BNC, Enchante!

Once my friend Candie became totally smitten with someone because they knew what a British Naval Connector was. I have to admit, people who know tech stuff make me cream my jeans. When my friend Rheanne and I saw Shortbus I got all excited when I saw a character using Final Cut Pro. “Aw! Final Cut Pro.” “You geek.” Which coming from her is a compliment.

I don’t understand people who don’t appreciate geeky video tech-y stuff. It must look pretty obvious that I’ve hung out with mainly video and filmmakers for the last decade. I was so depressed when at my last job I was accused of knowing nothing of sound editing, because they were using a very temperamental Logic Pro software which was incompatible with their input device and I had spent a decade using Protools in well designed suites, which in my opinion is a far superior program. Although maybe I am just a software loyalist. It makes a LOT more sense for video editing at least, because the interface is similar to programs like Avid and FCP. I hate Logic Pro, it can go to hell, it’s such a fuck ass program. And in my experience thus far M Audio sucks too.

Either way it’s kind of dumb to tell me I don’t know sound, when I can use Protools with one hand tied behind my back and standing on one foot. It wasn’t my fault they didn’t choose a more intuitive program, which would probably have been better for their membership anyway.

I remember one time I was sitting around with friends having a conversation and another tech minded person and I started talking about RF modulators. Which I didn’t think was very impressive, but everyone else was all “Oooh, RF modulators, how do you know that stuff?” He also asked a question about winding cords and I mentioned the crucial 3/4 turn. Oh yes, he said, the 3/4 turn.

The most major suck ass thing about my previous job (besides terrible interpersonal issues) was that I came in and NOTHING was set up and barely any video decks were functional. The Betacam deck had to be serviced. The distribution amplifier had been out of commission for ages. There was no 3/4″ deck. The S-VHS decks were crap, which was a big issue because for some ungodly reason the centre had been using S-VHS formats to master onto for YEARS! Anyone who masters onto a video tape that is a 1/4″ wide is being an idiot. Even 3/4″ is more stable, magnetic doohickeys just fall of tape and the less physical size of tape you have the more magnetic particles coming loose with destroy your tape quality.

And then we were all told that Mini-DV tapes were generation lossless and you could keep things on them forever. Ha ha ha. What we didn’t find out until years later was that Mini DV is “lossless” because it replaces a missing piece of information with whatever the next pixel beside it is. As you can imagine tapes on Mini-DV are starting to get really square pixel shit happening and distributors everywhere are imploring their artists to stop sending in Mini DV masters. I’m sure HD is going to end up having some horrid complication later in life too. The fact Betacam has always been and will always be the best format to master onto unless something MAJOR happens. But as a rule analogue is superior to digital.

The sound suite was in random pieces. The M-Audio input device they were using kept crashing and having to get software reinstalled, it would work for a while, and then it would crash AGAIN! It was like being in the 9th circle of hell. I never want to go into a tech artist run centre job again when nothing is set up and barely anything works. I can’t troubleshoot equipment that is totally broken.

I think the problem was things were being acquired because In Theory they were a good idea, although in practical usage they were too new to have proper support or a large base of knowledgeable people to consult. Just a bad idea. I remember when I was in elementary school we did rudimentary computer programming with sprites and I wrote a program which In Theory would have worked perfectly, but in real life application was pretty shoddy. I was talking with my friend Archer about getting an HD camera and he told me to stay away from it until they work out whatever kinks will come out. It’s true, if you’re putting thousands of dollars on equipment you’d better be damned sure it’s going to be reliable for the next six to seven years until they come out with a different format and everyone screams. And using a Beachtek because the camera has no XLR inputs is so dodgy, and few of the new HD cameras had XLR built in.

I digress. Once I found out a filmmaker friend didn’t know how a light meter works and I never looked at her the same way again. I’m awfully shallow about stuff like that. In film school everyone had their own light meter because the school’s meters would get smacked around by constant use and ended up being pretty unreliable. And when a minute of 16mm film costs $100 bucks from film stock to processing, you can see why everyone put out that much cash for their own meter. Once when I was totally broke my mom kept trying to convince me to sell my Sekonic so I could buy groceries (they’re about $200) and I was appalled. You can have my Sekonic when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

I am still waiting for my video conversion to finish and I got on a tangent. I think I have to do something else. I am going to go play We Love Katamari and try to pass the campfire level.