I've seen alot of tips on external mics & booms, but how do you record good sound? My camera doesnt have a port for an external mic to plug in. What can I record my sound onto?
"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."
"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." - Yoda
Well, you are kind of stuck with no XLR port. If it's that important, and you can't live a little bit of ambient hum, you should look into buying a new camera. And with HDV coming around, shooting anything at this stage on Mini-DV is a waste of time. Sometimes renting is the best option. Otherwise, you record your audio on another device can turn into a nightmare. You would need to buy an old school clapper so you can sync your video to audio in post. Half way through you will wish you spent the money on a better camera.
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I've got a clapper and the patience to do the sync in post. What I don't have is the money for a new camera yet. What device would be good to record on?
"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."
"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." - Yoda
Minidisk or DAT, depending on how rich you are :).
I'm in the same boat you are, no mic port. I do plan on using some external recording device and a clapper but from some of the test footage I shot I was able to remove the motor hum from the camera. If you have the time download a demo of Cool Edit Pro and read up on the noise reduction feature. Basically you'll have to strip the audio to a wav file and then open it in cool edit. Then you open up the noise reduction portion and select an area of the waveform that is silent other than the ambient hum of the motor in the camera. With this selected you can generate a noise profile and apply it over the whole waveform and Voila the hum is gone but the rest of the sounds remain.
As far as an external recorder I was thinking of using my ipod photo, some clever folks found a way to install a version of linux on them and it contains a recording program that can record at 44.1kHz which is technically CD quality. Unfortunately right now it only supports mono as far as I know but things might have changed int the last couple of months.
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Check out my photography site at
www.jphphotography.ca
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Check out my photography site at
www.jphphotography.ca
Normally you'd record mono sound anyway unless you have more than one mike. Usually when recording to a stereo camera or DAT I stick the mono sound from the mike on the left channel and the same sound at a slightly lower volume on the right channel just in case it peaks on the left: I can always use the other channel instead in that case.
Just an FYI: Adobe took over Cool Edit Pro and came out with Adobe Audition. You might want to get the demo of Audtion.
--QD Jones
--QD Jones
