Well, I hate to bother you folks with a newb's question but, after searching in circles around various threads, I've decided to post to see if I can get a quick piece of advice. Here's the bullet:
My wife is a singer who needs to record accompaniments at a pianists house. He's got a mic hooked up to his stereo system, and she's been dragging my digital camera there, hooking into the analog outs and recording on dv. I've been dumping the session into final cut pro and carving up the songs into .aiff's to dump onto a cd. Bad workflow.
For Christmas, I wanted to find an easier solution. I've been looking at the Sony MZ-NH700, and thought it looked like the magic bullet. On the recreational side, It would allow us to keep md's of each of our family member's own music libraries for portable listening, etc. – and I thought it could become the recording medium for these little piano sessions.
But here's where I'm confused - can I edit this mess once she's done a a click-and-record into the thing? I'm seeing posts about converting to .wav through third-party software, and uploading in realtime, etc. and have gotten a little confused. I understand that the files will be in a proprietary (.omg?) file format. Can these not be edited by the software that Sony provides with this rig? By editing, I mean cutting off audio slates, deleting songs that the pianist muffs, etc.
Obviously, I'd love it if the system could be seamless enough that she could even plug into the pc, upload the sessions and pick and choose the tracks she wants as keepers and then dump them to cd - all by herself (and she's not exactly a computer whiz). Might sound daft, but I'm wondering if this is possible with this system.
If anyone could take a moment and let me know the process for accomplishing this - if it exists - I'd be very appreciative. Looks like a great community here, so I'm not worried about support on this rig. It's just you folks are so far ahead of me here, I'm having a little trouble keying into the basics.
OS is not a concern, btw, as I'm running both Windows (XP and 2000) and Apple OS X at home (communications business - have to bridge artists with business folks for a living).
Any help would be appreciated.
Jesse C