u/wtfisrobin

This question referred here by r/Filmmakers

I saw some BTS where documentarian Frederick Wiseman was recording his on-location audio with a small handheld parabolic mic on a pistol grip, rather than his usual go-to boom pole.

I'm filming a couple of documentaries right now, and am wondering if I should work a parabolic mic into my kit as well...

In what sort of shooting situations would a parabolic mic be the best tool for the job, over a boom mic or a lav setup?

I want to understand more about how codecs work under the hood.

It's pretty well documented (see every youtuber's review of the camera ever, every reddit comment about the camera, old forum threads) that despite having very thin files on paper, the Canon C100 can stand up to color grading and contrast adjustments better than expected.

Obviously it still breaks eventually, and obviously it's not like it's as flexible as 10-bit 422 or Raw, but compared to the 5D Mark II's 38mpbs 8bit 420, or 8bit camcorder footage, it blows it out of the water. My 5Dii footage breaks with very slight contrast adjustments, but not so with the C100; there's a lot more room to wiggle. Same as compared to my JVC GZ-HD7 (8bit, 4:2:0, 27mbps). Both of these codecs are "better" on paper but are not actually better files to grade at all.

How? What more is going on under the hood of a codec than Bit Rate, Bit Depth, and Chroma Subsampling that allows for this? How can a tiny, thin file like that be so performant under stress where others fall short?

So for background: I swear I am a competent musician lol! I have been using Ableton as my daily driver since Ableton 7, and before that FruityLoops for years, and for college, where I went for music, I had to use Logic and ProTools and Reaper. I understand that kind of DAW inside and out.

I literally am a professional working musician, I primarily do film scores. I'm doing a documentary for HBO Max right now. But i've never used a Tracker style program in my life. And it looks SO cool. and I see the stuff you guys are doing in here, and I hear your preaching about how great the workflow is, and I BELIEVE YOU! I want IN! It looks so cool, it looks fast, it looks nimble, and it looks like you can legitimately do some things you can't do any other way, and that intrigues the hell out of me.

for literal YEARS i've been lurking this sub. I've bought renoise like 3 different times across different machines over the years. i keep going back to Renoise like every 8-10 months and being like "okay, i'm gonna crack it this time, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna figure this out" and then I fall flat on my face, can't figure out how to make anything, spend like 4 hours trying to make one drum loop, can't figure out how to make a melody, where tf are my VSTs, how do i do a CHORD??? and eventually after 3 days I'm like "ok I can't be spending this much time not making anything, I have deadlines to hit" and i'm back in Ableton.

I need like the BEST 101 starter resource that can take a hopelessly Linear DAW-pilled man like me and make him a TrackerMan. I will pay money, It doesn't need to be free. Although if the best one is legitimately a free one, I will take it.

War Planets/Shadow Raiders is my favorite and I am beyond thrilled to see them post this.