H4n Help Needed

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larrys

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I just bought the H4n and a Panasonic GH1 and they are in transit right now.

I all ready have a Sennheiser ME66 shotgun with XLR and a Sennheiser wireless Lav, also XLR. Can anyone tell me the best settings to get quality audio on the H4n with these two mics for interviews? By settings I mean, any gain, limiter, etc... settings which will get the best results for voice.

I will also be using Plural Eyes on Final Cut Pro for syncing, so I was considering using the Lav for the interviews and the shotgun on the GH1 for the camera audio to use later in post. Does this seem wise?

Thanks!
 
I can´t tell you much about expert settings cause I am not, however I did work with a similar setup including H4n.

Your mic may need a xlr to 3.5 adapter and a 3.5 to 2.5 to connect to the Gh1. I´ve done it and it can work.
But with the Gh1 you cannot control or monitor audio, so you are never sure. You would have to check afterwards, but in an interview setting it sucks to say "hey wait a minute, I have to check whether my camera recorded the sound".

So if you are using an external setup anyway I would only use the Gh1 internal mics for sync reference. Connect all your mics to the H4n.

With the H4n in the beginning I used Auto Levels and it happened that it adjusted to the sound of the clapper (which you better do in case plural eyes poos up) and then everything that followed was too low. So you get better results going manually. And the operation of the H4n is pretty easy, you could do it all yourself, but beware, to me it happened more than once that I was thinking the H4n was in record when it was not. The record button blinks when it´s ready and it´s lit up when recording. In sunny daylight you don´t see the difference, you have to watch the timecode in the display is running.

Also the H4n does not allow to adjust the levels of the two xlr connections independently. So either live with that, with a Lav you can normally level the signal before, or connect one of the two mics with an 3.5 adapter to the bottom of the H4n. That blinks out the H4n mics (which may provide a good atmo or backup) but you can then level your mics independently.

I had H4n and mic stuff mounted together on a shi*ty tripod, that worked quite well.

Hope that helped, you better get an expert for gain, limiter settings..
 
Last edited:
menace3000 said:
Also the H4n does not allow to adjust the levels of the two xlr connections independently. So either live with that, with a Lav you can normally level the signal before, or connect one of the two mics with an 3.5 adapter to the bottom of the H4n. That blinks out the H4n mics (which may provide a good atmo or backup) but you can then level your mics independently.
Click to expand...

I didn't think this could be done either. But, according to this post it can be done. Haven't had the time to try it myself.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=1816135&postcount=49
 
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