Sound Check

Looked at Bill Miller's “primer on Production” today (September 2002). I found it interesting that you had directors, casting directors, makeup, script, gaffer, grip, and DP, but no sound man. Have you decided they are no longer needed? They weren't even listed in the additional list.

The corporate world looks at these lists as the maximum needed. I would say that next to a cameraman, the sound man is the most important person on the crew. I can't tell you how many times the producer lamented the cheap soundman he hired. Hope this was an error of omission.
Ed K.
Videographer

Bill Miller responds: That was truly an oversight, and a big one I must admit. Fact is, I started as a sound person, running a Nagra for PBS years ago, and I really know the importance of the sound person.

Thinking back on writing the article, I don't know what possessed me to not put it in. I find myself in constant battles with producers, especially at TV stations, over hiring or not hiring a sound person. You are right. We messed up on this one. Will try to make it up to the sound department in the future.

In the August 2002 Video Systems, Bob Turner's article “Integrators and VARs” includes a sidebar chart on page 32 with the heading, “The following workstations are qualified for use with Avid Xpress DV 3.5.” Then, at the bottom of the section “Windows systems,” the text indicates that Windows 2000 Pro SP2 is the correct platform. This is flat wrong.

Windows XP Professional is the only Microsoft platform that can run version 3.5. I know because we recently upgraded to 3.5 and had to buy WinXP, which involved a far from painless transition with updates to a variety of drivers. For version 3.0, Windows 2000 Pro is fine.
Steve York
York Zimmerman Inc.
Washington, D.C.

Bob Turner responds: You are correct. I wrote the article prior to delivery of version 3.5, which does require Windows XP Professional. I should point out that Avid approved the accuracy of the text. Unfortunately, the OS requirements changed after I submitted the article and before it was published. Thanks for catching it and giving us the opportunity for a heads-up to our readers.

I read Steve Mullen's review of Toaster 2 and found it informative (August 2002). I was curious. He states that NewTek shipped him a unit that met Toaster's system requirements, but doesn't say what he was shipped. Is there any way to find out the specifics of the test system? Processor speed and whether he tested duals are of particular interest to me.
Dave Boyer
ITV operations manager
Delaware Technical and Community College
Newark, Del.

Steve Mullen responds: The unit was a Dell 520 with dual CPUs and a four-drive SCSI RAID. Given it was six months ago, I'd assume 2GHz Pentium 4s. You might contact NewTek and ask.

I read Barry Braverman's article on MPEG encoders and found it very helpful (“Hard-Core Encoding,” April 2002). I was wondering if he had any suggestions for my problem. I am getting serious artifacts from Apple's QuickTime MPEG2 encoder when exporting from QuickTime. The quality used to look great before I installed DVD Studio (and its encoder).

My question: Are there any other software encoders I might try to fix the problem? My footage is extremely high contrast, and I get halos.
Eddo Stern

Barry Braverman responds: If you're on a PC, you might try the new ProCoder released in June. It seems to handle high-contrast source material well. You can check it out at www.canopus.com/us/products/procoder/pm_procoder.asp. For the Mac, I recommend the MPEG Supercharger in Cleaner 5 (OS 9 only) or Heuris MPEG Power Professional. Both have filters to competently pre-process your source QT movie. Good luck.

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