Audio control on ch 3 & 4?

jgrimson

Member
I understand how the camera maps out audio to channel 3&4 when shooting HD. My question is, how do you control the levels or even monitor whats going on those channels? As an example I recorded lav. audio and a room mike on channels 1&2. Therefore channels 3&4 default to stereo camera mike, which could potentially be useful, however those channels were completely clipped level-wise. It'd be a great safety to have those channels sometimes however, if you can monitor and control how do you know what you're getting? What am I missing here?
 
Yes, yes. I'm having a similar problem. I just bought this big johnson shotgun mic and I get it cooking on channels 1&2 but then my on-board mic is going and I can't cut it out of my mix. I can obviously kill those two tracks (3&4) in post, but I'd like to know how clean the grab is off my shotgun mic through the headset. My reading / limited understanding shows that you can do this in the standard DV modes, but once you're on DVC PRO you're "stuck" with all four channels, and that's great and fine, but how do you manipulate channels 3 & 4? So, you see, I've...helped you not at all, but! I do feel your pain.
 
You can't control the levels of 3 & 4. They're always set at a fixed level, which is equivalent to the potentiometers at top-dead-center.
 
Wow, that means that if you intend to bank on just the external feeds for your finished product you're up against a wall when it comes to monitoring the live feed because it has the on camera mics as part of the signal 100% of the time with no way of cutting them out?? That's a pretty interesting limitation. I look forward to the day when my shoots are complex enough for that to be a problem for me!
 
Thanks Barry. It is an edit workflow issue to remember since it can turn into a ginat mess with multi-camera situations and 4 channels coming into the timeline on each.

Here's a question. If I dub a tape from a P2 format with 4 channels of audio what goes to tape? Just channels 1&2 I would hope. Anybody test that?
 
Barry_Green said:
You can't control the levels of 3 & 4. They're always set at a fixed level, which is equivalent to the potentiometers at top-dead-center.

So, if you swap Channel 1&2 with 3&4 you can use the potis for your camera-mic and use Channel 1&2 with the XLR input for an external sound device (like SQN).

I´m wondering if there is a possibility of listening only to 1&2, but recording 4 Channels?

Cheers.

Germany is gonna win the cup
 
I believe that you can only hear channels 1 and 2 on headphones. You are not hearing a mix of 1,2,3 and 4.

Am I right about this?
 
Interesting. I was thinking the same thing about the other internal mike options. The ALC is an attenuator or high end pad right though? For loud environments?


Is there a way to have all of the camera options in manual but the audio recorded in auto? Sometimes I'm just looking for ambient audio and can't be bothered to monitor... I know my XL1 auto capabilities were always awesome...

Thanks for reading my brain on this one..
 
There is no auto audio level control setting. The ALC is a limiter, not a level control.

As for monitoring 1&2 or 3&4, that's selectable by menu settings in the playback menu.
 
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