Audio help with 7D

A

av8rdan

New member
I am a seasoned still photog with 30+ years of SLR and DSLR time, but relatively low videography time. Just got the 7D and am wondering a couple of things:

(1) Will any shotgun mic work on this mount? I have an old Sony from about 10 years ago that is made to fit on the top of my old Sony camcorder. Planning on some other sort of external mic in the future...maybe a Rode?

(2) When I shot tv spots before with the little camcorder (was years before the HD revolution) the Sony had an audio out headphone jack so I could wear headphones and clearly hear the audio coming in. Can't find one on the 7D. Do the modern external mics like the Rode Stereo VideoMic have headphone jacks? Or what workaround is required to be able to wear headphones while shooting to monitor audio?
 
Answer to Question 1: Depends. Some mics are too hot for the 7D preamp and may need an inline limiter or you'll get clipping and distortion. Some mics need phantom power. Plug it in, hit record, make some noise, and play it back to see how it does.

Answer to question 2: You will need some piece of hardware between the mic and camera that allows for monitoring. From there, you can use a headphone splitter to run a line to the camera and headphones... unfortunately you're still not going to know how the camera is dealing with the audio... which is why I use audio recorders.

Example, I can run a Rode vid mic into a mini MP3 recorder. The recorder has line/headphone out so I can split it, monitor off one end and send a line to the camera with the other. I then sync it in post if necessary. I do the same with a zoom h4n or I run a field mixer with dedicated in/out/monitor channels or if it's super critical, I use a different camera.
 
good info. I am a confesed noob at some of this, but I am guessing the 7D has no timecoding capabilities? So "syncing it in post" is strictly a manual operation. I have done this before but it was always hit and miss, just keep fumbling with it until the lips and words match up. If you know of a way to use the 7D and make post syncing of audio easier, please email me by clicking on my profile name at left.
 
You could always lay time-code in post if you really needed to, so a dual-system should be able to sync. What NLE system are you using?

Also, note, that most shotgun mics are XLR and wont work without some kind of step down adapter to get to the 7D's mini jack.
 
I use zoom h4n and sennheiser mic,audio out from zoom to 7d and 3.5mm doubler at zoom to get headphones to monitor audio.
 
I'm just beginning to learn about video recording. I was wondering if I record sound on both the Zoom H4n and on my DSLR and use a clapboard; could I just sync the frame from the sound spike in post and delete the audio from the DSLR and just use the H4n?
 
Would you say that's a good way to get sound in sync, or should I use another way? The clips I take will be mostly under 2 minutes. I'm learning a lot from this forum. =-]
 
That's an easy way of doing it.

I'd double check that the audio is perfectly in sync by watching the first few lines of dialogue, and check that it stays in sync by watching the last discernible point in the clip (where there is a visual and audio cue - for longer clips, not particularly necessary if you're jump cutting all the time.)
 
rundavids said:
I'm just beginning to learn about video recording. I was wondering if I record sound on both the Zoom H4n and on my DSLR and use a clapboard; could I just sync the frame from the sound spike in post and delete the audio from the DSLR and just use the H4n?
Click to expand...

How they have been doing with film for a long time :).
 
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