Take Five Productions records legal hearing
Published: MEA
UAE: Live recording specialist Take Five Productions recently recorded and edited the proceedings of a legal hearing at a meeting room in the Four Points Sheraton hotel in Dubai. The main requirement was for a fault-free high-quality sound recording for later transcription into text.
To ensure the entirety of the audio was successfully captured, Take Five Production’s director and head of sound engineering Trevor Cronin used an ‘uninterruptable’ power supply in combination with the fail-safe nature of the batteries in the laptop computers used. As an added security, two separate hard disk recording systems were supplied.
An RME fireface 400 fire-wire recording interface supplied the audio inputs. This was chosen because it can be powered via a fire-wire bus or with an external power supply. The onboard fireface monitor mixer settings were stored in the unit’s flash ram in case the host computer malfunctioned, meaning that the unit would transfer audio to a backup recording system.
The room was setup in a U shape to facilitate the discussion. The three parties consisted of a panel of three judges and two opposing legal teams, with expert witnesses and company directors from each side – making a total of 20 people. Seven inputs were used with six Shure MX 412 condenser microphones positioned on the delegate’s tables. The seventh input was a centrally located Sony C48 large diaphragm condenser microphone set to a figure of eight pattern used for capturing ‘off mic’ conversations.
The following day the five and a half hours worth of audio was edited at Take Five Productions studio facility. This consisted of high pass filtering and muting of unused sections, level adjustments and loudness mastering. The material was transferred into an MP3 file format ready for the law firm’s London transcription centre.