audio dub
 

What is the best way to dub audio? mainly a voice over. In camera or with the computer? When I get it I'll be using FCE.

Hi Bob,
I'd have to say "by computer". It's a far more flexible and practical operation.

Record your voice-over via FCE's voice-over tool (or some other way) and just drop it into your project's bin and then onto the timeline. You'll likely have several "takes" for each clip and you may want to tweak the sound for noise removal, et.al..

You can also record your voice-over onto miniDV tape using your camera and then import it as you would normal video footage. This has the small advantage of maintaining the 48kHz sampling rate found on DV footage. Whatever you do, however, do not try to v-o (dub) directly onto existing taped video footage. With each "take" you're running the same section of tape over the heads again and again, something that's bound to eventually produce problems with both the audio and video on that section of tape eventually.

Thanks Ken. Right now I just have iMovie. I wonder if I can do the same thing with it, just to practice alittle? I'm not sure with iMovie if you can just take the audio from your clip and movie it. maybe you or someone else here knows.
I was just trying some dubbing in the XL1s and was thinking if you made a mistake and had to keep backing up and rerecording it might not come out that good.

iMovie 3 has some limited audio manipulation facilities but not voice-over. You can, however, separate audio from video.

I hope to get FCE soon. I want to hit one of the Chicago apple stores and try it out first. I would think it probably has voice over. With iMovie 2 you can record your voice through the little built in mic on the iMac. You can record your voice on a different track. But it's not that good.