An utterly shamefully simple question

A

andrew00

Well-known member
Hi,

I have one ridiculously stupid question to ask, it's horribly basic but it's just one thing that I must say I don't know and I do need an answer to. Please would someone answer it and I apologise in advance for how silly it is.

I'm going to be recording a lot of sound on an NTG-2. The problem is I don't know to what level to set the sound controls ideally.

What I mean is, from what I've done in the past, I've tried to get the sound so the person's voice is just about at the level of the camera where the little human figure is, occasionally peaking in the red when they raise their voice.

However, I don't know if this is right - what should I aim at?

Say I have an actor in front of me and I get him to talk to the camera where on the audio levels on the LCD should I aim for and so change the settings for?

I am planning on doing the trick as mentioned here when you record in the input 2 and record different levels with the left and right channels to get two different versions of the sound just in case [although admittedly I don't know how to do that in the edit yet, i.e. just the right channel say but have it centrally, mono like]. However I have no idea what I should be aiming at in the first instance - especially as in some situations, interviews etc I might like to have the on camera mic on as some kind of ambient mic.

Thanks for replying, sorry for being dumb!
 
i'm not sure it is such a dumb question.

you want to be recording so the wave is hitting about -6dB, I like to record a little bit lower than that, but no less than -12dB

that translates on to your camera somehow, you have to get the manual out to tell you exactly what the audio meters are telling you.

there should be a kind of status check button or similar to quantify the meters with a dB scale. any any case thoguh you will be able to work out where -6dB is on the meters, and when you do a level check with an actor, just make sure the fairly dynamic parts of his/her voice is bouncing up to -6dB and you should be ok.
 
Thanks for your reply, according to the camera manual, the spectrum on the audio meter goes from -34DB to 0DB and that the little figure of a person is -12DB. By proxy therefore anything louder than the -12dB mark is 'in the red' so to speaks and therefore -6dB is in the middle of this.

Does this mean therefore that I should get the actor to speak to their normal voice, i.e. normal volume is AT -12dB or that it PEAKS at -12dB when they speak loudly as we all can from time to time.

From what I can gather you've written above you said you want the recording wave to hit -6dB which implies to me the loudest that person is going to speak during the scene should be hitting -6dB max - in your suggestion between -12dB and -6dB, is that correct?
 
the problem you are increase or decrease the level after analog to digital conversion , there might be situation where you actually recording good level allready distorted signal , buy some barrel attenuator( -10-15 db) to place in between the mic and camera input for loud sound situations
if you good with the signal the regullar dialog picks have to go at least -10- 8 dbfs 4th,5th red bar - that would leave you 10 db -8 db of headroom for unexpectable picks , you can open the alc ( hard limiter) which kicks at -6 dbfs and end at -4.5 ,it working quit well
 
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