In my post about the new Dolby E plug-ins I asked if anyone had had any experience of using them.
Miguel Torres from Spain has very kindly emailed me with his experiences and I share it with you all with his permission…
We have hard tried Minnetonka and Neyrinck plug-ins on PT 7.4, 10.4.11 and HD3 system.Controls, 8 track encoding and decoding its 2 tracks works are perfect for us, but when inserting Dolby E into a dbtc tape, we have to hear a decoded return, to hear what we are sending to our clients.
We haven´t been able to AES/EBU real time monitor for QC. Pro Tools AES/EBU aux track with plug-in return from tape decoding a Dolby E signal (not with Neyrinck or Minnetonka). Have you?
When a clients send a Dolby E tape, you have to record it into a Pro Tools stereo track.
Both plug-ins are based on a “select stereo file” system to decode, but mono tracks are not admitted (neither stereo interleaved or 2 mono files). Have you found this problem too ?
Have you found a Tape QC monitoring work flow or record a Dolby E signal and decode it in Pro Tools ?
Glad to feedback with other pros.
Very best regards.
Miguel Torres
Tech Manager
SONYGRAF DIGITSOUND
Thanks Miguel for this. As yet haven’t personally got involved in Dolby E so cannot answer any of Miguel’s questions. Over to you….
Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.show me less content in the footer
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March 19, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Neyrinck SoundCode For Dolby E is designed to do realtime monitoring of Dolby E from a video tape and many people have tried it successfully and found it easy to use. However, in any Dolby E system, you do have to carefully set up the system to not alter the bitstream. Any alteration from sample rate conversion, gain change, dither, or clock mismatch will make a Dolby E stream unusable. Follow these steps to monitor a Dolby E stream in realtime:1. create a stereo aux track2. connect the stereo input from the video deck using an AES interface3. insert a RTAS Neyrinck SoundCode Broadcast Monitor (stereo-to-5.1) plug-in on the track.4. connect the track output to a 5.1 interface for listening5. Set the Broadcast Monitor “source” control to “track stream.”Now you can listen to the decoded Dolby E played back from the video deck. If it is not working, then you have to isolate where the problem is. The first thing to take out of the system is the video deck. You can use the AudioSuite Broadcast Encoder plug-in to encode a short Dolby E stream and import the stereo wave file into a Pro Tools track. Then play that track out an AES interface and connect it straight back in to the monitoring track. Once that is working, then you can go back to using the video deck and isolate any problems with it. It is very important to go through the video deck settings and make sure it is set for “digital mode” with no gain change, sample rate conversion, and a proper AES connection.I will contact Miguel and see if I can help isolate the problem in their system.Paul
March 19, 2009 at 10:42 pm
This is from Steve Clarke at Minnetonka…Miguel will be pleased to learn that we have an incremental upgrade coming that will have several new features including further integration into tape-based workflow.The SurCode for Dolby Decoder can decode Dolby E streams from your Pro Tools timeline or from a live AES/EBU input feed from your deck.Also, you can lay back to tape while using SurCode for Dolby E Decoder as a live input confidence monitor for real time Dolby E decoding.We have successfully tested it in the lab and will make this feature available as a free upgrade to all current SurCode for Dolby E users the first week of April.