Studio Design

[paulears]

I think I do feel a little 'cheated' and some contributers took a lot longer to do their posts than me!

 

The premise was we needed to design a studio within a budget that most thought rather too slim. We come up with quite a few ideas, many from peoples previous experience of doing just this kind of thing. Then, it is revealed as a paperwork student piece of work - I think dissertation is not something that could be applied to a last minute piece of work, despite the heath circumstances that couldn't be helped. If this is a year 1 or 2 uni project, it's forgivable, as a final year piece, it isn't. No depth of knowledge to draw on, no verifiable research base - I mean, we could be anyone, couldn't we?

 

So my beef is that I feel like I've been used a bit - we thought it was a real project, not pretend.

 

"Sorry for the confusion this is a solely paper based design project. I expressed a desire to do something to do with Studio Design for my dissertation.."

 

Surely for a dissertion you should choose a subject you know something about, have real knowledge and therefore can produce something of substance. To produce a valid conclusion you need to be able to look through the kit list as was posted by members here and justify each item, analyse it and suggest alternatives based on your knowledge, experience and ability.

 

What I see is that we had our brains picked and will have our comments presented as fact. If your assessors are on the ball they may well spot some critical issues that you won't have considered at all and suss you out. Worrying stuff.

 

I'm sure you'll tell us this is just background and is only to support data you already have and you won't submit any of it without either proper citation (and that's difficulton an internet forum where you don't know who people are).

 

Sorry for the moan, but it would have been nice to know the score from the top - we would still have helped.

paul

[James]

Well I had no prior experience of television broadcasting before I went to university. I worked in IT Support for 4 years beforehand which gave me quite good technical knowledge and I think helps in trying to become familiar with technical equipment etc. As for experience during university it's only really been with basic camerawork and working with the Avid Edit Suite I've also done a bit of work with the universitys Lighting Desk. Not much I know! I think this is the point of the studio to give students experience of working with this equipment too late for me unfortunately!

 

Chris

 

 

OK Chris,

 

So you have very limited broadcast knowlege,

 

Have you considered forgetting about the live studio work and sugesting putting a proposal together focused on what you know and what can be achievable.

 

Leave the studio as a blank space, You have some small lights, some basic stands, a few backdrops, softlights perhaps a blonde or two and some flags and stands would round that off.

 

Without the need to do live studio work you don't need vision mixers or anything,

 

Then you only have post production to think about. Post is increasingly IT based where you have more experience. Can you fudge this assignment towards where you knowlege is?

 

We make extensive use of AVID shared storage solutions, Perhaps you could explore the virtues of shared storage using open storage formats? Perhaps looking into MXF media? Perhaps a way of bringing in video captured via a third party SDI card, logged via a media manager database, available through a web interface?

 

I'm struggling to think of how you could adapt this into your paper project but it seems a lot more likely that you would be able to make something of this?

 

Does this make sense?

 

James

[uk_student]

Edited

[James]

So have you had any help at all from anyone from the BBC? (It's a big place I understand)

 

James

[Bobbsy]

I was going to stay quiet, but after reading UK_Student's last post, I feel cheated too. The first post in this thread read:

 

I am currently working on my final year project but am having a few difficulties and was hoping there may be people here who can offer some advice.

 

Basically my university is trying to arrange the building of a small studio this would be a bookable facility students can use to make and edit small video productions and maybe even allow for the recording of live music etc. I chose my project to try and come up with a design for this small studio.

 

I currently have problems however gathering up to date information on industry standard equipment etc. The library at the university doesnt currently stock many up to date books regarding this subject and the internet doesnt seem to be a reliable source of information on this subject so was hoping there may be someone able to offer some advice on this subject?

 

Without doubt this implies that this was a real project, not just a paper exercise. Later posts added verisimilitude to this by defining an actual budget and even listing some existing equipment that they wanted to incorporate.

 

Now, there's nothing wrong with asking for support for a term paper rather than a real project, but I do think it was wrong to lead people down the garden path by implying a genuine build. This also resulted in quite a few "blind alleys" in terms of the problems and priorities included in replies.

 

As for the size of the budget, a great many educational establishments in this country have near or full broadcast facilties costing many times this for use in their media departments. There's nothing unusual about the number at all.

 

Sorry, but I think perhaps you owe this board an apology for misleading everyone.

 

Edited to add: Regarding the issue of information on sound proofing and acoustic treatment, part of you problem may be that you're approaching the wrong people. Even withing large organisations, acoustics are often farmed out to specialist consultants such as Sandy Brown Associates. There was recently a thread in here were a number of such consultants were named. I don't know if they'd be willing to talk to you since that's how they earn their living, but I try that avenue. Although not a specialist, I CAN tell you that sound proofing is not achieved by sticking something on a wall. It's done by building works that add mass and isolation. The stick on the wall stuff is to control the acoustics INSIDE the studio, not to control sounds getting in from outside.

 

Bob

[Simon Lewis]

OK....

 

Having supervised many similar final year projects, I share the sentiments of several on this board. Requests for help should be clear and unambiguous, and - importantly - responses to such requests should not form the "meat and gravy" of a technical report (if this is the type of project being undertaken).

 

However, here is a starter list of some resources that are peer reviewed, academic and eminently citable.

 

Master Handbook of Acoustics

F Alton Everest

 

Recording studio design

Philip Newell

 

Handbook for sound engineers : the new audio cyclopedia

Glen Ballou (editor)

 

Acoustics and noise control

B.J. Smith, R.J. Peters, Stephanie Owen

 

Acoustics in the built environment : advice for the design team

Duncan Templeton (editor)

 

 

My apologies if you've already read these, but this is where you will get the basic acoustical information from. From there, I'd suggest looking at AES and IOA papers.

 

Hope you have a enjoyable time with your project!

 

Simon Lewis

[paulears]

Actually, I did have a chuckle when you wondered how daft the university would be to hand £70 grand to a student?

 

If you read some of the threads on the Blue Room, you'll find under 16's given massive budgets and left alone entirely to project manage and install the whole thing on their own, or with a team of people working for them.

 

Turning back to the project.

 

For the purposes of your project - if it's paper based and there is no financial implication to getting it a bit wrong - then why not 'remove' from the project altogether things that you aren't secure with - these then become a separate element, referred to - but not actually dealt with.

 

Maybe I'd go with the budget as a problem. work out three versions, from near-broadcast, to just above domestic - setting out what the advantages and disadvantages of each level actually are. You could then attempt to justify what extra features give which particular benefit at what cost. Probably more useful, and would have more substance as the reader would be able to see where funding goes - and if the benefit may be worth it.

 

I did one a couple of years ago where the client kept talking broadcast, and didn't bat an eyelid at some of the costs involved. Only at a very late meeting was the entire project revealed as a web cast product - never ever being 25fps, full screen. Instant savings, all over the place

[uk_student]

Edited

[tonymaslen]

for up to date kit and people try

 

http://www.mandy.com yes I know it sounds really bad but its an actual industry web site for TV based bits and bobs very useful....

 

 

 

also try http://broadcastengineering.com/ very good TV broadcast based site....

 

take care

 

T

[uk_student]

Edited

[paulears]

forget the chroma key curtain - far too small - if you need to chromakey, then have a full width cloth, like the others - far more useful. If budget is really tight, then plaster the end wall and paint this chromakey green (assuming you are going DV) Floor tiles? Don't. If you are planning on running cameras on the floor it has to be 1 piece - Harlequin studio is my favorite, having used it on 4 projects so far - if you can't run to that then industrial vinyl would be better - often has horrible grey swishy patterns, rather than solid colour, but ok-ish.

 

7m width ok - reducing it for storage - daft! if you have to have it, cut down the size of the control room window and put it on that wall - you need as much studio working floor area as you can - running the cloths round those sharp angles to cover them will look very odd and not be that usable.

 

I'd guess and say that the big window will let quite a lot of outside sound in, and you don't have the budget to sort it - but this may not be as bad as it sounds as if you are using personal mics, close in, then this does allow a bit more background noise to be coped with. With the drapes, the audio may be reasoable - but probably a bit boxy - what is the ceiling like? hard floor - hard ceiling parallel - anything you can do there?

[Bobbsy]

In terms of an acoustic consultant, I've used Sandy Brown Associates ( http://www.sandybrown.com/pages/home.php ) on several projects and they're amongst the best in the business. I don't know if they'd cooperate on a student project or not but you can only ask.

 

In terms of the rest, I agree with everything Paulears says, with a few comments:

 

If money is tight (ha ha), you can do totally without a window to the control room. Although a nice security blanket they're far from necessary, and experience says you spend half your time closing blinds because of reflections on monitors from studio lights anyway. I'd say your money would be better spent on some form of secondary glazing for the exterior windows to help control that sound.

 

Another option you might try for the floor would be a self levelling epoxy coating. There are various suppliers, but one is at: http://www.creationflooring.co.uk/?gclid=C...CFUpTEAodmTRRgQ . They just roll up, mix two chemical, spread the muck on the floor, and twenty four hours later you have a shiny, smooth totally level surface that will also take stick down rolls of removable vinyl for the typical "gloss black" or "gloss white" look.

 

Bob

[uk_student]

Edited

[uk_student]

Edited

[James]

Chris

 

How many/what tracks do you want to record?

 

Why do you need 3 Digi 002s?

 

What is wrong with sound editing within avid?

 

You have 2 offline systems, what version of avid are you talking about and what will be your online format??

 

James