32-bit floating point audio for six microphones came to dinner for a video production of “Cadernid” for Virtual Reality (VR) viewing. Our portable audio recording technology solved production headaches for a Virtual Reality film production company which also needed to move professional equipment rapidly between multiple geographical locations.
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About this video production
Cadernid – Video production for VR
Our client uses 360° camera technology to develop virtual reality training to the Police, public sector, and the legal profession. Virtual Reality (VR) filming is an expensive and demanding video production niche. Apart from the immense technology at play, 360° filming poses additional unanticipated problems for staging and direction.
Virtual Reality considerations
It will be all right on the night – it has to be
Often, film and video producers rely on niche contractors for specialist equipment or experience to assist with production. This is because the rigours of filming leave no time to experiment or learn. Everything has to work, because it might not be possible, for instance, to get the same agency actors to shoot a scene again if it turns out audio and video are deficient in post production.
Dinner for six
Cadernid’s script relies on scenes fof up to 6 actors at a time. Usually, producers consider “room” mics to capture audio at that kind of scale. However, a 360° camera and fragile antique furniture dictated wireless/radio lavalier microphones. The team already had sufficient lavalier microphones. However microphone receivers needed to “uplink” incoming audio from actors to an audio interface to process and 6 tracks simultaneously.
In summary our clients needed additional equipment and experienced support. The team already used an ambisonic microphone. However, that device was untested and would have been risky to use as a primary capture device.
32-bit floating point – reliability
Zoom F6 Professional audio interface
The Zoom F6 is about the same size as a DSLR camera body so its portability is a bonus for this kind of project. Indeed, the F6 is ideal when filming schedules demand rapid re-location several times in a day because it is compact and lightweight.
However, the F6 was crucial to this project because it powers 6 professional microphones while synchronising to video frame rates with timecode.
In Closing…
Our experience with audio recording is not just a benefit for big budget professional production teams. Audio capability like this helps us equally to bring hefty savings to smaller audio/video budgets because of savings in reduces post production time . Lastly, miniaturization means we can travel light and set up at locations rapidly for further savings.
Browse our knowledgebase to find out more about the technologies we use.
For advice about how to make technology save costs for your productions, please contact us.
