a reasonable compromise. It'd work fine for me. I'd hope that you wouldn't do this for the vids that have lots of audible good live sound though, because it's nice to have that in both ears for the immersive experience.

            I take it your live sound is never mixed in stereo? The fact that I'm not sure whether it is or not suggests that it probably isn't and it probably doesn't matter. It occurs to me that it'd be awesome if you got a nice binaural stereo microphone to give headphone users that 3-D sound experience for the more audible live stuff.

            I'm always impressed by the quality of the sync between the music and the production of the vids but quite frankly I usually turn the music off and view the images in silence if there is no live sound. Maybe you could save some time and effort in production by just leaving the sound out when there's no good live sound. I understand that maybe others enjoy the music though so this panning thing is a reasonable compromise.

            Comment


              #7
              Most people seem to hate the music - it's rare for me to hear of anyone actually enjoying it (though it has happened). It's quite disappointing, really. Not that I think the music is anything too amazing myself, but I don't think it deserves the hatred it seems to universally get. But then, I'm not someone who really appreciates music, so maybe my ears aren't sophisticated enough to recognise how bad it is. I want to keep it, it has its practical purpose and I think adds texture to it, but most other people, including those right here in the studio, want it gone or much improved.

              Anyway, yes I do save the sound in stereo, but I don't mix the channels in any creative way, so it's effectively just mono in the end. I'm still not certain if this is the right way to go - the last few videos that I have edited (they aren't on the site yet) I decided to put no music in at all. In these cases the subject matter lent itself to it quite well, and I actually enjoyed the end result a lot, so I'll do that more often I think. However, there will be times when music is inevitably necessary (in my opinion) and so then maybe I'll try this selective channel idea.

              I'll test it out first, though, and put up a sample later this week after I hear some more feedback, to see what you think. It may be a disastrous idea, so we'll see.

              Comment


                #8
                speaking as a muso / audio buff, splitting the audio into left/right for music and live would drive me nuts, especaially if i was using headphones.

                it also means that I would then have to return my balance back to normal after watching the video, making me more likely to simply mute the video than bother with mixing.

                the music itself isn't that bad, although midi often sounds very cheesy (especially with songs that I recognise - a while back, you used "Loser" by beck, which seemed a bit weird - was it a subtle dig at the model, or just a coincidence?)

                my suggestion would be to mix the music in with live audio where worthwhile, or just keep to the music.

                also, i'm curious - where do you source the music from?

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                  #9
                  I source the music from all over the net. Then I run the midi file through a wavetable, to make it unique.

                  As for Beck's Loser, I usually don't pay attention to the titles of the songs, and I don't recognise about half the songs I use at all. I just pick something I think sounds appropriate.

                  Thanks for your input, it's extremely helpful!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    A couple of points:

                    (1) The music doesn't add much to the situation. It's synthesized, it's obtrusive, people are calling it "cheesy" and nobody much seems to like it -- so what's the point?

                    (2) Videoman, I always thought the videos on here were produced using licensed or royalty-free music, which can be had cheaply from many sources.

                    But, you just admitted you are copying ("sourcing") music from all over the net, including songs like Beck's "Loser." (Allmusic.com says -- Written by Hansen/Stephenson, copyright 1994)

                    But EACH photo from this site is tagged with a copyright notice, and each page on your website says "this copyright will be enforced, so watch out!"

                    So, are you guys saying that it's OK to duplicate other people's music, but you'll take action if someone violates the copyright on your porn?

                    Let me get this straight, it's not ok to pirate your videos, but you'll be happy use other people's copyrighted works without permission.

                    Y'all really need to rethink this..

                    conclusion 1: By incorporating this music into your videos, you are subjecting yourself to potentially huge damages from the recording industry and their Australian lawyers.. I mean, those artists are not likely to want to associate their music with 'Adult material'! (Sarah McLachlan even sued the makers of a 9/11 remembrance video for appropriating her song 'I Will Remember You' without her permission!)

                    conclusion 2: In some jurisdictions, the incorporation of infringing works (pirated music) into a work you hold copyright to (AW videos) might invalidate the copyright on the videos themselves! In other words, a court could loose your videos into the Public Domain if they were found to include copyright infringement.

                    conclusion 3: By including that copyrighted music in your works, you are actually subjecting your USERS to potential liability in some places (like, uh, the United States) where the Recording Industry is actually SUING USERS who have copyrighted songs on their hard drives.

                    If any of your users are sued by the RIAA -- don't laugh, over 200 Americans have already been sued in U.S. courts by the Music companies -- and they go to court, the RIAA could try to extract $150,000 for the songs in those videos, on top of the $150,000 they are trying to get for each song on users' hard drives. Granted, most people who are sued will try to settle, but if anyone does get to court, the point is your use of that music actually subjects American users to ADDITIONAL liability, not to mention the liability it brings on your site.

                    Even though much of recording industry is headquartered in North America, we can assume that there is copyright law in Australia, right? And that these companies have offices and lawyers down under?

                    It is no longer safe to assume that just because you are somewhere out on the internet, you are safe from the recording industry's insanity.

                    conclusion 4: the RIAA does suck.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Remote1

                      Hi, and welcome to the boards - your first post, I think?

                      You certainly gave us some food for thought! We'll look into the issues you raise.

                      Thanks for bringing this up.

                      abby

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                        #12
                        Remote1,

                        Must agree on your point 4. What type of industry sues their customers?

                        Comment


                          #13
                          This is getting a bit OT, but while we are on this topic there is something that I've been mulling about with all this copyright furor in the USA.
                          If I buy a CD I've bought not just the physical CD and packaging but the rights to the music for personal use. It stands to reason that if I damage the disc by scratching or cracking it I should be able to easily swap the damaged disc for a shiny new one right?
                          What about all the people who invested serious $$$ into replacing all their LP's for CD's? Rebates all around I say.
                          If the music industry is really serious about enforcing intellectual property rights it should go both ways.

                          My $0.02

                          Timbit

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                            #14
                            Can you at least turn the sound level down??? There are some titles you have that start with a few seconds of intro music which is very loud compared to the live sound that follows straight after. So I have to turn the sound down when music is playing to a level where I cant hear the model speaking, then turn it up quickly when she starts talking and remember to turn the sound down at the end of the video before the next one starts with loud music.

                            I dont like to have to add to the RSI (repetative strain injury) I already have from working at a computer all day by altering the sound level over and over again..... ;-)

                            I have not found that the music adds anything to the videos I have seen so far. I prefer only having live sound even if there is only background sounds. If you replace the background sounds with music it has an less natural feel which seems to go against the natural presentation of the girl that the site is aiming for. For myself, subtle background noises and sounds add more to the scene than any type of music you could replace it with, as any music you would add is by its nature be unnatural to the scene you are preenting (unless you have the girl listening to music while you film her!)

                            I hope you find my comments useful.
                            JohnnyBoy.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              As has been said repeatedly, there is a reason for the music.

                              At first our videos had no live sound at all. It was just me videoing Abby shooting the models. You hear: background music from the stereo; Abby and me directing the model around; the camera going off all the time; the model being referred to by her real name; the model telling us things about herself that should not be revealed publicly.

                              For those reasons we opted for no live sound, and so in lieu of silence we replaced it with cheesy music (legally obtained - i.e. it was either part of the editing suite I was using at the time, or it was created for us by a muso acquaintance of ours).

                              Since then it has become part of the tradition of our videos to have music. About a year or so into the project, when I transferred my editing functions to a new piece of software, I started creating the music using midi files as mentioned above.

                              We still use the music even now not only because of tradition, but because even now we still encounter the abovementioned reasons to block out live sound. On the occasions where I could've used no music all through the series of vids, I still opted to do so through my own choice - I just wanted to, I felt it was unobtrusive enough to be allowable.

                              Very few people agree with me.

                              Because of what Remote1 says above (and because everybody seems to despise the music so much), until we find a source of music that is legal - i.e. original stuff created for us exclusively by a musician - no more music will be included in any video I make from today onward, and you will have to suffer through whole periods of absolute silence through some of the videos when needs must.

                              And if anybody complains about that, they shall hear my wrath!

                              Comment


                                #16
                                You guys are already using DivX, which probably means your audio is in MP3. At 128 kbit/sec and lower, most encoders use joint audio, which means that having completely separate programs on left and right would significantly diminsh the sound quality You would have to turn off joint audio.

                                Another solution is to use two audio tracks. the OpenDML spec for AVI's allows for two audio streams. Download the Gordian Knot RipPack and CodecPack from http://gordianknot.sourceforge.net and install them. Using VirtualDubMod and Morgan Stream Switcher (both included) you can encode two separate audio streams in the same file, and switch between whenever you want.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  How problematic would it be to have two versions of a video available for download, firstly the music-based video as at the moment, and a second with purely the raw sound (muted where necessary)?

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Longneck
                                    [B]You guys are already using DivX, which probably means your audio is in MP3. At 128 kbit/sec and lower, most encoders use joint audio, which means that having completely separate programs on left and right would significantly diminsh the sound quality You would have to turn off joint audio.
                                    Actually the audio isn't encoded in MP3 - Adobe Premiere doesn't have that as an option for me to use. I have no idea why, I think they're just being annoying about it. However, I imagine your point still stands.

                                    Originally posted by Stilton
                                    [B]How problematic would it be to have two versions of a video available for download, firstly the music-based video as at the moment, and a second with purely the raw sound (muted where necessary)?
                                    That's really out of the question. Bandwidth is something we want to minimise, and this whole music thing is not that much of an issue. It's really just me being stubborn for my own reasons. The music isn't an absolute necessity, but it is a useful addition for me to create better videos.

                                    In my opinion, that is. For what that's worth.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Final suggestion (as a newbie with a terrible dialup for only three more days I doubt I'll worry for a while).....how about an extra logo on the model profile pages to show whether the videos actually has the model talking?

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        There already is. Any video description (and the model galleries have it too) that has the little audio speaker on it
                                        img tag disable, use attachment mgr/system to add images to postshttp://www.abbywinters.com/discus/messages/4/2006.gif
                                        refers to "live sound", i.e. talking. Pretty much all of the vids for the last year have live sound, before that it was more sporadic, and our first year had pretty much none.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          *feels stupid*

                                          I'm sure I'd have realised that in a few minutes... :S

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Videoman
                                            [B]until we find a source of music that is legal - i.e. original stuff created for us exclusively by a musician - no more music will be included in any video I make from today onward ...

                                            Not a facetious question -- what would you be after specifically?

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Do you mean what kind of source? Or what kind of music?

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Either/or. Particularly, what kind of music?

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Well now.

                                                  Ideally, we'd need unobtrusive music. Synthesised, sort of atmospheric, with a style that can easily segue into a new piece easily enough. There'd be slow pieces for intimate scenes, faster paced punchier ones for more active scenes.

                                                  We'd have about 10 - 20 pieces each, in several different categories (quiet, romantic, fun, cute, silly, powerful), they'd need to be around 3 minutes long, and designed so I can mix from one to the other without it sounding like an obvious change, or so that I can repeat them over again to extend their length.

                                                  But most importantly they should sound indistinct enough that we can recycle them a lot without people thinking "not this music again!" and yet be distinctive enough to be catchy and pleasant to listen to.

                                                  One possibility that just occurs to me is to have a particular melody that can be in all the pieces, the abbywinters.com theme, but of course it'd be used with appropriately different instrumentation to match the atmosphere of the video.

                                                  Comment


                                                    #26
                                                    Right. Short soundtrack-y pieces with different moods. Let me think about this, and get back to you via email. I might be able to work something out. img tag disable, use attachment mgr/system to add images to postshttp://www.abbywinters.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif

                                                    Comment

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