Shipboard Studios A/V Thread

[Fishman_Tx]

Your wish is my command!

Maybe we should start a boat recording studio thread, I'm in the media business and have 3 Avids (two Adrenalines and a Symphony Nitris DS) I use for video production and also have a protools HD suite, (Avid owns digidesign Protools btw) and have been wanting to put a mini studio on my future boat. Something small but has both high end audio and video production capabilities.

I wonder how many others would have interst in a boat 'mini' studio thread or if we are the only ones.

I'd think with all these little HD video cameras out that people would have interest, seems like everyone is making travel videos. You know, something a few steps up from a basic laptop studio.

I have two pairs of Sennheiser HD 800 headphones, touted as the worlds best sounding headphones although not cheap at $1400 a pair they are a little slice of sonic heaven.

I have 3 pairs of Genelec 8050a's speakers for my Avid video production suites, love them but will probably have to get something smaller for the boat, they make a smaller series that might work, my protools hd suite I have several speakers running from Adams, Mackie's, Yamaha & B&W diamond series.

protools HD suite

<DROOLS ALL OVER FRONT OF SHIRT!!!>

What's the make and size of boat?

PC or laptop(w/dockstation?)? LOTS of memory, 4gigs or min 2 with better processor. Should be no problem either way. Your acoustics will suck, better stick to the HP's. What are you using for the A/D interface at home/work?

[Chipg]

I'm in the boat searching process as we speak, being on a tight budget and wanting a studio / office I have been considering a Morgan 461 or 462 in rough condition that I can fix up / modify, you know the boat with the bath tub.

I ran across this boat About Liberty look at the pic of the office, they removed the aft bathtub and head and replaced it with the computer desk, I love this boat and the modifications they did, it's perfect for me as a liveaboard that I could work from and travel the world, it's just me and my girlfriend so I don't need two heads and would love to have the extra space for a studio / office.

I'm PC based for my Avids and Protools, for the boat I would more than likely build a computer for the Avid, Protools & misc other nav software although this build is 8 months old and prices have come down and performance has increased it would be similar to this but in a smaller case: Videoguys' DIY 7: Intel Core i7 8-core

I'll run the new windows 7, the avid guys over on the boards are saying it runs 30% faster on windows 7 due to better allocation of ram and processor cores. It would also have a SSD drive for the operating system and software then my video projects / footage would be on internal 2TB drives configured in a raid, probably four 2tb drives in raid so I would have 4TB of storage backed up.

My boat studio would be mainly software based so no avid or protools break out boxes.

Acoustics will suck but I can get alot better with smaller powered genelec speakers than I ever could with headphones, headphones are great for working while someone wants to sleep, about it.

Interfaces are the factory breakout boxes that come with the Avids and Protools, the protools one is the 24bit 192khz input breakout box but agian, they will stay at home and the boat studio will not have them.

[s/v Jedi]

With an 8-core CPU you better make some room for a big genset first! ;-)

About wifi streaming: it is the perfect way to get music on a hard drive out of your speakers. A laptop with wifi adapter is all you need (ad hoc config) or you can use a cross-over ethernet cable.

The upcoming Squeezebox Touch takes it a step further: it has the squeezebox-server software inside and usb port for a hard drive. It also has a great adapter to mount it flush in-wall (in-bulkhead). The performance is just what you want: 24/96 so bring those HD rip's ;-)

I also have a Squeezebox Boom. This is another perfect system for a boat: small but big audio (another DSP/speaker combo that beats Bose) and it's 12V powered. If you have the Touch, it will connect to that over wifi to get access to the music on the hard disk that's attached to the Touch. If you don't have a Touch (like me, only beta testers have 'em now) it will connect to squeezebox-server software on your computer/laptop. We bring it into the cockpit or a guest cabin if occupied.

You control these devices with about anything you can imagine. They have a wifi-remote but an iPhone, iPod-touch, palm-top or any web-browser+wifi enabled device. And.... it's "cheap" ;-)

cheers,
Nick.

[Chipg]

Yea Nick, power is a concern. Here is the thing with video, what would take 1 hour to render a video on a duo core computer will take 15 minutes on the 8 core computer so either way I think it takes about the same watts to complete a video / audio project. Peak power consumption on the i7 processor is 250ish watts (when all 8 cores are loaded to the max) on less processor intensive apps it'll only use one or two cores and have a low power consumption.

I'm also researching battery, solar, wind and generator options. I'd really like to be able to run it off solar and single or dual wind generators, last thing I want is a noisy deisel / gas generator running but can live with the noise from wind generators. I could also live with only using it every other day while the house batteries are charging up.

I have an extra 8D battery in my garage and a big power inverter, I might hook up my home system to it to see how long I can run it for before the 8D gets to 50%.

Thanks for the tip on the audio streaming hardware! I'm going to look into it, appreciate it!

Chip

[Stillraining]

OK ..I want to play as well ...but not in Quite the same league you are going.. I'm OK upgrading to Windows7 I think Vista is worse then XP anyway...so I will fork over again to get past it.

Don't think I need the 8 core or TB's of storage as mine is a hobby not a business..

What I want is an easy editing pod system... Think separate shuttle shift mixing board..turn a nob left or right ..stop on desired frame..tag or time code those start and stop frames for multiple sequences with the push of one button..selecting fade options and insertion with the simple push of one button and stitch the whole thing together with sound by pushing another single button.

Thats my Christmas list Santa..

OH.. I want the thing tied into my Toshiba 26" bulkhead mounted LCD monitor with built in speakers...100.00 head phones are good enough for high end listing for me otherwise..cant hear 3 top herz test levels anyway.

[Chipg]

Windows 7 'could' be a power saver over vista, hear me out on this theory, because programs will run 30% faster on it it's less time the computer has to be turned on and projects will get finnished faster however regualr tasks like typing or searching forums won't make that much of a difference but I am told the way windows 7 utilizes the cores better it would be better at putting the computer in a low power mode wile the simple stuff is being done. So you have the power when you need it and less for normal computing. Anyway, just a theory right now. I'll be putting it on a home computer soon to test.

Stillraining, they make jog shuttle contollers and you can set custom function keys on the keyboard however you want to do most of that stuff.

Here: http://www.logickeyboard.com/shop/sh...-v2-1509p.html
custom set the buttons to program it to do any task you want. It can also be used for other programs like photoshop.

What editing software do you use?

[Chipg]

Here:

YouTube - Contour Design ShuttlePro v2 Unboxing

You could also configure it for navagation software if you want. Best $100 you'll spend if you want to keep editing simple and fast. I have no affiliation with any brands I have spoken about. Just a good usefull tool.

[Chipg]

What video editing software do you guys use?

[Stillraining]

Cool ! If it works with any editor Im getting one thanks!......Weird video..4min on opening a box.

I have just been using windows movie maker...at Church we use photoshop premier cs3 I think...

I was thinking of trying this... Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 ...Have you experience with it?

[Christian Van H]

I LOVE my Shuttle! As for processor power, you haven't lived 'til you've edited AVCHD. This stuff will dog down ANYONES system! I use CineForm’s Neo Scene to convert AVCHD, greatly speeding up the process, and Vegas or Premier to edit...

[Fishman_Tx]

I have several editors including Pinnacle, but use very few. Since I do not "produce" video, my usage is limited to strictly conversion using DivX Pro format for HTPC use. I use DivX Author, VirtualDub, and VirtualDubMod as well as DVDFabHD and Sound Forge. Since video is not my specialty, I'm definitely going to pick ya'lls brains when I run into snags. Usually it's an audio sync issue; leading or lagging. Also, I'm a studio musician who uses hardware as well as software, so therein lies my focus and love.

[Chipg]

Originally Posted by Stillraining

Cool ! If it works with any editor Im getting one thanks!......Weird video..4min on opening a box.

I have just been using windows movie maker...at Church we use photoshop premier cs3 I think...

I was thinking of trying this... Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 ...Have you experience with it?

Yea, sorry about the 4 min of it. I was wanting you to see what it looked liked and the stckers you can put on the buttons anyway you wan't to configure it, it should have been a 30 sec video I couldn;t find a shorter one.

I do not have any experience with Pinnacle, for $100 you might be able to pick up an older version of Adobe CS3 premiere off eBay for the same price, sounds like it's something you already know how to use. Lot's of used software on eBay from people and schools that upgraded or changed to different editors that include the license so it's legal to buy it used. I bought a $2500 program off eBay used for $200. Deals are out there.

[Chipg]

Originally Posted by Christian Van H

I LOVE my Shuttle! As for processor power, you haven't lived 'til you've edited AVCHD. This stuff will dog down ANYONES system! I use CineForm’s Neo Scene to convert AVCHD, greatly speeding up the process, and Vegas or Premier to edit...

AVCHD is a bitch to edit nativley, I convert it to uncompressed AVI files first, it's not really a format I'd recommend to a guy editing on a sailboat with a low power laptop but it can be done with work arounds, they just take a lot of time and your computer has to run for a while to convert it.

I use ProCoder 3 from Edius to convert AVCHD footage, Edius also makes a simple free program to convert it to avi files. I have never heard anyone say they didn't like neo scene and I know a lot of pro's who use it to convert footage / remove pulldown. My ProCoder 3 was expensive but it can convert any format to any format, very usefull when your producing a show that has a mixed bag of cameras with all different formats.

[st599]

For basic video editing, I'm quite impressed by KDEnlive and Jahshaka. Nowhere near Avid, FCP or the like, but still good and run ok on an Atom PC.

For low power what about something like Leitch with its DSP card that runs a lower power specialised processor for realtime rendering?

[Christian Van H]

Originally Posted by Chipg

AVCHD is a bitch to edit nativley, I convert it to uncompressed AVI files first, it's not really a format I'd recommend to a guy editing on a sailboat with a low power laptop but it can be done with work arounds, they just take a lot of time and your computer has to run for a while to convert it.

Ah heck! I hope to have A LOT more time to convert when I finally get to go cruising! NeoScene is really neat, and only runs $99. It also converts to 4:2:2 at the same time... Videoguys.com - CineForm Neo Scene for PC and Mac