45 Sound Blog

Were are very pleased to announce that Lethal Dialect's headline show in the Workman's Club in Dublin this Saturday May 26th will be on 45 Sound:

https://45sound.com/shows/151-lethal-dialect-the-workman-s-club-dublin-26-...

Recently featured by MTV Iggy and one of the State.ie Faces of 2012, this should be a great show from the Cabra-born Blanchardstown MC.

Tickets are €12 and are available from Ticketmaster.ie

Here's a video from his recent Camden Crawl Dublin show on 45 Sound:

 

 

 

 

Right now we're working hard finishing our first 45 Sound Uploader apps for iPhone and Android. These will make it easy for fans to shoot their  live music videos and upload them directly to the correct show from their smartphones. However while video quality improves with each new generation of phones, their small sensors can't yet match the video quality of the increasingly popular DSLR cameras.

The first DSLR camera to shoot great quality 1080p high definition video was the Canon 5D MkII, released in 2008. Since then Canon have added the cheaper 7D, 550D/T2i, 60D, 600D/T3i and recently launched the new 5D MkIII to replace their MkII. Other DSLR cameras which shoot great video include the Panasonic GH1 & GH2 and the Nikon D800.

These cameras are small and light enough to take to a show and film the action from the thick of the crowd, and with a little practise they can shoot excellent video footage even in low-light conditions. 

Here's a good example of a DSLR fan video of playing at the Vantastival festival just outside Dundalk, Ireland a few weeks ago. 

And another good one from 's Camden Crawl Dublin set in the Button Factory last weekend.

 

Here are some tips for shooting great DSLR videos of a 45 Sound show:

- Start a new video for each song. Many DSLR cameras can only film continuously for 12-13 minutes, so if you don't stop you could run out mid-song.

- Use a 16GB or 32GB memory card. 1080p HD DSLR video files get very large very quickly. The Canons take up around 1GB of storage for every 3 minutes of video.for example.

- Keep it simple! If you try to move too much when shooting with a DSLR, the resulting video can be very shaky and difficult to watch. Instead just frame-up the artist(s) correctly and hold your camera steady for the full song. Any camera movements should be smooth and steady (doing this well takes practice though!!).

 

Finally let's talk about uploading your DSLR video files to 45 Sound after the show. Unless you have a very fast Internet connection, we recommend you run your files through MPEG Streamclip to make them smaller before uploading. The videos will lose some of their image quality when they are pushed up to YouTube anyway, so you can save some uploading time by reducing the file sizes beforehand. We also have a file size limit of 2GB on 45 Sound, and the video file size of a longer song can easily exceed this.

MPEG Streamclip for both Mac & Windows can be downloaded for free from  http://www.squared5.com/

Reducing the video file sizes with MPEG Streamclip can take some time, but you can select multiple videos and it will work it's way through your list. Have a look at this video for the steps you need to follow:

And here are the recommended settings for converting Canon DSLR .MOV files for faster uploading to 45 Sound:

- Export to Quicktime

- h264 Compression

- Limit Data Rate to 8000 Kbps (NB this is the key setting which reduces your file sizes)

- MPEG-4 AAC Sound, Stereo @ 256kbps

- Make sure the frame rate is the same as your camera setting and that 'Interlaced Scaling' is NOT selected

- When you have your settings right, click on 'Presets...' to save them for next time.

 

I think that's enough DSLR video information for now. We'll have more blog posts on what lenses, camera settings and filming techniques to use over the next while.  

If you have any questions, observations or other topics that you'd like to see covered in future 45 Sound blogs, please let us know in the comments below!

Cathal

45 Sound

 

 

 

Well it's been a busy 2012 so far for the 45 Sound team. This is an idea which was floating around in my head one year ago, the team came together for the first time six months ago, and we finally had our website ready for a soft launch on February 1st.

Let me fill you in on a little secret... We have been testing our technology with sample videos since our prototype came to life just in time for the Hard Working Class Heroes festival here in Dublin last October. Since then we have uploaded hundreds of test videos to our website while we worked hard at making it better for you people. Here's the funny thing - every time we see a new video has been uploaded to 45sound.com and is being processed by our servers, we can't wait to watch and listen to how it turned out. We're still thrilled every single time our baby works it's magic and turns out great-sounding fan-shot videos.

We won't be officially launching 45 Sound until March 14th at SXSW so we're taking things slowly until then, but it has still been amazing for us to see the videos starting to go up on the site and music fans around the world enjoying them. We only have a small number of shows up on the site at the moment, but we have already got some really cool videos. Here are a few of them I thought you might enjoy!

 

And So I Watch You From Afar 

Their second album 'Gangs' has been nominated for the Meteor Choice Music Award for Best Irish Album 2011, they just won Best Irish Act at the 2011 Irish Festival Awards and Best Live Band at the Northern Irish Music Awards 2011, and they're also my personal favorite band. When these guys announced a few months back that they were off to tour Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in February 2012, we knew that would be the deadline for our soft launch. And after some very long days and nights of fixing, changing and testing our system, we just about made it! After the band had played their first show of the tour in Moscow on February 2nd, it was an incredible feeling to be sitting 3,000km away in 45 Sound HQ in Dublin and see the fan videos from it going up on the site. 

Here's a fan favourite from that night, 'Set Guitars To Kill'

The next night And So I Watch You From Afar played Club Arktika in St. Petersburg. I think this fan video is a perfect example of why we think we're doing something pretty damn cool with 45 Sound. It's filmed from the middle of the crowd and captures the raw energy of ASIWYFA's live show, but with perfect and consistent audio that's great to listen to.

 

Kíla

On a calm but cold Dublin night just two day's before Christmas, Kíla played the first ever show under the amazing new roof canopy in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar. Kíla's music is a captivating blend of Irish traditonal and many other musical styles from around the world, and their loyal fans pay homage to them each year at their legendary Christmas shows. Watch, listen and enjoy!  

 

 

Le Galaxie

First Fortnight is an Irish arts-based mental health awareness festival which takes place in the first two weeks of every year. It's a great idea run by a voluntary committee of wonderful people and a festival 45 Sound hope to lend our support to when it comes around again in January 2013. To close their 2012 festival, First Fortnight put together a great night of live music on Saturday January 14th in the heart of Dublin. The Button Factory was filled to capacity and the final set of the night was from synth & guitar warlords Le Galaxie. This is the same band that played one of the best sets of the 2010 Electric Picnic festival despite being on-stage at 1.30pm, so unsurprisingly they made the most of their 1am slot this time... 

This first video was filmed from the front of the crowd with a Canon DSLR camera. The stage was quite dark and backlit, so parts of this one seem a bit more like an artistic piece than a live music video. I think the driving beat and synth melodies make it work really well though, a good example of how fans can use 45 Sound to make creative and unusual videos. 

 

And the final video of this highlights roundup is Le Galaxie playing 'You Feel The Fire', the same song as the second half of the first Le Galaxie video, except this time filmed from the stage by talented music photographer Kieran Frost. It compliments the first video nicely I think. Kieran is well-known in the Irish music scene for his great concert photos, so hopefully he'll be uploading a few more videos from on & around the stage to 45sound.com before long!

 

That's all we have for you right now, but with the great shows we have lined up I'll be back soon with another installment of highlights. Until then keep an eye out for more blog posts, we have many stories to tell you...

Cathal

CEO 45 Sound 

Here's a few snaps of us working hard on page designs last Friday evening. We've probably said this already, but Dogpatch Labs Europe is a very pleasant place to work!

We tested 45Sound for the first time at the Hard Working Class Heroes music festival here in Dublin at the beginning of October 2011. Our technology worked perfectly for all the fan-uploads from a memorable festival, but a tight deadline and the usual last-minute issues meant our site looked VERY basic!

Having listened to great reaction and feedback we received at #HWCH11, we sat down together as a team and planned out a decent-looking website for the service. After a lot of hard work and scratching of heads, we are delighted to be rolling out the first proper version of 45Sound.com in time for what promises to be a very memorable show from Kíla in Temple Bar, Dublin tonight.

As you can see from the photo above (taken just now), in true Team 45Sound style we are making changes and fixing bugs here in 45Sound HQ in Dogpatch Labs Europe up until the very last minute. Today's website roll-out and tonight's Kíla show are big steps forward for us on the cusp of what we hope will be a very big 2012 for 45Sound. Our site is still very much a work-in-progess and we haven't tested everything fully, so please bear with us and be patient. 

If you do encounter any problems with 45Sound in this roll-out stage of the new site, we would really appreciate it if you could get in touch with us at and tell us what the problem is so we can get the fixed. We know the Show pages are loading quite slowly for example, that's because we are generating them on-the-fly from our YouTube channel and we'll have that fixed after Christmas.   

The same goes for any other suggestions or feedback you have, we want to hear what you have to say so please give us a shout.

We think we can build 45Sound into an amazing service over the course of 2012, but we need the help of fans and artists to make sure we build the most useful service we can for you. Bear with us while we fix up any teething problems and continue to develop the site, we promise you're going to enjoy the features we'll be rolling out soon...

Have a good Christmas and check back with us regularly during 2012!

Cathal, John, Mikel and Dan

Team 45Sound

 

 

This was a panel discussion to help inform bands and artists about technology and how they need to be using it.

We've progressed a lot as a team in the month since this talk, but it should give you a bit of insight into our technology and what we are trying to do with 45sound.

If you have any questions or queries, please drop us a comment!

And for the record, I'm not a (complete) geek...

Cathal

We got a nice little mention in John Collins' "Web Log" column of the Irish Times Business supplement last Friday (October 14th):

YouTube and Vimeo have millions of clips of live gigs no matter what your music taste but almost without exception the sound quality is awful. 45sound.com is addressing this issue by recording gigs – it has almost all of last weekend’s Hard Working Class Heroes festival – and then cleverly matching the clean sound file with your clip. One to watch.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/1014/1224305751142.html

Considering we've only gone public with our service a week or so, we're pretty happy to get listed alongside Hunch.com in the Irish Times. Onwards and upwards!

 

45 Sound is a new service which makes your live music videos sound
better. We replace the original sound of your video footage (which is
usually fairly crap) with a high-quality recording of the exact same
part of the concert. Now when you upload your video to YouTube and
share it on Facebook, it will sound as good as it looks. It's a great
way to capture the memory of the concert, and also to play your own
part in telling the story of the band or artist.

Hard Working Class Heroes 2011 is our very first trial run of
45sound.com and no-one has tried to do anything like this before, so
please bear with us! The four of us on the 45 Sound team have worked
hard to get this basic version of our service ready in time for the
101 bands and all the fans at HWCH to try it out free of charge and
let us know what you think of it. Testing 45sound.com at HWCH is the
first step in our mission to bring bands and their fans around the
world closer together, and we are delighted to be able to help out so
many Irish bands and artists by trying our service out for the first
time here in Dublin.

As with all brand-new technology, we'll probably have a few teething
problems with our service over the weekend. It will also take a little
time to get all 101 gig recordings mixed and uploaded to the site. We
promise we will do everything we can to process every single video you
upload to our service, so please be patient with us.

Thanks!

John, Mikel, Dan & Cathal 

Rubberbandits
"Double Droppin' Yokes"
Live in Dolan's, Limerick - Dec 2010

Video 1: Before 45Sound Processing

Video 1: After 45Sound Processing

Video 2: Before 45Sound Processing

Video 2: After 45Sound Processing

And So I Watch You From Afar
"Set Guitars To Kill"
Live in Whelan's, Dublin - Nov 2010

Video 1: Before 45Sound Processing

Video 1: After 45Sound Processing

Video 2: Before 45Sound Processing

Video 2: After 45Sound Processing