'Night After Night' doco - very disappointed

[Dave Homewood]

I have been looking forward for months to seeing this documentary, ever since my mate Ron Noice told me he had been interviewed to appear in it.

Unfortunately when I recorded it yesterday off TV while I was out it seems that 1) It statred early and despite allowing a couple of extra minutes before the advertised time on the timer, the beginning was still missed.

Worse than that, the sound is stuffed. The sound seems to pulse in and out and is unlistenable. It seems to do this for a fair way in (not watched it all, but I fastforwarded to the end to see if the next item recorded did the same, thus being a problem with the machine, but the end of the doco and the next item are fine. So, was this a broadcast problem?

If so, what a shame. The lady Jennifer who made the documentary apparently has worked on it for a long time and gone to extreme lengths, and I'd hate to think maybe the entire broadcast across NZ was ruined and people switched off.

I will have to see if I can borrow a copy from Ron as I think he has a preview copy. It's a shame as it looks like it was a superb doco.

[stu]

Apr 26, 2008 20:25:57 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Worse than that, the sound is stuffed. The sound seems to pulse in and out and is unlistenable. It seems to do this for a fair way in (not watched it all, but I fastforwarded to the end to see if the next item recorded did the same, thus being a problem with the machine, but the end of the doco and the next item are fine. So, was this a broadcast problem?

This caught my attention for purely professional reasons. What channel was this on?

The pulsing sounds like it could be several things I've come across in the past and I'd wager that it was caused by a fault in the transfer from the master to the transmission copy or ingest into a disk based system or a transmission/transmitter fault. Unless production standards have slipped much more than I imagine, I doubt very much that the original master would be produced with such a glaring error.

A very common problem is if the vocal component of the soundtrack was drifting in and out while the background fx stayed reasonably constant but became a bit thinner (lost bass response) then it could be a phasing issue that may also be introduced due to a fault in the broadcaster's presentation suite (the control room that puts stuff to air).

A prime example of my never ending plea at work ... "don't these b****y people ever listen to things or is the fact that the meters are wiggling good enough?!"

Cheers,
Stu.

p.s. assuming you're using vhs, there is also a possibility that there was a manufacturing fault with your tape for the first "x" length of tape or a slight audio head clog which cleared itself over time .... if you've ruled these out please tell me to go suck eggs ;D

[Dave Homewood]

It was on Maori Television. It seemed to be all the sound pulsing in and out.

Also the sound was ine on the first thing I taped, but the second the next recording began it is rubbish. Could that have been a VHS head clog?