HELP with external mic use

[mseh]

I have a new T3i and have been testing it out as I'm doing some interviews next week. I connected an external mic. Here's the deal.

When I use the ear buds on the receiver that is connected to the camera and someone uses the transmitter and speaks into the mic I hear them and can tell the set is working fine. BUT, when I record something and play it back on camera, no sound.

I'm sure there's some setting I'm missing, but I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong. I removed the 3.5 jack. No sound. When using the internal mic the sound works fine on playback. Side note: There's some serious hiss that I have to resolve. One of these interviews is in a prison 1,000 miles away so I can't easily re-schedule.

If anyone can help, I'm very grateful. Thanks!

 

[legrevedotcom]

I have a new T3i and have been testing it out as I'm doing some interviews next week. I connected an external mic. Here's the deal. When I use the ear buds on the receiver that is connected to the camera and someone uses the transmitter and speaks into the mic I hear them and can tell the set is working fine. BUT, when I record something and play it back on camera, no sound. I'm sure there's some setting I'm missing, but I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong. I removed the 3.5 jack. No sound. When using the internal mic the sound works fine on playback. Side note: There's some serious hiss that I have to resolve. One of these interviews is in a prison 1,000 miles away so I can't easily re-schedule. If anyone can help, I'm very grateful. Thanks!

Not sure I understand the mic issue right. Regarding the hiss... The dslrs have notoroiusly bad sound. Their signal to noise ratio is to low and so when your mic needs to be gained up you bring along the noise with it. The resolution could be adding a mixer to run the mic through first or record the sound externally.

 

[Alex H.]

First, can you specify which wireless system you're using? Knowing the entire signal chain will help.

Second, have you gone through an entire setup process, from transmitter to receiver to camera? These things are not just "turn 'em on and plug 'em in". You have to set up every element of the system.

Third, while DSLR audio is known to be pretty bad, for the most part, there are ways to minimize the hiss. The Automatic Gain Control has to be turned off, and manual audio level control in the camera needs to be used to turn the input gain way down in order to correct the hiss (which comes from the lesser-quality pre-amps in the camera). The T3i, by the way, nas notoriously noisy pre-amps... worse than the other EOS Rebel cameras.

Last, without the Magic Lantern firmware modification installed there's really no way to listen to your audio from the camera as you record, and not monitoring sound while you record is like shooting without a viewfinder. Don't leave your audio up to chance, especially considering that you're traveling such a distance for one of these interviews. I'd highly recommend that you get an external recorder (there's a sticky on that at the top of the Audio forum) which will allow you to record better sound without the hassle of DSLR workarounds, and will allow you to monitor with headphones as you record. It will require syncing audio and video files in post, but this isn't a difficult process.