Yeah, welcome to the world of digital. When we got our first Avid several years ago and I digitized a bunch of footage with audio at 0db, and it was all unuseable, I promptly got on the phone to our friendly neighborhood professional audio studio, whose engineer clued me in about -12 being 0. And then it took awhile to figure out that tone needs to be -20, and all audio should be in the -20 to -12 range, although if you're final release is going to stay digital, you can take that audio up a bit hotter than that with no problem. The problem will occur if you make a Betacam dub.

It's amazing how many people don't realize the difference between analog and digital. Last year we had a tape in for a local film festival that had been dubbed from Digibeta to Betacam SP, and the meters were pegged in the red, all the way through the roof. And the dub was made by a reputable house in L.A.

that -12 difference is a sneaky little bastard. *always* check audio out of the cam! ;)