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Sound for DSLR (or mirrorless) video - books?
Want to start shoot yoga videos for a website on mobility for seniors. I'd like to use my existing mirrorless kit if possible (I have nice lenses etc) but am honestly clueless about sound. Like really clueless. I have an Olympus OMD EM5 (and an epl2) I hope to use for the video capture. The quality from is is more than good enough for web use. I've been advised to buy a separate recording system for the sound (a voice track i want to add later). There will be some dialog from the people in the video too. How do I sync the voice track with the video? is it as low tech as an old fashioned clapper board (that I could cope with!!) or more these days? Any got suggestions for books / tutorials I could get to take me from zero to beginner? Thanks in advance! May 02 15 04:58 pm Link Audio quality is best when the microphone is close to the source. If multiple people are talking while recording video, you should use a wireless lavalier for each person recorded to a multi-chanel digital recorder such as a 4 track Tascam DR-60DMii. Industry standard Wireless lavalier: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/6 … Mount.html Recorder 4 track: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 … _dslr.html It is hard to manage all of the video and audio equipment for a shoot alone, which is why it is common to hire a pro sound engineer. If more than 1 person is talking, you definitely want a separate sound engineer to control audio levels while you manage video. For part time projects, they are cheaper than all the gear required. You synch in post with software called PluralEyes to match the ambient from the camera to the audio recordings.. Youtube videos will probably be more helpful than books. May 02 15 05:14 pm Link I have the DR-60 ... It's great, with a few drawbacks. The size and shape are really inconvenient, compared to an H4 or Tascam's own DR-40. You also get one more input(a stereo mini jack) but lose the built in mic, so it's really a wash. Where it shines is that it has separate line, camera, and headphone outs, all with their own level controls. If you're monitoring sound with headphones, that alone gives it a massive edge over the smaller units. The analog to digital converter may or may not be better than in smaller units as well; documentation isn't clear, but it appears to have lower distortion. It also has a line in jack(again with its own level control), so you can feed it a signal from a mixer, on top of whatever you're doing with the mics. Most smaller units offer these features too, but not all at once. You have an output jack for camera OR headphones, for instance. An input for mic OR line. If this is the only sort of video you plan on doing, that's the way to go. If you want to do some run and gun stuff too, I'd get a smaller unit and deal with the drawbacks. As far as syncing ... Yes, you'd usually use a clap track if you're doing it manually. Though these days, they call it a slate tone. I have a cheap stereo mic I keep on camera - it's just barely better than the built in. Then I sync the Tascam audio so there are no phase issues or echo. I do have a copy of Pluraleyes that I got for free with my DR-60, but honestly I haven't bothered to use it yet. Most of my stuff has been really simple, and you'd be surprised how quickly you can manually sync a simple audio track with some practice. If I were recording live music, I'd probably have to learn to use pluraleyes. One thing I can suggest is not to skimp on your cables. It doesn't make as much difference as on a really high-end stereo system, but the difference is there, especially if you're running good mics into a mixer. The minutia of audio recording is often glossed over by nonprofessional videographers, and it makes an enormous difference in the final product. May 02 15 08:41 pm Link I got educated on this stuff a LOT in the last few months. If you are looking for something simple and more affordable, go with a Zoom H1, that run about a hundred bucks on Amazon. The audio quality is awesome, even if you use the on-board mics or you can pick up good Rode mic for a few hundred more and plug it directly into the Zoom for exceptional audio quality without breaking your bank. To sync the audio, you want to make a loud POP (such as a loud hand clap) somewhere between the camera and the external mic. Your camera will pick it up and so will your recording device. You use that pop to sync up both audio sources in post then kill the audio track attached to the video and you're all set. You can also buy a "clapper" which helps keep track of your video sequences and then does the loud snap so you can sync up all your audio. That's actually the main purpose of those. http://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Acrylic-Pl … eo+clapper May 02 15 09:36 pm Link Virtual Studio wrote: Good advice Virtual Studio wrote: The low tech/low budget answer is to clap your hands May 02 15 10:20 pm Link Loki Studio wrote: The low budget industry anyway Loki Studio wrote: Waste of money unless you are doing a lot of video. May 02 15 10:26 pm Link Shot By Adam wrote: The best equipment you can buy is going to sound lousy unless the mic is close to the person speaking. May 02 15 10:39 pm Link nwprophoto wrote: Because the person will be wearing yoga kit and bending / stretching / lying down a lot I was going to go for a shotgun mike on a boom rather than clip on wireless which would be fairly awkward - probably wired up to a portable recorder as people have suggested above. May 03 15 07:15 am Link Thanks for all the help guys - really appreciate it! May 03 15 07:16 am Link Virtual Studio wrote: Contrary to the hype, interference tube mics (AKA shotgun mic) are most likely May 03 15 08:10 am Link not sure why you need the shotgun mic. Any mic close to the speaker should be fine. This shouldn't be an expensive thing to do. i use zoom h1 and am ok. More money might help but mic placement is key. May 03 15 12:28 pm Link A shotgun mic rejects off-axis audio. A regular mic does not. Most shotgun mics also have a higher signal to noise ratio than other mics the same price. That means that not only will a regular mic pick up a ton of reverb and background noise more than 2-6 feet away depending on the mic, but the subject will sound fainter as well. A shotgun mic is not the same as other pencil mics like small diaphragm tube condensers. Pencil mics are almost all directional, but only a shotgun mic will reject off-axis audio. For what the OP is doing, a shotgun would work best. If he were recording music or voiceovers, a regular mic would work better. They can be used for other things of course, but they can be used for other things in the way that you can use the back of a screwdriver to drive nails. It works fine, but it's not ideal. I found for instance that using a shotgun mic for my voiceovers made my voice sound a lot more nasally than my usual Shire Beta 58, and that the recording was much drier. It also emphasized my tendency to occasionally whistle my 's' sounds. Using the Beta on a boom pole made me sound like I was 50 feet away. They both worked of course, but I don't do it that way unless time and gear space are at a premium. Oh, and Pluraleyes isn't always pricy. A dumbed-down version a la Photoshop Elements often gets packed in with the DR-60. May 03 15 02:55 pm Link Zack Zoll wrote: Not really, it uses phase cancellation in the interference tube to hopefully cancel out higher frequencies. Zack Zoll wrote: S/N ratio is an electrical measurement of internal components and has no bearing on a given design Zack Zoll wrote: Shotgun mics don't work well at all in small rooms or in highly reverberant spaces, because the on- and off-axis sounds are inherently very similar. Zack Zoll wrote: Nothing magical happens in the interference tube to make sounds louder. Zack Zoll wrote: A shotgun mic is a small diaphragm condenser with an interference tube in front of it. Zack Zoll wrote: You kind of contradict yourself here. Cardiod and hypercardiod mics reject off axis sound. Zack Zoll wrote: Or worse, depending on the room Zack Zoll wrote: This will happen for 2 possible reasons. You are off axis to the mic pattern May 03 15 05:21 pm Link wow. too much knowledge here. I barely know anything about sound. I think almost anything is better than camera mics. I assume there is an instructor talking in the video. Just think what is the easiest way to shoot for you. If budget is a problem even the cheap mics are better than none. They just sound a little tinny. It isn't very hard to improve the sound. good luck. May 03 15 08:06 pm Link I'll just point out that 'rejecting off axis audio' is a much simpler explanation than phase canceling, and gets the point across quite nicely. Many people don't need the 'engineer answer' to understand what is going on. I don't know the OP well enough to know what is the case here. I'll also point out that being directional is not the same as rejecting/cancelling frequencies. If you tape up all the side holes on a shotgun mic, it is still directional, but it will no longer cancel out off-axis sounds effectively. If it were simply a matter of a mic's pickup pattern as you say, then taping up the sides would do nothing. Everything else ... Well, I'm not qualified enough to say how much was a mic type, and how much was those individual models. May 03 15 08:10 pm Link I will try and simplify this a little. Shotgun mics are much better suited for outdoors than indoors because of the phase cancelling. Not saying they wont work, just depends on the room. Secondly there is the problem of narrow pattern of shotguns. There are reasons a Hollywood boom op makes $100/hr. It looks like a simple job but in truth it is extremely difficult. The boom op has to know the script and scene exactly. With the narrow cone every small head turn or movement risks the mic being off axis and sounding horrible. Even with a acoustically dead indoor room a hypercardiod or cardiod is usually a much better choice with anything less than highly experienced boom person. They are much more forgiving than a shotgun. Just as a note, lav mics are almost always omnis, even the slightest head turn with a cardiod lav mic will sound horrible. May 03 15 10:35 pm Link Clapping your hand in frame is a low tech as it can be  Lav mics work great for such situations: really close to the voice and thus killing most of the background noise and reverb. May 04 15 07:26 am Link You have suggestions on mic's already, so about the syncing: make sure you also record the audio with your camera, it will have it's own track once you import it in your video edit software. You can use that, to have the software roughly auto-match with the actual audio track from your mic, and then do bits of nudging to perfectly sync it. Once you're done with that, you can either delete the cam audio track, or simply turn it off, so it get's ignored during export. May 04 15 07:36 am Link |
