audio
 

hi,
i´m in the final stages of a dive dvd. 95% of the dvd is just video and music. but we are making a short info section about corals. and need to have some voice over for this part.
does anyone have any recomendations or advice on how i should do the audio setup on my xl2 using only the standard mic
please help asap. the deadline was 6 hours ago...

Hi Thomas. I would forget about dubbing the audio onto the same tape as the coral video (if that's what you were planning).

If I had no other audio recording gear apart from the video camera, this is what I would do-

It's much easier to just record the mic audio onto a blank DV tape with the lens cap on. Play the video footage on a PC (without sound) while recording the VO track on the camera. Shouldn't take long (with good VO talent).

After recording, just capture the tape and bring the clip(s) into an NLE with the coral video. Throw away the black video and align the VO track with the coral video. Cut away any garbage and adjust the timing as necessary.

Hope I've understood what you are asking. (If I got it wrong, just ignore my post.)

Richard

hi Richard,
thanks for the reply. the thing i needed help with is how to set the audio settings on camera. is it best to have it on 12 or 16 bit. should i play around with the settings on the diffrent channels? i got the xl2 2 weeks ago. forgott my manual in singapore (in the hotel, they throw it away after i checked out) so it is taking too much time already so i hoped someone would know the best way to set it.

Hi Thomas. You have the choice of recording audio as 2 channels of 16 bit, 48KHz, or 4 channels of 12 bit, 32 KHz. If you are only using the stereo mic on the camera, just select 16 bit as this is higher quality and is straightforward to capture into a PC (comes in automatically with the DV video).

I would normally use manual control for the record levels, but this needs some rehearsal to set the levels properly. If there are other noise sources in the room where you are recording, or even noise leaking from outside, get your mouth fairly close to the mic to get a high signal to noise ratio. But don't talk directly at the mic, as you want to avoid popping as much as possible.

Richard

Hi Thomas. You might be able to download the XL2 manual from the link below. If the link works, select Product/Software Manuals. It is for the NTSC version of the XL2, but as far as I know there is no difference for audio. The audio section in the manual starts around page 50.

Richard

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/con...&modelid=10350

hi Richard
thanks for the input. we are about to start now. i´ll let you know how it turns out.
yeah, i downloaded the manual before. been trying to get in swedish, but no luck. its been kinda a catch 22 between canon sweden and the authorized deales here, to get the swedish manual that is

OK. Best of luck Thomas.

Richard

Don't know why you'd want to go through the extra step of recording the VO to tape just to captur einto the computer. If the NLE doesn't have an audio record capability itself, a freeware program like Audacity would do it for the trouble of a 5 minute download. Record the VO as a wave file using a mike connected to the computer's soundcard, drop it into the NLE as an audio track and edit away.

Hi Steve. The original question asked how to do it using the on-camera mic. That's why.

I realise you could also take a feed from the XL2 into a sound card and record it that way, but I figured Thomas would want to watch the video on his PC while doing the recording. Some systems are a bit temperamental when you try to do things like this, and there is a chance of recording unwanted clicks in the audio, especially if you have anti-virus software and other TSRs running in the background. Since Thomas wanted a fast solution, I thought recording to tape would be a safe bet.

Richard

hi Richard,
so its done, and it work out pretty good. i never edited vo before or recorded it. normally when i do my videos its only underwater, and not so much sound to capture...
thanks for the help.
cheers
tom

Thanks for the feedback Thomas. So when are you going to post some clips for us to see it? :)

Richard

Hi Richard
There is a webpage about it.
http://www.scubatoe.com/tioman/index.htm
The page was done in rush. It will be worked on these upcoming days.
As you can see it’s going to be released in the end of June, so we had put the all energies into finishing editing. And one of the computer crashed... not the best time for that, but I guess it never is. Took eimi (wife) a day to get it back together. There will be more pictures and videos up next week (we hope).
The entire film is 1 hour long. Of that 7 minutes is with vo (the coral section).
Are you diving yourself? Tioman where we filmed it is just a 30 minute plane ride away...