Just shot my first multi-cam gig, and...

[Rylan Zolinski]

It went "alright".

The sound guy they had there allowed us to hook up our XLR cable from his sound station and into our cameras (XHA1). We used both channels and everything was going smoothly. About 25 minutes into the recital, I started getting some massive hissing. Near the same time, my cousins camera started getting a "ticking" noise in his audio. The audio technician said it was nothing on his end but both my cousin and I didn't fiddle with our cameras for this to happen. I did see the audio technician play with a dial and it's what started the hissing, but he assured me it wasn't him. I then figured out that the hissing was coming from my channel 1 and the ticking on my cousins end was coming on his channel 2. We both unplugged our owned messed up channel and continued shooting. I was wondering if I will be able to work around this? I only have audio on channel 2 and he has his on channel 1, but before he figured out his one channel was messed up and not both of them, he switched over to his on-camera mic. This makes his audio useless to me now. I assume that when I capture this footage, both channels of audio should show up and I can delete my channel 1 so that I can use my undamaged channel 2 audio? If so, that means I only have the one channel, but could I somehow make it 2 channels?

After the audio mess-up, we had a camera issue. There was a very quick break between a dance and this was our chance to swap tapes. We swapped them and we both got a "change tape" error at the exact same time. How weird is that? So we managed to miss a good 30 seconds of a dance and so we now need to salvage it somehow.

Anyways, that was my first experience with a multi-cam shoot. They already have a desk with 60 orders for the video we shot. I hope I can fix this!

 

[AndrewGentle]

I assume that when I capture this footage, both channels of audio should show up and I can delete my channel 1 so that I can use my undamaged channel 2 audio? If so, that means I only have the one channel, but could I somehow make it 2 channels?

Yep, this is easy to do and I use it all the time. Whenever I use an external mic or sound desk feed on a camera with XLRs I always still record the onboard shotgun into the other channel. It's also a good idea to feed the same source into two different channels, if you can, and set the gain a little lower on one of them in case the levels get too high. For any of this, you usually discard one of the tracks. I use Premiere and the Audio Effect which does this is called Fill Left or Fill Right. What NLE are you using?

 

[Rylan Zolinski]

Yep, this is easy to do and I use it all the time. Whenever I use an external mic or sound desk feed on a camera with XLRs I always still record the onboard shotgun into the other channel. It's also a good idea to feed the same source into two different channels, if you can, and set the gain a little lower on one of them in case the levels get too high. For any of this, you usually discard one of the tracks. I use Premiere and the Audio Effect which does this is called Fill Left or Fill Right. What NLE are you using?

I am using Premiere.

 

[MattinSTL]

Never change tape in a multi-cam shoot even close to the same time... never. Have a hand signal to say "I'm changing tapes"... then after you've changed... signal "okay" unless your buddy can see that you've clearly started shooting again. For the first tape change... accept about 10 minutes (or so, depending on the best time to change) of wasted tape for whoever changes first... after that you should, hopefully... both be able to use full tapes and change them out of sync with each other.

Sound... ugh... yeah... it seems that EVERY TIME I trust somebody else to handle my sound it gets screwed up. EVERY TIME... unless that person is strictly doing sound FOR ME. Meaning, if you're shooting at a church, or some venue... where the sound person's job is to be sure sound is okay for the event itself... not YOUR recording of the event... it's amazing how many things can go wrong. It's to the point that if I'm taking a board feed... I will STILL put a mic, wired or wireless, near one of the venue speakers (potted down or low sensitivity). At least this way you KNOW you'll get an okay recording of the event sound, because you're getting audio from a source that the sound guy MUST care about.

What's great for a board mixer, but bad for a video guy... is that it's easy to control what channels go to the extra output... so if the tech checks an individual channel through the board, he may leave your output potted down, or too high... or have you getting audio from a channel that's not even being used... so that all you're hearing is the self-noise of the mixer-board... or you could find yourself having set up for line/mic level audio... only to have that changed at the board... resulting in audio that's way too low, or way too hot.

I just shot a gig where all kinds of things like this happened... for example... used two lavs to record one source... then at the last second house wireless turns my lavs to hiss as I had to switch to cam mic... then reconstructed all BG music by figuring out what the songs were... the proper VERSIONS... because the first replacements lost sync... then carve individual words out of the on-cam mic and process the hell out of 'em to make them blend in... turning a few hours edit into a few days edit.

I feel you. It sucks. Lesson is try your best to take "chance" out of everybody else's hands.

On a multi-cam shoot... figure out which cam can be the master shot... and try to get a wired sound source to that cam... one that is in YOUR control... like the mic (fixed/clamped) near a PA speaker option.

 

[Rylan Zolinski]

Never change tape in a multi-cam shoot even close to the same time... never. Have a hand signal to say "I'm changing tapes"... then after you've changed... signal "okay" unless your buddy can see that you've clearly started shooting again. For the first tape change... accept about 10 minutes (or so, depending on the best time to change) of wasted tape for whoever changes first... after that you should, hopefully... both be able to use full tapes and change them out of sync with each other.

Sound... ugh... yeah... it seems that EVERY TIME I trust somebody else to handle my sound it gets screwed up. EVERY TIME... unless that person is strictly doing sound FOR ME. Meaning, if you're shooting at a church, or some venue... where the sound person's job is to be sure sound is okay for the event itself... not YOUR recording of the event... it's amazing how many things can go wrong. It's to the point that if I'm taking a board feed... I will STILL put a mic, wired or wireless, near one of the venue speakers (potted down or low sensitivity). At least this way you KNOW you'll get an okay recording of the event sound, because you're getting audio from a source that the sound guy MUST care about.

What's great for a board mixer, but bad for a video guy... is that it's easy to control what channels go to the extra output... so if the tech checks an individual channel through the board, he may leave your output potted down, or too high... or have you getting audio from a channel that's not even being used... so that all you're hearing is the self-noise of the mixer-board... or you could find yourself having set up for line/mic level audio... only to have that changed at the board... resulting in audio that's way too low, or way too hot.

I just shot a gig where all kinds of things like this happened... for example... used two lavs to record one source... then at the last second house wireless turns my lavs to hiss as I had to switch to cam mic... then reconstructed all BG music by figuring out what the songs were... the proper VERSIONS... because the first replacements lost sync... then carve individual words out of the on-cam mic and process the hell out of 'em to make them blend in... turning a few hours edit into a few days edit.

I feel you. It sucks. Lesson is try your best to take "chance" out of everybody else's hands.

On a multi-cam shoot... figure out which cam can be the master shot... and try to get a wired sound source to that cam... one that is in YOUR control... like the mic (fixed/clamped) near a PA speaker option.

Yeah, we really buggered up the tape changing. Synching everything up now is gonna be a pain in the ass. I just know it.

We originally planned on using my Rode 2 mic and capturing sound from the speakers on stage but decided to hook up the sound straight from the board and into my camera. I am going to purchase an audio recorder very soon so that I can utilize the Rode.