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Nosey Elephant Studios

ETRO Audio-Visual Lab

About us

Nosey Elephant Studios is a service provider in audio-visual content creation for research and commercial applications. We are producing audiovisual databases used by researchers for testing their algorithms or developing applications in the areas of audio-visual behavior analysis, video production and post-production and speech/audio technology.

We are also offering music production services for bands. Check it out at the Nosey Elephant Studios recording & mixing MySpace link.

http://www.myspace.com/noseyelephantstudios

ETRO students have the opportunity to practice -as part of their courses- in modern techniques of signal processing and audiovisual production.

Our vision is to become a platform for technology transfer, promoting ETRO’s technologies and valorizing research results by offering services or by using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the emerging cloud computing model for software deployment.

Infrastructure

The lab is situated in Building Ke (VUB campus Etterbeek) covering a total surface area of 60 sq. meters. It is composed of 4 rooms: A 4m x 4m control room, a 6.67m x 4m x 2.67m recording room and two storage rooms. The control room is equipped with a 48 channel analog recording console, Pro-Tools audio recording system, outboard equipment, hardware for capturing and routing SD or HD SDI video streams, a SONY HD camera with autocue and a variety of studio grade microphones.

The video capture system installed is capable of recording up to 6 SDI streams. Integration with the audio system allows multi channel audio-visual in-synchrony capture of up to 6 video and 24 audio channels.

The recording and control rooms are acoustically treated. Air flow and temperature are controlled with a low noise HVAC system. The recording room is a box-in-box construction (double walls, floating ceiling, double doors, double windows), allowing produced sound pressure levels up to 100 dB-A, without affecting noise floor of the nearby offices. Room acoustics is variable through broad-band acoustic panels. The recording room is equipped with a 3.5mx2.5m blue-key panel. Lighting conditions are controlled through (fluorescent, 3200K) dimmed lighting modules. An installed truss allows ringing of loudspeakers, cameras and lighting units.

Services

Nosey Elephant recording & mixing is the music production service of the AV Lab. It operates as a recording studio producing demos for talented bands that want to promote their projects. Our philosophy is music and sound centric: you need both for great results. For that, we use a selection of fine analogue gear together with ProTools precision and our experience/creativity. All these in a newly build facility, surrounded by the relaxing environment of VUB campus.

Costumers

The AV Lab is recent, it started since November 2009. Actually, the current costumers used our facilities:

Universum Digitalis

Universum Digitalis is an ETRO spin-off in the area of content management and distribution. We produced audio content for their “VUB Art collection” and “Tour & Taxis Audio Tour” projects.

Music Bands

Projects

Video message for the Flemish government

We produced a video message for Minister Ingrid Lieten to be projected at a conference she couldn’t attend in person. The recording was done on-site, in one of the meeting rooms of the Flemish government building in Brussels.

Dialogue replacement for RITS film

In the framework of the final year student film production at The School for Audiovisual and Performing Arts - RITS. we recorded and synchronized the dubs in the produced scene. In this project we tested in real life an automatic dialogue replacement (ADR) system. The ADR system is an operational product being the results of many years of research of the ETRO DSSP research group.

Rockrace 2010 video promo

Rockrace is the music competition of student bands in Brussels. It takes place every year in spring. We’ve recorded the finals, held at KultuurKaffee, VUB and produced a 17 minutes long clip with scenes from live performances of the 3 finalist and their interviews for XL-AIR radio station.

Since 2009 Nosey Elephant Studios is offering 2 days of free recording and mixing as a second price in the competition. Bands we have already produced are: