HMC-150 Audio

[bazza]

Can't quite work out the on-camera audio. It is set in menu as MIC ALC ON presumably this is an auto gain. Yet recorded ambient audio at a wedding is very quiet (hardly any waveform) for people chatter or one person speaking yet just right for clapping, cheering etc. In a disco I have to wind down the manual controls to stop overloading which is not unexpected but why doesn't gain kick in for the quiet talking bits?

[Barry_Green]

ALC is *not* auto-gain. There is no auto gain. It's a limiter, not gain. You have to manually set the audio levels.

[bazza]

Ah, thanks Barry at least I know now. After a series of Canon XL1s and an XH-A1 this is my first camera without auto gain which is so useful most of the time at weddings. I can live with it but wonder why they made the adjustment dials quite so awkward to operate.

[Barry_Green]

You can remove that plastic adjustment-preventer shield thing, and that's the first thing I'd do.

[Burners]

Hello All, Ive been monitoring this forum for the HMC150 as I am almost ready to purchase 1 (or 2!).

Shooting mostly weddings at night with a DVX100 (pre A model) & DVC30, I usually use the audio from the DVC30, which is set to AUTO.

I find fiddling with the dials on the DVX100 all the time distracting and annoying to say the least and I never seem to get the level right.

Monitoring the audio through headphones proved unhelpful as you cant adjust the volume and most of the time I couldnt hear anything as the ambient sound was too loud. I was hoping the HMC150 would have an AUTO feature but alas it seems not.

I wonder if there is a way to adjust both of the dials at the same time to achieve a constant balance..

[Gymnut808]

I don't think there's a way to gang the two channels of audio to adjust them uniformly, at least I haven't found a solution. I'm coming from Canon so I haven't owned a DVX, but you can adjust the headphone volume on the HMC.

[BrianMurphy]

Hello All, Ive been monitoring this forum for the HMC150 as I am almost ready to purchase 1 (or 2!).

Shooting mostly weddings at night with a DVX100 (pre A model) & DVC30, I usually use the audio from the DVC30, which is set to AUTO.

I find fiddling with the dials on the DVX100 all the time distracting and annoying to say the least and I never seem to get the level right.

Monitoring the audio through headphones proved unhelpful as you cant adjust the volume and most of the time I couldnt hear anything as the ambient sound was too loud. I was hoping the HMC150 would have an AUTO feature but alas it seems not.

I wonder if there is a way to adjust both of the dials at the same time to achieve a constant balance..
I would suggest you post in the audio forum to begin with and folks there can help you work out what seem to be a few problems. I think a good set of headphones will help isolate the ambient sound from the sound coming from the camera. Sounds like you use the build in mics, try running one channel of your camera hotter than the other. This way you will have a chance at picking up comments from the crowd when you want them and reverting to the other channel when you don't and at least one of the two won't be overmod if "uncle charlie " decides to do his foghorn impersonation for the camera.
I don't know of any pro camera that has an "auto" feature and can I assume you are mixing your audio in post?