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I have to make a live recording with a jazz band, and my question is: can I record without stop the 2 hours long concert??? or I have to stop at the end of each song??? how long can I record at time???

Sure you can keep recording as long as you hard drive has a room for it.
You have to calculate how many inputs, 24 or 16 bit and sample rate you're planing to use.
16 bit of 44.1kHz in stereo is about 10.2 MB and 24 bit is about 15.2 MB.

You can record non stop for as long as you want based on available disc space.

Or until the computer freezes...

You definitely want to stop every song or 3 and save. Bands always stop to tune, drink, drink, forget to tune, drink...

In other words, take any opportunity to stop the record pass and save that you can. Just hit record again quick as you can.

With any live situation, best of luck...

I would turn off "Analyze Soundbite as soon as possible" when you hit stop in between, just to make sure no background tasks are running while recording.

I do live recording all the time. How many channles are you recording? 2? 24? You can let it run for as long as your setup can handle. You'll need your buffer settings to be appropriate. You might not need to hit stop/save but it wont hurt, unless they start before you do. If your worried about your setup do a test run at home an let it run for a couple hours to fine tune your rig. what you'll be looking for is erratic buffers and erratic counter to know your setup s stressing. Ht me up f you need more help. Have fun. Remote work is a nice challenge.

I beleave I need between 15 to 20 channels. Can you tell me about buffers and counters???

What I'm saying is that once your system starts to stress the tell-tale signs are the counter not scrolling smoothly and the buffer meter acting up. You definitly want to run a test session @ 24bit for a couple hours to make sure your setup can handle it. Or to tweak your system to make sure it can. What drive are you recording onto?

Hm. I think there is a limit with DP over the 2 hour limit or so. They may have corrected this or it may be a limitation of SDII.

I designed my studio around live recording and it works great. I can record 24 tracks at 44.1/24 bit so far up to 3.5 hours straight without a problem. I am running dp 4.5 on a dual 1 gig g4 with 1.5 gig of ram. I also use maxtor one touch 7200rpm firewire drives from best buy belive it or not. I always do a record test before the gig, which involves recording 24 tracks of tone, silence, whatever for several hours straight just to be sure. (I have tested 32 tracks sucessfully) Also, I always max out my buffer size when I record live. My 3-4 year old computer has never had a problem doing this!!!!

Hm. I think there is a limit with DP over the 2 hour limit or so. They may have corrected this or it may be a limitation of SDII.

Nope I've definitly recorded well over that. Audiodesk has a crappy session size limit but I have found no limit for session size nor track length in DP3 or DP4.

The few live shows I've done, I let the band know before hand, for safety sake, we need to stop every few songs and save.
I arrange a cue with them so they know when tracks are rolling.
The only problem I ever had was back at the studio during editing. A 2+ hours long project can get messy if you aren't used to such long projects. Also careful when deleting soundbites.
Another option is to record to ADAT and dump the audio in the studio.

I would like to see DP come out with a "save as you go" feature that would allow you to save during record without stopping.
Al

I would definitely consider having some sort of back-up recorder. Maybe an ADAT?

Depending on the type of show it is, many (most?) jazz bands do not play for more than an hour without taking a break of 15-20 minutes. If you have an external hard drive available, you might be able to take that break time to offload your first set, which would free up a lot of disc space for the next set.


Lindy

Hi lindymack, your aproach is not a bad idea.
Anyway if the system crash in the middle of a session, is nothing I can do.

Anyway if the system crash in the middle of a session, is nothing I can do.

I guess you could try a disk repair file recovery type software to scan your harddisk. Did this happen or are you just preparing? If your worried about your performance I reccomend recording at 16bit for this show. Have you run a test yet? That will really help you trouble shoot in advance. Nothing is worse than losing the recording mid show. Well I guess losing it after you get home would be that much worse.

The advise to do a test recording is imperative.
Always add more tracks than you need to confirm it will work.

Keep the bit rate at 24 bit and try 48K SR first. If this fails try again at 44.1.

If this fails try the exact number of tracks you need.

As I recall 24 tracks 48K 24 bit is around 3GB for 8 minutes. if your doing sets you likely will need more disk space than a standard 5 minute song for handles.

Use a fast drive.

I label each song in a project the first song being one (1) and make a template. Label the following songs (2) and soforth as a new project with the same template.

I would not use chunks because if you get a crash you bring down all the songs as I understand but others could clarify this.

If you can afford a portable time code generator and feed it into a track you could also have a time stamp for multimedia needs. If using one set it to exact time of day drop frame.

My .02c

Good luck