Sound Issue

Justin Marx

Justin Marx

Well-known member
Had a PRO sound guy for a 12 day shoot.. Never had time to listen or watch the footage (except to verify).. He fed his mixer into the camera, and it seems that all of the AUDIO is VERY LOW! Is there a reason or solve for this.. If we bring it up in FINAL CUT, it brings up all the background noise as well..

He set tone to -20dB and adjusted the levels on the camera to that.. Something he said was pretty standard.. WTF???

The ODD thing is that it sounded fine when we would listen to playback through the headphones plugged directly into the camera..

PLEASE HELP!

- - Justin
 
There are few things off the top of my head that I can think of:

1. The input level (the MIC / LINE) setting was wrong.

2. The track selection switches on the left side of the camera were set such that the sound guy was adjusting the HVX's internal microphones.

3. You're listening to the wrong track(s) in your NLE.

I suspect it's a combination of #1 and #2. Did you have your camera set to display the sound meters on the LCD/EVF? If so, what did those indicate?
 
Not 1 and 2 or 3.. The levels we're showing what he was mixing.. He would set tone from his mixer on each new P2 card and we would shoot bars at the same time for the hell of it.. So it's not 1 and 2.. The AUDIO sounds great!! JUST LOW!
I muted the camera audio tracks, so all I am hearing is the specific dialog track.. Just low........

The levels never passed the third line.. NEVER into the RED..

We'll just have to boost it.. it SUX but it's the only way.. Oh well..
- - Justin
 
I'm confused... are you saying the levels on-set were fine, but the levels in post are lower? Or did you know on set that "the levels never passed the third line"?

Can you describe your method for setting the levels (using tone) in more detail?

Anyway, -20dB is pretty conservative (depending on the situation). Maybe go for -12 next time, if that's the issue?
 
I am not a sound engineer, but it 'sounds' like your engineer is set for analog audio, not digital audio. I believe the -20db is an analog setting where -6db/-12db is digital's setting. I am still quite muddled on the subject, but I know when I went digital to analog betaSP, and I set it to -20db as outlined in the specs, it was WAY too low. Which makes me think that's what happened to you.
 
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