okay so i plan on making an indpendent horror movie next year and I really dont want bad sound. There is nothing more that i hate in a move than bad sound especially if its the voices. So what i was wondering if i should use a few minidisc recorder with a couple clip on lapel mics? Or if they could even be connected to the same minidisc to save money. I hear everyone saying to buy a dat recorder, is it imperitive? They seem to be way more than expensive at 800$ than a minidisc recorder from ebay for 50$. So basically to sum it up would a minidisc or two and some lapel mics be good enough to capture the voices to be dubbed into the movie in post production? (I also plan on buying a shotgun or some other type of boom and using the built on camera mic)
Thanks.
Film or video? Which camera?
If I can assume a DV style camera then in lieu of separate audio recording I suggest recording all audio on the camera. If you don't have XLR (balanced) inputs on the camera itself a device (listed below) that provides them is worth it.
Both DAT and solid-state reorders generally offer higher sound quality then mini-disc recorders and have balanced inputs.
Kudos for wanting good sound! Remember to check your levels and have your boom operator use headphones.
Sign Video makes the XLR-PRO, also BeachTek makes a similar product. Both give you balanced inputs and level adjustment controls.
http://www.signvideo.com/xlr-pro_xlr_adapter-audio-mixer.htm
http://www.beachtek.com/products.html
thanks for the quick reply. I plan on using something along the lines of the canon gl2 or panasonic dvx100, but Im waiting till next year to see what models come out first. But no matter what the chances that it will be minidv format are very high. Yeah i noticed the gl2 doest have xlr input but i think the dvx100 does. Anyway thanks for the tips!
Best bet for you is to use a DAT. Don't record sound onto your miniDV and expect that to be that great. You can use the onboard mic as well, but a good mic, boom and DAT will make all teh differnece
Another option is to record straight to hard disk if you have a decent laptop (or more importantly, a laptop with a decent sound card in it). Mac laptops are ideal (G* series), but newer or high-end PC laptops will be good too.
Ben C
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Benjamin Craig
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quote:
Originally posted by filmmaking.net
Another option is to record straight to hard disk if you have a decent laptop (or more importantly, a laptop with a decent sound card in it). Mac laptops are ideal (G* series), but newer or high-end PC laptops will be good too.
Good call --- that's what we did on the last short I shot. Worked out well.
quote:
Best bet for you is to use a DAT. Don't record sound onto your miniDV and expect that to be that great.
Provided it's a decent camera that has a manual volume level control and doesn't introduce a lot of noise in the mike inputs, you'll be fine recording direct to DV. DV is normally 16-bit 48kHz, DAT is 16-bit 44/48kHz... so no real difference in quality once it's on the tape, other than that DV gets more dropouts than DAT (in fact I've never heard a dropout on my DAT whereas I've heard quite a few on DV tapes I've edited).
One thing to be sure of is that you monitor the sound with headphones on the DV camera and not on the mixer, if you have one: I've had to edit video before where it sounded great on the mixer and they didn't realise that it was way too quiet or loud on the camera. The downside is that DV headphone outputs do tend to be noisy so you may have to check both at times.
As for Minidisc, it works plenty well enough for dialogue: yes, it's a lossy compression format, but if you're recording low-budget sound in a location where you're more concerned about tiny artifacts from compression than about the planes flying over and the neighbour having a Choral Society rehearsal in their back yard, you're lucky.
are there any good websites to give the basics about boom mics / dat recording for sound? i'm pretty new to this, and am pretty lost when it comes to sound. all the discussions i find are usually people who already know at least a descent ammount. can anyone help me out?
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