HPX audio monitoring

[dafilms]

Since the HPX does not have dedicated audio meters, has anyone had any issues while working with a sound person. The sound people that I work with really liked to keep an eye on the meters and I worry that the small audio meters at the bottom of the LCD may not cut it.

 

[andicam]

but the "sound person" work with audio mixers, don't they? and they measure their equipment before shooting and rely on the mixers????

 

[Mac]

The small meters are a drawback on the HPX500 - Actually, I'm very surprised by them in an otherwise pretty well thought out camera.

Here's what I do - I assign the incoming (wireless or hard-wired) signal coming from my sound person's Sennheiser 416/Shure mixer to CH2. I assign the forward audio dial (on the side of the camera, the "well thought out" part) to the CH2 signal so that I can tweak it at the camera... I assign that same signal to CH4 at a fixed level, set in advance by my sound person.

I assign the nose mike (an AT shotgun) to CH1 and CH3 at slightly different levels to compensate for low or high peaks. I do NOT use AGC because I find Panasonic's vastly inferior to what I've come to expect from Sony cameras (where I used AGC often).

This way, when I import clips I have 4 versions of the audio to chose from. Since I shoot documentaries in situations where I can't control ambient audio, this setup allows me to chose the best mike/level combination in post.