{"id":246,"date":"2009-03-02T09:23:02","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T13:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/?p=246"},"modified":"2009-03-02T09:23:02","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T13:23:02","slug":"how-to-get-good-audio-from-a-cheap-video-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/02\/how-to-get-good-audio-from-a-cheap-video-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Get Good Audio From a Cheap Video Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get asked frequently about a dilemma that people run into with inexpensive video cameras.\u00a0 They need to shoot a video where the camera will be far away from the subject…yet the camera only has a built-in microphone with no options to plug in an external microphone.<\/p>\n

What to do?<\/p>\n

Well, to find the quick and simple answer, we turn to the world of film.\u00a0 You see, with video, both the audio and video are recorded simultaneously to the same tape.\u00a0 But with film, no audio is recorded to the film…just the moving images.\u00a0 The audio must be recorded separately on another device, and then synced to the film during editing.<\/p>\n

\"\"We’ve all seen the clapperboards used in Hollywood.\u00a0 And these clapperboards serve a couple purposes.\u00a0 One is to log the shot information and another is to help the film editor sync the film with the audio during editing.\u00a0 In other words, the clapperboard being clapped gives the editor a visual cue of when a shot starts…as well as an audio cue as to where the audio starts.\u00a0 The editor can then sync the film and the audio together using those cues.<\/p>\n

You can do the same in the world of video when your camera doesn’t support an external microphone.\u00a0 In\"\" lieu of the external microphone, you can just use a digital voice recorder<\/strong>.\u00a0 Many voice recorders also support plug in microphones, allowing you to “mic up your talent” with a lavaliere style microphone if you choose.<\/p>\n

You simply record your video from the camera, while simultaneously recording the audio on your digital voice recorder.\u00a0 You can follow the Hollywood example by using a clapperboard if you choose, or simply have the person you are recording clap their hands.\u00a0 Again, the idea is to have a visual cue on tape as to when the shot begins, as well as having that same cue on audio.<\/p>\n

From there, it’s just a matter of importing both the audio and video files into your video editing software and syncing them up.\u00a0 And modern video editing software makes this easy by showing waveforms<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Waveforms are the representation of the volume level in an audio track.\u00a0 They look like little graphs.\u00a0 And where the graph spikes up, that means the audio is starting (as in a person speaking).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It may take a small amount of time to get the audio and video tracks synced perfectly, but it will be time well spent, as you can get far better audio this way than you could ever hope for from your camera’s built-in microphone.<\/p>\n

And all by using an inexpensive digital voice recorder available at any office supply store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get asked frequently about a dilemma that people run into with inexpensive video cameras.\u00a0 They need to shoot a video where the camera will be far away from the subject…yet the camera only has a built-in microphone with no options to plug in an external microphone. What to do? Well, to find the quick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[19],"tags":[179,161],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}