Serious Audio Question with emphasis in Video
 

Hey All...

Here's my situation over the last 6 months I have been put in the position of doing the camera work and production work which is far different than my world of POST.

Anyhow, I find I am doing alot of portrait interview style videos and some weddings on the side of course.. Anyways, my question is about what's the best way to use the stuff I have. Here's the list of my aresenal:

Rode Broadcaster Microphone W/ Goose neck pop filter
Senheisser G series wireless lapel and receiver
Shure Lapel wired microphone
Sony PD-150 standard stock microphone
Mackie DFX-12 Mixer
Art Tube XLR Pre-Amp

Camera: Sony PD-150

So my question is out of that hardware whats the best combos and solutions to use it in. I know it's broad and asking alot but I have this feeling of "I don't know what the heck I'm doing".

Currently I use the Rode for voiceovers it seems to be a decent microphone. I was piping it through the mackie and then into the PD150 camera. I could monitor the audio from the mixer.

Then I added this smaller pre-amp Art Tube. Then I would pipe the rode through that and into the camera, but the only way to monitor the audio is through the sony headphone jack from which my understanding is not the best way to do it. So not sure how to get around that, unless I go microphone to art tube to mackie to camera. But it seems like a lot of connections that could result in loss or noise.

Then I was thinking instead of using lapels for the interviews have the rode out of frame and using that since the audio was really nice from it..

Open to suggestions, upgrades or comments.. I appreciate the time..

For recording interviews, I can't see the need of using your Rode mic and preamp asnd putting it out of frame has it waaaay too far from the voices to sound decent. Put the wireless lav on the subject, the wired lav on your talent, and feed both through the Mackie. You could either mix on the fly, having both mics panned centre, or pan one mic full left, the other full right so that in the camera you're putting one mic on audio channel one and the other on channel two, then do the final mix in post. The latter would probably be the better strategy as you have more flexibility in cutting the audio that way and can make mix decisions at your leisure.

For that matter, you could get away with one mic for the interview if you wanted. Put your choice of lav's on the subject. The interviewer is off camera talking to the subject, camera shooting from beside his shoulder. After the interview is done and the subject leaves, you mic the interviewer and shoot his reverse where he repeats his questions and you get him nodding and other reactions. Then you cut them together in post.

For voiceover, why send it to the camera at all? That's just adding an unnecessary step - you're going to be recording VO back at the studio, not in the field, right? Use your good broadcaster mic in a space with decent acoustics for recording, feed it to the Mackie (or if you like the sound you get going through the Tube preamp better, go for it and put the preamp between the mic and the mixer but it seems to me that's redundent as your mixer has mic preamps that are probably just as good) and send the mixer output to the input of your editing computer's soundcard or audio interface. That'll give you far better audio than recording the VO in camera and then going from there into the editing computer.

There are a number of programs that will let you view picture while recording sound so you record your VO in-studio after editing picture, recording while the voice talent views picture on a monitor to aid him with the timing, cues etc.

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah the tube has a much warmer sound and natural sound probably because it's a tube amplifier. Putting it both inline with the mixer generates some weird sound.. The only problem with the tube is I have no way to monitor the audio as it feeds into the camera other than the camera's headphone port which I hear is not a good way to do that..

If you're getting "weird sound" feeding the preamp into the mixer, first thing I'd suspect is a level mismatch. The pre is outputting a line-level signal. If you put it into one of the mixer's XLR connector inputs you're sending it to an input that expects mic level and probably overloading it causing severe clipping. If that's the case, use a TRS patch cable instead to connect the preamp to the mixer input strip of your choice so that you're going into the mixer's line level input instead.

Great info to know Steve. I appreciate your response..

Thanks again bro,

Pat