So how many of you out there have run ISDN sessions? Recording a Voice over remotely? Streaming the talent from one city to another with an ISDN box at both ends?
Its dead technology. Read more below after enjoying this instructional video about voice over recordings:
In case you hadn’t heard, there’s this thing called the “inter-ma-web” and it connects lots of places too, so the smart coders over at Source Elements created a plugin for Pro Tools called Source Connect. It allows a CD quality stream of audio (and TC!) to be pass 2 ways between two PT rigs connected by decent broadband connections. By decent, I used to have it running on a 256k out and 1500k in ADSL connection and it worked great, with a 300ms delay, which for a VO is bearable.
Sournce Connect was susceptible to drop outs depending on your internet connection, so they have developed a new caching technology (with SC 3.x) to go back after the recording and fill in the gaps with Auto-Restore and Auto-replace functions! Well cool!
They also have a plugin for one way communication that would be handy for quick approvals with multiple parties. Its called Source-Live and it sets up a stream from your PT rig (from an Aux out to the plugin) so that anything you play in the studio can be heard by the email recipients who connected to your stream with windows media player or itunes!
I’m hoping to get an interview with Rebecca from Source Elements in the near future and she can talk us through their various SW with a demo.
A second piece of technology that works very well with Source Connect is Digidelivery. DD for short. DD allows the owner of the box (its a rack mounted server) to send large media packages over their outband internet connection as simply as email. Its integrated into PT and Avid Media composer directly from the file menu, so you can simply DD a PT session and it comes up with the dialogue box similar to a Session session copy as – ie would you like to include media, videos files, etc as tick boxes.
These systems have been used together for remote VO records, where source Connect allows for the director/producer to give the talent feedback on their recording from somewhere else, and at the end of the session, the local PT session recording is delivered to them uncompressed via DD. Tidy workflow!
Nice one Brent!
I have recently tried it out and it is really awesome. I guess it’s just a matter of time for the ‘take up’ to eliminate the need for ISDN, which I’ve never really liked the sound of (CDQ and Prima).
Of note also is esession’s ‘Virtual Glass’ (http://www.esession.com/home/index.php).. check it out, which is currently free but has a slightly different target market and marketing model. (it also does not have the unique restore feature).
Cheers,
Matt
True, but believe it or not there are still studios that don’t use ProTools so ISDN is still a necessity.
Hi JHinton,
Just as an aside – Source connect “Started life as a pro tools plugin” but is now available in VST and AU also. So assuming they have SOME sort of software DAW they should be able to connect to you for two way communication.
I work in a studio over in europe. We actually use both ISDN and Source-Connect! I dont know how much time you spend using this plug-in, but we have seen major problems as the correct setup to use source-connect is pretty hard to achieve. Well we brought in a LAN-Technician to do it, but Ive worked with several studios around the world that had problems with that! So ive heard a lot of artifacts and black-outs…
Im not saying that I dont like source-connect – in fact it makes my work a lot easier – but as long as you need special skills to set it up better stay skilled in using ISDN…
Sorry for my english…
regards, erik
PS: Great site Brent!
Hi Erik,
I just wanted to mention that I’ve had no issues with regard to network setup… Worked a treat. I made sure I had the correct UDP forwarded to my main workstation however.
In my earlier message, I’d mentioned I tried it, well I have bought it now and I am extremely happy with its performance so far… Sounds a lot better than the codecs I had been using.
Hi Mattrixx,
maybe we had this problems because we bought the first avialable version of source-connect (something like a year ago). As we did the setup then with a LAN-trechnician, and had no issues since, I havent checked the setup. So maybe source-elements made the setup easier with newer versions…
regards erik
PS: Have you ever used the remote transport sync?
No. ISDN is NOT dead. For music and VO perhaps but not for broadcast.
All the live radio broadcast interviews booked through our facility are via ISDN. NPR, BBC, CBC, some of the major PBS stations, and more have only ever requested ISDN of us.
Now, would I like that to change? Absolutely!!