Fairlight Tips & Hints #3

Using The Fairlight On
The Dubbing Stage

by Andy Somers

Since the Fairlight MFX2 was introduced many years ago, many people have been playing back their projects directly from a Fairlight on the dub stage. This has a number of advantages:

1) There's no need for laybacks to 6-track, 2" or DA88, with the resultant savings of time and stock.

2) Because the Fairlight locks up so quickly, and locks in both forward and reverse, it has a significant advantage over 2" and especially DA88 (at least from the mixer's point of view).

3) You can make changes on the spot, at the whim of the mixer/director/that guy in the suit and play them back immediately.

Of course, there's the disadvantage that when you're making a change, you can't be locked to the stage playing back, and when you're locked to the stage, you lose the power of the system as an ed-itorial device, as it's performing the simple and mundane task of playback.

Fortunately, more and more dub stages in town are now equipped with Fairlight's D.A.D., which stands for Digital Audio Dubber. It's nothing more than an inexpensive playback device, capable of playing 24 tracks per unit (multiple units can be linked together for a maximum of 576 tracks per controller). Like it's big brother, the MFX3, the D.A.D. allows you to playback 24 tracks from one hard drive. You can also slip individual tracks, lock to the stage in forward and reverse, and playback any Fairlight MFX project, or a converted OMF2 project from another workstation.

Having said that, let's talk about what you need to do to make your D.A.D. experience a productive one.

Preparing For DAD Playback

While the D.A.D. will playback any MFX project, there are a few important considerations. First, the hard drive you insert into the D.A.D. must be formatted on MFX3 version 13.x.x or 14.x.x software. Version 11.x.x and 12.x.x software uses an older drive format (MDRDOS) which the D.A.D. cannot read directly. As a result, you need to prepare your project for the D.A.D. on a rev13 or later MFX3.

Second, since the D.A.D. plays all 24 tracks of a project from a single hard drive, you'll need to make sure that all the sound files your project needs are on that drive. If your project has no borrowed sound files whatsoever, then simply place this project on the drive and go to the last step, below.

If, on the other hand your project does have borrowed audio, you'll want to make sure that the other projects that audio is borrowed from reside on the same drive. The easy way to do this is to use the BACKUP command (under BLUE B/UP) to copy the project to the D.A.D. drive. When you select the project using BACKUP, ALL the other projects that are needed are automatically selected and copied over as well. Alternately (and this is the recommended method), you can consolidate all of the audio into your project using the KEEP BORROWED command under the BLUE SPACE menu.

Finally, you need to make a "dubber language" file on the hard drive you're going to place in the D.A.D. To do this, simply open the project on the D.A.D. hard drive, and type: MDL in the command line at the top of the screen, then press <return> (not <enter>).This creates the "dubber language file" which the D.A.D. needs in order to read the audio correctly from the drive. Now all that's left is to place the drive in the D.A.D. and playback the project.

Making Changes On The Stage

I'm going to assume that if you're playing back from a D.A.D. you'll have an MFX3 on the stage to make changes with. To facilitate this, you want to have available to you an identical clone of the project on both the hard drive in the D.A.D. and the MFX3 workstation. To "clone" a project onto another drive, you must use the BACKUP/RESTORE command and not the COPY command that's in the PROJect menu.

As an example, let's say we have a project called REELONE.MT. Do a drive-to-drive backup from your MFX3 drive to the D.A.D. drive. Now, when you need to make a change, make an extension.

To do this, open REELONE.MT and then press EXTEND under the PROJect menu, calling the extension something like REELONE UPDATE. Make all your changes in this "update" project.

When you're done, all you need to do is copy REELONE UPDATE.MT to the D.A.D. hard drive, then open REELONE UPDATE on the D.A.D. drive, type MDL <return> and put the drive back in the D.A.D. By using this method, you won't have to move any of the original audio files back onto the D.A.D. (they're in the REELONE.MT project, already on the D.A.D. drive). Thus, you can work on a project while it's dubbing, and update the D.A.D. quickly by just copying a very small update file to it.

That's all I have room for this time. I touched on a few aspects of file management. In the next issue, I'll present a more in-depth look at handling files in the Fairlight.

As always, if you have any questions you'd like me to address in this column, send me e-mail. Also, this article is available at my website.

All for now, happy cutting!