Should I use the stereo signal sent when edeiting or just the mono

J

joshtownsend

Well-known member
I shot with a good boom mike with the into the 2nd XLR input on the HVX and recorded four audio files (or two stereo files) from that one mike. I made the input less hot on the 2nd channel in case I clipped the main one.

Right now I'm editing with Premiere and I get 4 audio files. Can I pick the best one out of the four then get rid of the rest of pick a stereo pair.

If I only choose one of the for am I losing any audio information?
 
By all means, use the best one - probably your boom mic, just make sure it is panned to center. The others will give you more 'room noise' and 'camera noise'. HD natively records 4 audio tracks, but you should be picky as to what is used. You may loose perceived volume, but simply compensate by increasing the boom track by +3 to +6 db (or add some compression and then increase output).

J
 
I only used the boom mic. I just set the HVX to record the signal into a pair of separate audio tracks. One pair had the gain turned down in case of clipping.

Mu question is, if I split the stereo tracks am I losing anything? I'm guessing the boom mic (an audio techniqe) maybe picks two seperate signals. If I use just one (of the pair) am I losing some bass or high end from the actors dialog.

Does that make more sense?
 
Is this a Premier question or an HVX200 question?

In any case, don't think of them as 2 x stereo pairs. They are simply 4 mono tracks.

Your NLE will determine all the options of how you can combine and diddle those in edit.
 
You've got two mono tracks from the boom mike, mix one track from that as needed which avoids clipping, and then turn that single track back into a stereo track in your editor. There are plenty of VST plugins that can add stereo separation to a mono track, including the Classic Reverb filter from Kjaerhus Audio:

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-series.php
 
josh townsend said:
I shot with a good boom mike with the into the 2nd XLR input on the HVX and recorded four audio files (or two stereo files) from that one mike. I made the input less hot on the 2nd channel in case I clipped the main one.

Right now I'm editing with Premiere and I get 4 audio files. Can I pick the best one out of the four then get rid of the rest of pick a stereo pair.

If I only choose one of the for am I losing any audio information?
Click to expand...


If I'm reading your situation correctly, you are plugging a mono mic into a mono port. That should only give you 3 active tracks: the external mic in XLR 2 and the two built in mics.

All of those are mono tracks.

That can be confirmed by looking at the tracks in the NLE timeline. One of the four will have nothing recorded.

To get the HVX200 to record 4 tracks, plug another external mic into XLR 1.

If your question is regarding how you can mix those to sound the best, then that is the what THoff is recommending.
 
You can't record to all four tracks from the same mic. You can set two of the channels to record the same XLR port (2), but it's never four, and it's not stereo -- it's two mono tracks.
 
I did just what David said but I have audio coming from just the boom and it's on 4 channels when I import to Preimere not just 2 mono. I am using cs3 with the P2 update and doing direct imports by the way.

Maybe I'm just confused and they are duplicates? So a single XLR input is not a stereo input?

I'm saying I shot a whole movie with audio just like Dave said (plugged the single boom into the 2nd XLR and set channel 1 and 2 to record from it not the built in mic). When I import I have four channel all with audio and one pair slightly lower then the other. I have them on long shots where the actor was 20 foot away and good audio on every channel, not me breathing and whatever you would expect from the onboard mic.

If each XLR only recorded to mono channels then are you saying the built in mic ALWAYS records? Where do you adjust the volume for that if I'm using up both XLR's or have both set to the 2nd XLR? What's the point of having a switch on the HVX that turns channel 1 and 2 to the onboard mic

Just not making sense. I mean hell yeah if that makes my life easier if I can just pick the best one then duplicate like THOFF said but I spent a two years making this flick and wanna understand the workings seeing a I've been shooting with the thing for two years.

Sorry if I sound exasperated I just locked the cut on my first feature and I'm cleaning up dialog right now. Thanks everyone, but I still don't understand.

here's the flick: www.gainesvilleripper.com
 
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You have four tracks in total because the camera always records four channels in DVCProHD, two for the internal mikes, and two for the XLR inputs. How those map depends on how the channels are set up using the switches on the left side of the camera.

I would expect the audio from the boom mike to be more useful than that from the internal mikes, so as I said before I would create a single audio track from that by starting with the hotter mike and switching to the other channel when the audio clips. Take the mono audio channel that results from the mixing and duplicate it so you have left and right channels and then add stereo separation using the audio tool of your choice, like the Kjaerhus VST I linked to.
 
Thanks a bunch everyone. I've got it. here's a quote I found from Barry after searching.

Depends on how you have the switches set. If you have the switches set that CH1 is INT L and CH2 is INT R, then CH3 = XLR 1 and CH4 = XLR2.

If instead you have CH1 set to INPUT1 and CH2 set to INPUT2, then CH3 = INT L and CH4 = INT R.

So 3 & 4 may be scratch tracks, or they may be your external microphone audio, depending on how you had the switches set when you shot .
 
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