Mail somebody a recording environment.

[ErikH2000]

Hello!

I want to have a small network of voice actors that contribute to one production (a computer game with lots of scripted dialogue). They would all record from home, and I want to get a decent recording from them. Furthermore, the recordings should be as consistent as possible so that I can integrate separate recordings and have them sound like they all come from one place. I.e. I don't want one really echoey recording, one really quiet, etc. Some differences I could maybe process away with software, but that is also extra work to be avoided if possible. My idea is to mail a studio-in-a-box type thing to each actor. He gets a microphone, a CD with recording software, instructions on how to set things up. I know it would be desirable to get everyone in one studio, but there are big disadvantages to that:

- Scheduling people to travel to the studio is a pain and slows down the whole process.
- We get recording artifacts and these can either be handled in editing (time-consuming, doesn't always work) or by rescheduling another recording session (again, slows down the whole process, and can be expensive). Having the actor wait around while we carefully listen to the whole recording is also asking a lot.
- Lines change late in the production, after beta-testers point out problems, and that makes for scheduling more sessions.
- Dialogue between multiple characters that was recorded separately sounds unnatural when played together so needs to be rerecorded, and that makes for scheduling more sessions.
- I am limited to selecting actors that live nearby to me.

So I want to send actors what they need to record from home, and I'll collect their audio, review it, edit it, and ask for new recordings if needed. It could be a lot simpler for me this way. I figure the main problem to solve is getting recordings that sound reasonably good and don't sound different from each other. Note that I'm not seeking sound quality to satisfy the ears of audiophiles. I want something that won't sound bad in a computer game. I want to spend < $50 on a microphone, because I might have to buy like 10 of them before it's all over.

What do you think of my approach? What instructions should I give the actors? (I am an audio amateur, with strong emphasis on "amateur"--please feel free to state the obvious.) Do you have any advice to make it go better?

-Erik

 

[Carter]

A fostex MR-8 and a SM-57 is a small enough package that you could ship around to your actors, I would only purchase one mic and a bunch of those slip on wind screens (each actor can use their own wind screen, for health reasons!) and a nice foam lined hard case to protect the recorder and mic, send each actor a certain amount a wind screens,( Lets say two ) Then all they have to do is ship the case around to get all of the interaction, Well you will have to train them on the machine but it is simple, Hope this helps.

 

[ErikH2000]

SM-57 is in the practical price range, but I don't know if the Fostex fits into the plan very well. It's a $300 item, so it makes me pause. I'd make it a requirement that all actors have a computer with a sound card. They plug the mike into the sound card, record, and send audio to me over the internet. It seems I could run whatever filters I want with software and not need the features of the digital recorder hardware. Plus, I'm reluctant to have actors shipping equipment around a lot, because it introduces extra cost (shipping), risk (losing expensive equipment), and delays (gotta wait for one actor to ship equipment to the next). I realize that sending redundant cheap equipment to multiple people is in conflict with the goal of getting good sound quality. I'm hoping to find a good compromise.

Also, why would you send an actor two windscreens instead of just one? Do windscreens get damaged or wear out?

Thanks for the advice, Carter, and I will defitely listen to any more you wish to give!

-Erik

 

[Carter]

Thanks Erik, Windscreens get nasty over time and the replacement cost is very low, I would recomend getting some free recording software like Kristal audio engine or audacity ( do a search and you will find them ) or you can go to www.hitsquad.com and you can find a bunch of free recorders there, If you all are running the same program it should work out great! that way when you are doing actor interaction you can send them the file with the person they are interacting with and the they can record their part on a seperate track and send the project back to you~ hope that helps

 

[ErikH2000]

I've noticed in another thread here that people worry about how much memory they have on their DAW computer. I also notice many people spend terrific amounts of time fretting over their computer configurations. I can't hope to have much control over the computers of my actors, other than giving them the software to install and instructions like "shut down other programs running while recording".

Do you think that recording large files to disk is likely to produce artifacts? Maybe it would be better to get actors to record individual lines into separate files so that the recording can be smaller and fit in memory.

A related question: have you heard of a program that will automatically remove the silence from beginning and end of clips without manual editing? I picture running this program on a directory full of thousands of files, each containing one clip.

-Erik

 

[chessrock]

What do you think of my approach? What instructions should I give the actors? (I am an audio amateur, with strong emphasis on "amateur"--please feel free to state the obvious.) Do you have any advice to make it go better?

Erik,

I like your idea, and in theory, it sounds great. But in practice, I can already tell you it's likely going to be a gigantic -- excuse my french -- clusterfuck.

With that said, I do think this is something that could be set up, but with sonsiderable effort and time spent battling with technology and people's schedules and personal limitations.

What I would recommend would be to set everyone up with ISDN. This will not be cheap or easy to set up at first. But if you manage to get it all up and running ... then everything should run very smoothly and without a hitch. This is the way the big boys do it.

That's not to say it can't be done the way you suggested ... just that it's going to be a good deal more difficult -- expect a lot of hurdles and setbacks. But it could also be very fun and rewarding.

 

[ErikH2000]

I'm confused about the usefulness of ISDN in comparison to what I proposed. As I understand it, ISDN is just a way of transferring data, comparable to say... ASDL over a cable modem. But I have to think I'm missing something. Is the advantage you are thinking of that you can get standard hardware for both recording and transmission? I've read a little bit about ISDN and am willing to do my homework, but maybe you could give me a rough idea of how it improves on my first plan?

I'm afraid that a major obstacle would be that each actor would need ISDN installed and in addition to installation, I'd need to make ongoing payments to the carrier to keep the ISDN connection. I should explain that the people I'm working with are amateurs and often volunteers with a low level of commitment. So the actors come and go, and don't have much use for the equipment for projects outside my own. For this reason, it is even more important to keep expenses down since I never know when one relationship with an actor will end. I can always have equipment shipped back to me, but an ISDN installation is not transferrable and has an ongoing cost.

And I'm certainly not discounting your warnings about problems with my first plan. Believe me, I'm openminded and still listening.

-Erik

 

[Klif]

My 2 cents?
I think that you're expecting a LOT from those actors. It's one thing for you to get everybody together to record these sessions. I understand that you're wanting to avoid that as much as possible but I really think that you're going out on a limb by assuming that these actors will have any knowledge of computer recording.

You're probably asking, "what's so hard about it?", but if you have to deal with someone that has ZERO experience with it, I think that the results you get back could be a total waste of time. You could go through all of that only to find out that you should have recorded them yourself in the first place.

Just some food for thought.

 

[chessrock]

The advantage ISDN would afford you would be the ability to manage and basically produce/direct the recording sessions. "Could you say that with a little more feeling? .... alright, that was much better. That mic sounds like shit, and I'm hearing strange noises in the background, could you fix that?" etc. etc. You can also give people lines or cues ... even have the various actors interact and track in real time if you'd like.

On the downside, the cost would be pretty enormous when it's all said and done, so it wouldn't really make sense for a small-time operation or a hobby.

I don't know that I would advise making a significant investment in this right off the bat. All of the problems that you pointed out in your first post --variation in sound and environment from everyone's clips -- can and will be an issue. Not to mention the fact that dialog won't sound very natural without interaction between the actors -- if you're a really slick editor, it can be pulled off with a lot of work.

 

[incursio]

If they are serious, professional voice actors, I would expect them to have the ability to record basic dialog at home. The handful of voiceover folks that I know all have home computer/studio setups. They all know how to record themselves, edit WAVs, etc.

A voice actor without the ability to record themselves is something akin to a baseball player without a glove.

I should add that if you are not using professional voice actors, consider possibly finding people locally who are willing to lend their voice. Otherwise the time, effort, money, etc spent on mailing a portable studio around to people, and dealing with the invariable technical issues that will arise from their lack of working knowledge, could make it not worth it.

Cheers.

 

[ErikH2000]

Well, I began the experiment. I will share my results so far.

I began with holding an audition within the player community of my game. If you are interested, you can see what the response was like at this URL:

http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=5113&page=2#53366

And please, don't think I trying something sneaky to get people to go over to my site. What you have at the above URL is an example of 20 volunteers with virtually no recording experience sending me their samples.

Meanwhile, I also did some research and decided the Shure SM-58 might be a decent field mic. I'm still waiting for my shipment to arrive with an SM-58, a windscreen, and an A96F transformer (to correct levels when plugging the thing into a sound card). My wife also opened a Fedex account and now we can print return labels to send to actors so they can ship back equipment without paying for it.

I'm still not ready to send out equipment yet. Want to get my field kit tested at home first. However, I didn't want to delay my current recording project. In fact, I wanted to get it done in a terrific hurry. So it's going to be a future recording project that uses the field kits. Keeping that in mind, I listened to all the audition samples and picked out the actors that had an okay recording environment as well as a good voice and acting ability. I ended up contacting four people, and three responded back that they could work on recording.

With volunteers you can't do a lot of prodding. If you give one guy a huge task and he just sits on it then it gets really awkward. You can say "hey, buddy, are you still going to do that thing?" But you can't say, "if you don't meet this deadline, we're not going to pay you". So I only gave my guys small parts to record, and only one at a time. I waited for them to finish up what they had before giving them anything else.

I am also extremely oriented towards getting a usable recording and then moving onto the next thing that needs to be recorded. I haven't asked for new recordings of lines unless they were unusable, but after I have everything then I may go back and ask for a few retakes of lines where people talk a little too fast or are out of context with the scene. I asked the actors to send big files of their entire session and when in doubt, just say the line over again as many times as is needed and let me and the editing guy pick the one we like best. I don't want to get into e-mail volleys asking questions on how to record individual lines.

So in about a week, I've got about 20 pages of script recorded and edited for 15 different characters. 3 actors, 1 project manager (me), 1 editor--all of us moonlighting to do this. I'm convinced that from a workflow standpoint this system works reasonably well. It has worked out better than getting actors to one studio and the whole rescheduling mess alluded to earlier.

The audio quality issue is separate. There is a good actor from the audition I want to work with but his home setup is crap. One actor gave us stuff that luckily we could disguise the bad quality of by adding reverb and other effects. His character is a monster that talks up from the bottom of a pit. For other characters that are more natural-sounding this cheat doesn't work.

Another "cheat" is that almost all of the lines in the project are not conversations, but one-way talking. Or very short two-way conversations. As has been pointed out, troubles come into play getting separate recordings to sound natural against each other. I have ideas on how to address this in the next recording project, but it takes some explaining so I won't unload that on you guys unless somebody asks.

Cheat #3: I get to show subtitles along with my audio. Some samples are hard to understand due to the actor's delivery and would get recorded again if I weren't in such a fracking hurry. Having text on screen shown with the audio softens the blow.

Final cheat: Audio plays in a game, and I know people will disagree, but vocals in games don't need to reach the same recording quality levels as vocals on say... a music CD. People are caught up in the game, music and other sound effects are playing, and they aren't evaluating the vocals as closely as they would for other types of media.

-Erik

 

[ErikH2000]

If they are serious, professional voice actors, I would expect them to have the ability to record basic dialog at home. The handful of voiceover folks that I know all have home computer/studio setups. They all know how to record themselves, edit WAVs, etc.

I would say that I'm trying to convert newbies into amateurs, but not professionals.

I should add that if you are not using professional voice actors, consider possibly finding people locally who are willing to lend their voice. Otherwise the time, effort, money, etc spent on mailing a portable studio around to people, and dealing with the invariable technical issues that will arise from their lack of working knowledge, could make it not worth it.

It's a fair point. That's kind of what I started to do, and it didn't work so well because of scheduling issues and some bad luck. I also am biased towards my approach because I'm starting with a group of enthusiasts that are internet-based.

-Erik

 

[ErikH2000]

I have to add one thing more, and then I'll shut up for a bit. I read around in the different topics here and I get embarrassed. Everybody here is about getting really good audio. I'm about getting cheap and fast audio. The corners I'm cutting would make you cringe. The stuff I'm using is terrible by audiophile standards. So I apologize for arriving here with very low standards, a tiny bit of recording knowledge, and then asking for advice. If the cheap/fast parameters I'm working with are too much, just ignore me. I'm finding that my players aren't evaluating the audio at nearly the same level as people here would, and everyone seems satisfied.

-Erik

 

[DJL]

I think it might be asking a lot of the actors to learn how to operate a little workstation... plus most likely their kids would play with it and drop it, or the dog would take it for swim or something would happen. Of course the best way would be to have them come into the studio... but, here's another idea... hookup a good phone interface at the studio... and have them call in their parts... and with multi lines you could even record them together "interactive" if you wanted.

 

[ErikH2000]

I think it might be asking a lot of the actors to learn how to operate a little workstation...

I agree. I'm just sending them a microphone and adaptor to plug into their computer sound card. And all the people I'm working with at least know how to record something with computer software.

plus most likely their kids would play with it and drop it, or the dog would take it for swim or something would happen.

Yeah, and shipping can be violent too. It's my understanding that SM58s are pretty durable--one of the reasons I picked it. And if they lose/break/steal the equipment, I'm out around $120.

Of course the best way would be to have them come into the studio...

Sure, but there are large disadvantages for me with that approach. (described in first post) When working with volunteers, it is much easier to let them record from their own home. Otherwise, you wait one week for somebody to show up at the studio as kind of a favor. And they're in a hurry to take off for a chiropractor's appointment or something so you can't hold them there while you play back the session. Later you find out one line is botched and need to get them back to the studio again. Multiply that mess times however many people you are working with--it's not good. This was what I did first and the result was quagmire. Now with the internet recordings, the pace is something like 5 times as fast.

I'm struggling with the audio quality still. I've gotten okay results simply by only picking actors who sounded like they already had a reasonable recording environment to use. For the next project, I'll use my field kits and I should be able to get better results.

but, here's another idea... hookup a good phone interface at the studio... and have them call in their parts... and with multi lines you could even record them together "interactive" if you wanted.

Well... oh, wait--you were just joking. The quality of POTS connection is too sucky even for me.

-Erik

 

[DJL]

Well... oh, wait--you were just joking. The quality of POTS connection is too sucky even for me.

-Erik

It was just an idea.... and no, I wasn't joking... for a few bucks you could do mods, etc... oh well, I guess you better get your bank card ready. Good luck... and best wishes.

 

[Bulls Hit]

Meanwhile, I also did some research and decided the Shure SM-58 might be a decent field mic. I'm still waiting for my shipment to arrive with an SM-58, a windscreen, and an A96F transformer (to correct levels when plugging the thing into a sound card).


The audio quality issue is separate. There is a good actor from the audition I want to work with but his home setup is crap.

Another "cheat" is that almost all of the lines in the project are not conversations, but one-way talking. Or very short two-way conversations. As has been pointed out, troubles come into play getting separate recordings to sound natural against each other. I have ideas on how to address this in the next recording project, but it takes some explaining so I won't unload that on you guys unless somebody asks.

-Erik

I don't know what that A9F6 is but have you looked at external soundcard preamps to go along with the sm58?
I've never recommeded a usb soundcard before but in your case they could work well. Have a look at the M Audio Mobilepre for $150. It's a preamp/soundcard combo that plugs into the usb port

The benefit of an external soundcard in your situation is greater consistency in audio quality.

To get recordings sounding natural against each other is easy with audio software. Have you dounloaded the free stuff, Audacity, Kristal...?
Digital editing allows you to cut the audio into seperate clips, slide them around and position them correctly relative to each other. Then you can apply volume envelopes, compression, delay to get them sounding seamless

 

[ErikH2000]

I don't know what that A9F6 is but have you looked at external soundcard preamps to go along with the sm58?
I've never recommeded a usb soundcard before but in your case they could work well. Have a look at the M Audio Mobilepre for $150. It's a preamp/soundcard combo that plugs into the usb port

I had started to look at that actually. It is interesting you bring it up. One of the actors had a crummy sound card that made a nice microphone record with lots of static. And I thought about sending a sound card, but opening up a case, removing old sound card, adding new sound card--naw, it's not gonna happen. But an external sound card is perhaps feasible. I saw some that were cheaper (like < $100), and wondering if I can find something cheaper but still useful for avoiding really obvious artifacts.

To get recordings sounding natural against each other is easy with audio software. Have you dounloaded the free stuff, Audacity, Kristal...?

Yeah, me and the guy doing editing have been using Audacity to do some matching. I think we still need to improve our skills there, but we've had a little success already.

-Erik