Clean Concert Audio to camera...

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I recently shot a Hip Hop concert where I was wired into the board to get a clean feed of audio. Now I showed up at the place well in advance while they were doing sound checks. The problem I ran into is that it was hard to tell what was clean audio coming to the camera and that of which I was hearing coming out of the house speakers.

I was wearing my noise cancelling headphones and had my camera audio switches set up correctly. However it was still hard to see/hear if I was getting good audio. My levels were well into the red but I couldnt tell if that was coming from the speakers or from the board. Should I have told the sound guy to kill the house speakers and send me a feed to my camera to check levels?
 
Your levels should NOT have been well into the red as you described. You should have set it so that only the highest peaks hit the edge of the red.
As for listening.... If you had a long XLR cable you could maybe have ran the line out to another room and listened from there to see how it sounded through the camera headphones.
 
This would be a situation where you would want some EM3 earbuds. They aren't comfortable enough (IMO) to wear for general use but when in high SPL environments they are invaluable.

Best
 
Sirius_Doggy said:
Your levels should NOT have been well into the red as you described. You should have set it so that only the highest peaks hit the edge of the red.
Click to expand...

Well, Doggy, on the DVX I'd suggest - especially for fgairly constant-level music - goin a bit into the red. The DVX's "red" is what most meters would have as the entire green-yellow-red transition; and levels are pretty low if they stay completely out of the red area.

As to headphones: you don't want "noise canceling" headphones. They only attempt to reduce certain parts of the sound spectrum. You want passive isolating headphones, like the Direct Sound Extreme Isolation (~$100, bassy) or HN-7506 (~$250, great). These help a lot, but are not perfect. So, when necessary - record a bit in sound check, go somewhere quiet, and play it back. Often there's no other possibility.

-Barry
 
What you might do next time is to have the sound guy on the board record you a DAT recording and just use you existing microphone on your camera. This way with the DAT tape the sound guy could adjust to peaks from the board and you can do the same on the camera. If there is any dropout or clipping then I would fix it in post. You might also consider getting DVrack and record it that way also so you can fix any problems while on location and have your DV tape as a backup. I recorded many bands this way and it solves a lot of clipping issues before it becomes a problem in post.
 
I might chime in on another issue somtimes missed. Many people think the board feed is the holy grail, but not always. Now this might not matter with hip hop, but if you are taping other kinds of acts in a smallish venue, many times the board is "clean," but the recording you get "sucks." This can be causeed by several factors, but most often is because many times the only thing that needs to go through the PA are the vocals. If the band's own amps are plenty loud for the smallish venue, and the drums are loud enough without any mic'ing, then the vocals are the only thing being pushed through the PA in a big way, then your board feed will be very unbalanced (heavy on vocals very light on everthing else). Also, the board can be kind of flat-sounding sometimes when you really want to capture the "live" feeling of the gig. And finally, in most venues, the FOB sound engineer is mixing the board so the venue sounds good, not the board's output, and there can be some BIG differences because of that. If the venue is real boomy sounding, the board may boost the highs in a big way to compensate so it sounds good in the venue, but the tape you pull out of the board will be harsh and brittle with too much highs.

Moral of the story: make sure to get some ambient-recorded sound in addition to the board itself when recording gigs like this. Then you can mix that in with the board pull as needed (aka creating a "matrix" in audience-taper speak).

With respect to levels, I don't own a DVX, but someone ought to know the EXACT db level for when the levels hit red. It is VERY important as when digital sound clips, you're completely screwed. Sounds like from other comments that the red lights up at under 0 db (often preamps will show red at -3 db), but if it's red at 0 db exactly (not under), then you should NEVER see red. It's good to know this whatever it is because digital clipping is very unforgiving. Another important thing to note is that I bet the level indicators aren't very good (they usually never are on a screen on a camera) because they aren't really that responsive. So if you've got loud transients coming in real quick, they might not even show up on the levels indicator whereas on a good preamp like a MixPre, the levels would definitely show the problem.
 
The first red on DVX100 is -12 dB* if I am not mistaken. Thus you should have 2-3 red segments light up on peaks to get good levels. And with the limiter you are safe with those peaks.

*) five reds means hitting the dreaded digital 0 dB.

What does "My levels were well into the red but I couldnt tell if that was coming from the speakers or from the board" mean? Hearing or recording? If you have cables running to the camera from the board and the switches set correctly the "reds" can come only from the board, not the internal camera mics.
 
multi tracking is the only way to go when your are shooting a concert. Its all about control.
 
img said:
multi tracking is the only way to go when your are shooting a concert. Its all about control.
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I humbly disagree. Multitracking is great, no doubt, but it requires way more effort, equipment, and expertise typically. For anyone who doubts you can get great "audience recordings" with two mics in a stereo config placed in the sweet spot, you should download and listen to some of the stuff on etree.org sometime.
 
Tainted is right on the money!!! A hot ticket is a pair of cardiod condensors feeding wireless transmitters (the ENG "buttplugs" are perfect for this) and your two receivers on board the cam. Find the sweet spot and pick a stereo config (I usually use the 'X-Y" method. (make sure your condensors are metal if the buttplugs use the mic for a antennae like the Sennheiser G-2 series buttplugs that come with their eng kit)
 
Wireless has upsides and downsides... but I wouldn't rely on it without a backup for live critical recording...
 
i have shot a lot of concerts and other shows...

i would recommend running a line (or a wireless with a plug on transmitter) from the sound board. make sure you ask for a line level feed and make sure your dvx is set for line.

if you have your dvx set for the line input then there is NO WAY that the noise from the speakers would show up on your meters.

if you have a shotgun mic i would use one input for the feed from the soundboard and the second input for the shotgun, hypercardioid etc. to get the ambient sound.

later you can mix the clean sound from the soundboard and the ambient crowd/live sound.

if you JUST have the clean sound from the soundboard it will seem very odd to see the video of a live show yet get the relatively sterile sound of JUSt the band without the accompanying sound from the crowd that you can see.

if i'm using both dvx-100's i'll do a shotgun on top of the second dvx pointed at the crowd for a good take on the ambient sound.

i am a HUGE fan of using the wireless mic "plug on transmitter" to get a relatively clean feed from the soundboard.

but you MUST monitor that feed. i have had sound guys who somehow changed the feed i was getting. by that i mean during the sound check or opening act it was crystal clear but the main act's sound came out like crap.

matthew
 
matthewd5 said:
if you have a shotgun mic i would use one input for the feed from the soundboard and the second input for the shotgun, hypercardioid etc. to get the ambient sound.

later you can mix the clean sound from the soundboard and the ambient crowd/live sound.
Click to expand...

Are clients really happy with mono sound like this? And is the soundboard feed in mono any good?

The guy at the soundboard has the job of making everything sound good through the speakers at the venue. A good sound engineer will carefully distribute key parts of the sound to different speakers to work best with the hall acoustics and speaker placement. This is often far from optimal for a stereo feed, and even worse for a mono feed... mono compatibility is not on the sound reinforcement engineers agenda at all... it's often quite contrary to it if he/she is optimizing for speakers 50' apart.

Now, whether this is better than what you might get with a shotgun on the camera is certainly a good question, and probably depends on the exact situation. But a good well-placed stere pair of mics will most likely do a better job of capturing the concert sound and feeling as the hard-working sound engineer and band intend it. Of course, you can't always do that.

Of course, sound guys are often bad, too. You gotta watch out.

Sorry, there's no best answer for every situation... but I'd suggest using a well-placed stereo pair whenever you can, and maybe a second recording device for the board feed (or maybe for the stereo pair). That gives you some post flexibility. keep your shots long so your syncing job is easier!

-Barry
 
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