Microphone?

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ktisallred

New member
I want a cheaper solution for a mic as I'm a college student. I'm about to buy this camera tonight! I'm very excited!


Anyways I read somewhere that I could buy a Rode VideoMic Directional Shotgun Mic w/Mount and it would work with the HMC40? True?

And should I buy another battery? How long does the battery that comes with it last?
 
ktisallred said:
I want a cheaper solution for a mic...

Anyways I read somewhere that I could buy a Rode VideoMic Directional Shotgun Mic w/Mount and it would work with the HMC40? True?
Click to expand...

Cheaper than what?

Rode's VideoMics are pretty cost effective, for onboard mics. I'm using a Rode SVM on the HMC40 and it's great.
 
Sorry I know you must be shaking your head at me. I worked with CentriKid camps as a video producer over the summer and the only thing I've ever known is a Canon GL2 with MiniDV and you have to have firewire with that, just wondering since this is an SDHC if I still need firewire since it's cheaper not to have it. Also, why is the Rode SVM $100 more? Will the one I picked still work?
 
Not sure what you mean by cheaper not to have firewire, and an HMC40 has no firewire port anyway.

The Rode SVM costs more (that the mono Rode VideoMic) because it's a stereo microphone. Either Rode VideoMic will work fine with an HMC40.
 
Audio-Technica make a shotgun mic in the $50-$60 range that has a 1/8" miniplug and work very well for the price. Obviously not as good sounding as a more expensive mic, but very good for the price.
 
ktisallred said:
Sorry I know you must be shaking your head at me. I worked with CentriKid camps as a video producer over the summer and the only thing I've ever known is a Canon GL2 with MiniDV and you have to have firewire with that, just wondering since this is an SDHC if I still need firewire since it's cheaper not to have it. Also, why is the Rode SVM $100 more? Will the one I picked still work?
Click to expand...
i hope you are not serious.
having a firewire external drive brings alot of benefits for post production. they are fast, reliable connections for editing. you shoul avoid editing video that resides on the main dirve of the computer (i.e. where you have your editing software installed)....please, don't use your SD card for editing...this will shorten the SD card's life.
 
ktisallred said:
Should I get an external hard drive that has firewire?
Click to expand...

What kind of computer are you using?

Btw, the battery that comes with the HMC40 can last a few hours. Supposedly it can last about 3 hours or so, but I've never actually exhausted it yet. I think the longest I've shot on a single charge was about 2 hours of footage (and there was still some juice left in it).
 
Hey Sorry guys, it's been a whirlwind since I ordered all this stuff! I got an external hard drive with firewire, btw. I figured it was the best way to go. When I captured from my Canon GL2 during the summer I always put it on an external and then backed up my edited cuts onto my actual computer.

I am using a macbook pro, btw. And I promise not to edit from the SDHC, I wasn't planning on it, I was just planning on sticking it in the SD card slot and dragging it over from that? Should I just plug in the camera to the computer then and drag it over?
 
I find it easier to just use a card reader to transfer. Using a Mac though, be sure to flip the write-protect tap on first - apparently Macs can hose up the recordings if you don't.
 
Here's how I deal with it on my iMAC:

(1) Create a sub-directory on my MAC like, "2010-January-31_Event_Name".

(2) Put the SDHC card in the card reader.

(3) Open the drive and under EDIT, pick SELECT ALL.

(4) Under EDIT, pick COPY.

(5) Click inside the folder (sub-directory) on my MAC and under EDIT, pick PASTE.

This copies the card structure exactly as it appears on the card. Notice that I haven't gotten into the files yet where the MAC might start to generate anything onto the card.

Even if it did, after I'm sure that the file copy is OK, I format the card in the camera.


Bob Diaz
 
On my macbook pro, i use the AVCCAM Viewer program from Panasonic's website to transfer the contents of SD cards onto my external hard drive, then "capture" into Final Cut Pro or iMovie from there.

Using the internal card reader, and never having flipped the write protect tab, i've never had a problem.
 
Alejo_NIN said:
i hope you are not serious.
having a firewire external drive brings alot of benefits for post production. they are fast, reliable connections for editing.
Click to expand...

Well, they can be. Firewire on Windows is kind of screwed up. I have a Firewire RAID (8TB), and it's stable now, but it took lots of tweaking. By default, prior to Windows 7, FW800 was not supported, and most versions of the OS locked Firewire at 100Mb/s. You could tweak it to 400Mb/s by messing with registry settings. Sometimes.

Windows 7 was supposed to fix this with new drivers. I was seeing 20-25MB/s to my RAID with the old driver. Swapped in the new one, and saw... 2-3MB/s. Shazbot!! So I eventually found the Unibrain drivers. They love to crash on you, the old BSOD, but it's possible to get them stable... if you have the right Firewire card (I didn't originally, I do now).

For speed, you're theoretically much better off with eSATA for external drives, or the new USB 3.0. I say "in theory", since, depending on the drive, you may not see additional performance over USB 2.0 or plain old Firewire, particularly on writes. The drive's hardware speed is always the limit on eSATA.

Alejo_NIN said:
you shoul avoid editing video that resides on the main dirve of the computer (i.e. where you have your editing software installed)
Click to expand...

That's not really all so true anymore. It was in the past, when most folks lacked the memory to run a full video editor... so the editor would need to page, and since Windows has its page file on C: by default, you could get into thrashing situations.

It's more correct to say that you shouldn't have too many assets on the same drive, particularly if you're using intermediate CODECs like CineForm. And you shoudl try to render to a different drive where possible, one not used for any video or large photos.

I ran hard into this back in 2006... I had HD video for a wedding, but only one camera. They had three professional photographers (one hire, two friends), and I was able to use all of those photos for "Ken Burns" style coverage/B-roll. This was my most serious HD project to date.

I had serious problems rendering... Vegas was taking over a day per hour of AVC output, and getting really crashy. I started investigating, and discovered that, during the render, the CPUs (I only had two back then) were running around 40-50%! Thus, the speed for the render was not CPU bound, which pretty much just couldn't happen in the latter days of SD. So I thought about it, moved the stills to one drive and targeted the output to another... now I was getting full speed renders.

Not that you want tons of video on your system drive if other fast HDDs are available. But there's nothing magic about the system drive, and if you're getting any NLE-caused thrashing of the main drive during normal use of your editor, you ought to buy some more DRAM, that's your real problem.

Alejo_NIN said:
....please, don't use your SD card for editing...this will shorten the SD card's life.
Click to expand...

Only writes shorten the SD card's life. And you'd have to do it quite a bit to really make a difference. Modern MLC flash is typically rated at 10,000 cycles per cell. It's actually hard to do that many writes before the device is replaced with newer tech.

The best reason not to use the flash directly is speed... the dang things are much slower than HDDs, in part due to USB, in part due to the SD card interface supporting only a 4-bit-wide data path. But in a hurry, I might run directly from SD into CineForm, no fears there.
 
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