DAT Recorders!@!!?!?!%**$*$

Hello. I film on Super 8mm, and am considering buying a Sony mid-level DAT player/recorder to record audio with. Does anyone know if the "importing" is fairly simple to my G5, and FCP, do I have to get a special cable, or is there a firewire port?

Thanks!


P.S. Tried Mini Disc, but the converting to wav file thing on line was killing me, too much process, looking for the simplest way to record and manipulate my audio.


Aldrone

a few years ago i simply used a stereo mini-jack to stereo mini-jack to come out of the DAT and into my Mac's audio in.
worked fine.

but if you get a dat with digital out, you could very easily conect to your G5's optical in ports.
if the DAT has optical outs, all you;d need is a Toslink cable.
you can get them at the hi-fi shop, but of course they cost at least twice as much as they should!

if the Dat is SPDF out, then there's the CO2 converter from M-Audio:

[www.midiman.net]

which converts SPDF to optical.

i;ve been using one of those, and they do the job.

either way, just set your "sound" in system prefs to use the digital in, and you can then acces that in FCP.

if youve still got the minidisc, i'm sure there are some simple converter boxes out there you could use.
maybe check out roland, or edirol?

cheers,
nick

Sorry but NO! The only way you get Sony MD even the USB equipped NetMD to play sound into a Mac is by plugging into the Headphone socket! Which is pretty mickey-mouse.
How wonderfully kind Sony have been to Mac users. They are happy for us to use their DV Cameras though.

<<<DAT Recorders!@!!?!?!%*>>>

You're going to use a DAT recorder in the field? Volunatrily? Most sound people I know record field work on DAT and Something Else and more often than not, end up using Something Else because the DAT machine misbehaved in some way.

The spec sheet looks great doesn't it, and if you stay in studio conditions, most of the time DAT machines work just fine.

Most of the time.

Everybody's been burned.

Koz

"The only way you get Sony MD even the USB equipped NetMD to play sound into a Mac is by plugging into the Headphone socket!"

so what DOES come out of that USB socket?

nick

High quality MP3 files! Using the ARC codec of course - noisy in silence.
The device is seen by a Mac but cannot be accessed. The software that comes with the NetMD is PC only but I would hope that someone with VirtualPC could maybe access them?
Philip

Yow!
what a drag!

no wonder i;ve been eyeing off these 2 recorders:

[www.edirol.com]

[www.d-mpro.com]

(and these microphones: [www.soundman.de] )


nick

I've been using the RME Hammerfall card which has ADAT and SPDIF inputs. They make a model with a Mac eprom, which hardly uses any CPU time, low jitter, low distortion, good compatibililty with a wide variety of audio programs like Deck for capture. So far, can't capture directly into FCP.

Man, you guys are all so helpful, I'm getting all warm fuzzies... Ok, so the gen. consensus is that DAT recorders are sporadic at best, and if so, then what does the lafcpug recommend I accurately record sound with. And please, oh PLEASE don't say "shoot digital and record with the camcorder mic," I am obviously shooting Super8 film for a reason, because I love the way it comes out. period. I have looked into the crystal sync systems and yes, it is a possibility.....



Thanks!

Alden Olmsted
The Real California Picture Co.
www.realcaliforniapics.com

well Koz is the one railing against dat.
Koz, would you trust a hard-disk recorder more, or less, than dat?

Alden, i love your s-8 weddings, what a great idea.
are you using a cannon 1014?
that was the one i was using way back when.
had the fisheye adapter

those head-set microphones wont be too usefull when your head's up-side a S8 camera, though

nick

Why not use a mini-DV cam to record your sound? Just turn both cams on, film a clap board then you'll have something to sync to (roughly) and the ease of importing using Firewire. Dunno, I haven't done this, but is seems like it would work, Sean