Audio capturing with Vegas

[Donald Blake]

Hi everyone,

I'm a Vegas 7 user, and I've been doing some small projects, mostly short movies, in my last short I've used "voice-over"

I don't have a studio or anything, so I used my DV camera to record the sound, and then I captured it in vegas like any other video, I deleted the video track and only kept the audio, but the basic files are very big for nothing.

Is there a way that I can only get audio while capturing??

thanks!

[Mike Kujbida]

Feed the audio output of your camcorder to your sound cards line inputs.
You won't have camcorder control but at least you'll get audio-only tracks.

[Ian Stark]

Mike, good idea. Am I right in thinking this method assumes you are recording directly into Vegas rather than using Vegas Capture?

[Jeff Harper]

Another approach:

Videotape your audio. Then render the audio only into a .wav file or whatever you choose. THEN Delete the entire original source file. No more large files.

[Mike Kujbida]

Ian, yes, you would treat this like you were recording a voice-over.

[Ron Chau]

Can you plug a mic into the PC and then somehow record directly ?

[Mike Kujbida]

Ron, you most certainly can.
I do this with students all the time.
Plug your mic into your sound card's mic input, make sure it's activated in the sound card properties and launch Vegas.
Insert a new audio track, click "Arm for Record" in the Track header, set the record path to the appropriate path, right-click in the Track Header area and select "Record Inputs - Stereo, Left or Right", press "Record" on the Vegas timeline control and start talking.
When you're finished, press "Stop", rename the file to something appropriate and then press "Done".
That's all there is to it.

edit: Most consumer mics are stereo while pro mics (what I use at work) are mono.
Since you (ideally) want your voice-overs to be a mono track, select either "Left" or "Right" as the "Record Input" and record it.
Once it's on the timeline, click the event, right-click and select "Channels - Left Only", "Channels - Right Only" or "Channels - Combine", depending on what's on your timeline.
If you want, you can wait until you get all your voice-overs done and then select all of them and then so this globally.
The other issue is to make sure you get a good level while recording.
i.e. make sure that you are close to the maximum without going into the red.
It's easy to lower the voice level later but, if it's too low to begin with, increasing it will also increase the noise and you don't want to do this.

[Jeff Harper]

Wow, thank Mike. That is great info!

[Mike Kujbida]

My pleasure :-)

[Edward Troxel]

The typical solution in Vegas would be to connect via the sound card, arm the audio tracks, and record directly to the timeline. If you have it on MiniDV and wish to simply CAPTURE the audio off the tape, you might look at Scenalyzer live. It has several capture options including audio only to WAV and 4-track audio in one pass!

[Ken Campbell]

I keep seeing these USB powered mics by various manufacturers, for example Audio Technica has a USB version of the AT2020. I don't know what quality you can expect out of them but this might be an easy way for now. Most mics have XLR connectors and many need phantom power, both of which the typical computer doesn't have. Another possibility is the Rode VideoMic. I also suggest you check out the dedicated audio section of this site, there are many truly helpful people who have posted some great advice there.