recording my uncle talking. (with a dslr and an external audiorecorder)

deleuze3

Well-known member
Hi,
i thought of recording a video of my uncle talking.

I shot my uncle with a 5d mark ii with the onboard mic (just as a landmark)

My uncle has a wired lavalier on him plugged into an audiorecorder pcm-m10.

With the audiorecorder, i will probably record non-stop for 1h30min.
With the dslr, i will only shot bit by bit, some minutes, sporadically, in many many clips.

How would it be possible to sync it after ? does plural eyes would work ?

I think the simplest way would be to use a juicedlink RM222 (and plug the rode lav in it).

any thoughs?
 
Before editing you can split the audio recording into few files, roughly matching the video files. Alternately, if this would be too complicated for you, you can stop the audio recording each time you stop the camera.
For sync, clap your hands in front of the camera at the beginning of each shot and in the editor sync manually.
 
Just a hint..... use a video camera for a shoot like you want to do, thats what they are designed for....and do VERY well at. I couldn't think of doing a shoot like that with a DSLR.
I do similar shoots like you want to do a couple of times each month.
 
While doing it with a video camera may be more convenient, I see no reason why not to do it with a DSLR.
A video camera wouldn't solve the sync issue in this case, since the audio is being recorded separately from the video.

Another option to solve the sync issue is to have a proper extension cord and to wire the lavalier mic into the DSLR audio input.
 
If you can be tethered then yes you can use your camera as a recorder. If you can't be tethered you have two options. Either use a wireless system or use your recorder and use plural eyes. Personally I think plural eyes is the easiest and cheapest route and affords you the ability to be untethered. You can clap to help synce but it usually is able to work even without it. You don't need to break up clips, plural eyes has a drift correction for longer clips.
 
Drop the audio on the timeline, then drop your video clips and arrange so that the audio lines up. Then add some b-roll, photos etc. to fill in what's lacking in your video coverage.
 
Can your uncle talk for 90 minutes? Why would you want to shoot anything for 90 minutes in one piece?
You will discover the disadvantages for long-form shooting with a DSLR after you try it. Good luck.

Just because the recorder will run for 90 minutes doesn't mean that is a good idea to do it.
Even the highest-price pro gear won't stay in sync for a 90 minute shot.
Start and stop the recorder at the same time as the camera.

Its not that difficult to sync without PluralEyes (which I've never seen any need to use.)
As long as you have a "reference track" from the DSLR microphone to sync to.
 
PluralEyes will want a 1 to 1 clip relationship, so break up the audio file to match the video files and you can sync by hand or with PluralEyes. I don't find it hard to sync by hand but it's easier in an audio app than a video app, at least to get it really tight.

As Richard pointed out even if you could record 90 min straight with the DSLR it would probably be a bad idea. There is only a very small chance that you wouldn't have significant drift over 90 minutes with your gear. So you would have to start chopping and shifting anyway.

Personally I wouldn't stop the recorder a lot in your scenario because he's wearing it and it will be very disruptive and each time is another chance to not hit the right button. Plus it's quite easy to chop it up after the fact. If you had easy access to the recorder things would be different.

My worry in how you describe it is nobody is listening to your main recording! If it's out of sight you wont even be sure it's actually recording. That would worry me a lot more than getting the files in sync.
 
PluralEyes will want a 1 to 1 clip relationship, so break up the audio file to match the video files and you can sync by hand or with PluralEyes.

Noiz, this is not true, I do it all the time. I'll have one long audio clip and it will sync my video accordingly with whatever gaps are there. You can later remove the gaps. It doesn't matter how many audio clips you have and how many video clips, it will align any overlapping audio.

When you have very long audio and video clips, you can enable the drift correction which will break up the audio clip and compensate for drift.
 
Ts must be a ix in later versions then because the version I had played around with didn't work well at all unless you had a one to one with the clips.

Well that makes it easier.

Thanks for the correction.
 
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