Hi all,
Here is a bad experience from the field that happened to me today. I'd like to share this with working peers like you and hear your take.
I was hired by a producer to shoot a sit down indoor one-person talking head today with a high profile figure. We shot with two HPX170. The wide shot has a shotgun mic. The close-up shot as a wired lav through XLR. (I don't have the exact model of the lav mic).
I was assigned to operate the closeup shot with the lav mic, while the producer monitored the wide shot. My shot has less room echo and sounded better. The producer and I set up the sound and the cameras together. We tested the sound before the session began. I was on the headphones during the test. Everything sounded fine.
We finished shooting the session without technical glitches. There was a couple fire truck sirens faint in the background. We paused our interview once to wait for it to clear. I had been listening for background noise and audio glitches throughout the session. If I have to be picky, I remember hearing a minimal level of hiss that sounded just like the normal noise floor of any prosumer camcorder (we know all audio equipment have a noise floor that is within spec, and it is more noticeable in headphones than from a TV speaker). At some point in the middle of the interview, I handed the producer the headphones. He listened for a few seconds and he said it sounded better than his shotgun mic.
But a few hours after we left, the producer called me up and told me that my shot has a lot of "static noise" from the lav mic. He said the noise happened in the later half of the interview (it was shot in a ~25-minute long take), and the static is so "overwhelming" that we had to reshoot it. He believes I have failed to identify the static noise that came in during the taping.
In the past, we have experienced hearing strong static noise with the HVX200 and the DVX in similar talking head settings multiple times. They were easy to identify during setup. In most cases we were able to isolate the problem to the 60Hz ground loop hum, interference of power cable being in close proximity to XLR cable, or if we had a dimmer in our lighting. This time we had no dimmer, and I didn't detect any 60Hz hum at all. I haven't seen the downloaded footage so I don't know whether it is analog noise or digital dropout / clipping.
I have shoot and monitored audio for literally hundreds of talking heads in the past and for different producers on professional jobs. They were done with DVX / HVX full-sized ENG cams / HDSLR with audio recorder, etc. I believe I am qualified enough to tell good audio from bad ones.
From my perspective, these are the few things I'm sure:
1) I didn't hear any audio problem during the shoot. Certainty nothing that can be called "overwhelming".
2) I playbacked the first 10 seconds of the 25-minute-long clip immediately after the interview. It sounded just fine.
3) The dialog and the noise floor sounded consistent throughout the shoot.
4) One of the two cameras was a rental (I can't recall which one).
Given the above, if my hearing is healthy and well, I can only conclude that:
1) The camera I was assigned to was faulty.
2) By design of the HPX170, the headphone circuit only shows me a live signal as opposed to a recorded signal. The signal chain to the P2 recording are processed differently than what I heard, and it is these processing that was at fault.
I'm not trying to find excuse or dodge responsibility. But in all honesty if it happens to me again, I can't think of any way to catch it on the spot. I know industrial practice usually warrants separate audio recorder for mission-critical shoots. Full-sized ENG cameras have robustly designed audio circuits to prevent this.
My fellow working pros, let me put this out to you all:
1) Have you experienced similar audio problem with this camera? (sounded OK in headphones, problem in the recording?)
2) There are times when we are assigned to work with prosumer equipment. How would you prevent nightmares like this? (We can't be expected to check playback for all 25 minutes on the field, right?)
3) To frame question #2 differently, in all humility, is there anything I should have done differently to fulfill my job duty as a cameraman and ensure reliability in my output?
thanks a lot for your insight. I hope this discussion will help us get to the core of the problem and to help other shooters prevent this nasty situation.
Jack
Here is a bad experience from the field that happened to me today. I'd like to share this with working peers like you and hear your take.
I was hired by a producer to shoot a sit down indoor one-person talking head today with a high profile figure. We shot with two HPX170. The wide shot has a shotgun mic. The close-up shot as a wired lav through XLR. (I don't have the exact model of the lav mic).
I was assigned to operate the closeup shot with the lav mic, while the producer monitored the wide shot. My shot has less room echo and sounded better. The producer and I set up the sound and the cameras together. We tested the sound before the session began. I was on the headphones during the test. Everything sounded fine.
We finished shooting the session without technical glitches. There was a couple fire truck sirens faint in the background. We paused our interview once to wait for it to clear. I had been listening for background noise and audio glitches throughout the session. If I have to be picky, I remember hearing a minimal level of hiss that sounded just like the normal noise floor of any prosumer camcorder (we know all audio equipment have a noise floor that is within spec, and it is more noticeable in headphones than from a TV speaker). At some point in the middle of the interview, I handed the producer the headphones. He listened for a few seconds and he said it sounded better than his shotgun mic.
But a few hours after we left, the producer called me up and told me that my shot has a lot of "static noise" from the lav mic. He said the noise happened in the later half of the interview (it was shot in a ~25-minute long take), and the static is so "overwhelming" that we had to reshoot it. He believes I have failed to identify the static noise that came in during the taping.
In the past, we have experienced hearing strong static noise with the HVX200 and the DVX in similar talking head settings multiple times. They were easy to identify during setup. In most cases we were able to isolate the problem to the 60Hz ground loop hum, interference of power cable being in close proximity to XLR cable, or if we had a dimmer in our lighting. This time we had no dimmer, and I didn't detect any 60Hz hum at all. I haven't seen the downloaded footage so I don't know whether it is analog noise or digital dropout / clipping.
I have shoot and monitored audio for literally hundreds of talking heads in the past and for different producers on professional jobs. They were done with DVX / HVX full-sized ENG cams / HDSLR with audio recorder, etc. I believe I am qualified enough to tell good audio from bad ones.
From my perspective, these are the few things I'm sure:
1) I didn't hear any audio problem during the shoot. Certainty nothing that can be called "overwhelming".
2) I playbacked the first 10 seconds of the 25-minute-long clip immediately after the interview. It sounded just fine.
3) The dialog and the noise floor sounded consistent throughout the shoot.
4) One of the two cameras was a rental (I can't recall which one).
Given the above, if my hearing is healthy and well, I can only conclude that:
1) The camera I was assigned to was faulty.
2) By design of the HPX170, the headphone circuit only shows me a live signal as opposed to a recorded signal. The signal chain to the P2 recording are processed differently than what I heard, and it is these processing that was at fault.
I'm not trying to find excuse or dodge responsibility. But in all honesty if it happens to me again, I can't think of any way to catch it on the spot. I know industrial practice usually warrants separate audio recorder for mission-critical shoots. Full-sized ENG cameras have robustly designed audio circuits to prevent this.
My fellow working pros, let me put this out to you all:
1) Have you experienced similar audio problem with this camera? (sounded OK in headphones, problem in the recording?)
2) There are times when we are assigned to work with prosumer equipment. How would you prevent nightmares like this? (We can't be expected to check playback for all 25 minutes on the field, right?)
3) To frame question #2 differently, in all humility, is there anything I should have done differently to fulfill my job duty as a cameraman and ensure reliability in my output?
thanks a lot for your insight. I hope this discussion will help us get to the core of the problem and to help other shooters prevent this nasty situation.
Jack
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