The catastrophy we dont want to happen with the firmware!!
- Thread starter Loic
- Start date
Eddy Robinson
Well-known member
Oh thank you Barry. I nearly bought one on eBay a year or two back and wanted to mention it here, but I could not for the life of me think of the name, and assumed I had misremembered it. I still kind of want one, actually!
Peter J. DeCrescenzo
Veteran
As has been mentioned elsewhere, but maybe not in this thread, there's a critical distinction about exactly where in the audio chain "monitoring" takes place.
External audio recording devices such as the H4 have headphone jacks that let you monitor the audio _internal_ to the recorder. In most cases this is the same sound the recorder is recording while in record mode. That means if the sound you hear has a problem (crackles, pops, hiss, caused by bad a microphone, mic battery, wireless interference, or wiring, etc.) while recording, then those problems are being recorded, too, and hopefully you'll be able to address them ASAP.
It's a very different situation when you're monitoring the sound coming out of a mixer or preamp before it goes into a GH1 or 7D camera. Listening to the output of the mixer can't insure the cam is recording good sound, or any sound at all. For example, the small connectors & cables used by these cams' mic-in jacks are notoriously unreliable and prone to crackles, pops & hum -- or being partially or fully disconnected. Whatever the problem is, you won't know about it until you listen to playback from the cam later, perhaps much later; e.g.: usually too late.
Obviously it depends on the nature of the production situation how big a deal the difference between these two monitoring approaches is, but it's a fact that connecting any kind of external audio device (microphone, mixer, etc.) to a camera that doesn't have a built-in headphone jack for monitoring is a inevitable disaster waiting to happen.
There's a slim hope that the Magic Lantern firmware hack folks might someday give us live audio monitoring from a 7D via its AV I/O connector, but there might be a long wait for this, or it may never happen.
Likewise Panasonic might be able to enable something similar though a future GH1 firmware update, but I'm not holding my breath.
Bottom line: If you want reliable sound recording when shooting with these cams, use an external sound recording device designed for the purpose -- not the cam's mic input jack -- and monitor the external recorder's audio before, during & after each take very very carefully!
P.S.: All of this BS would have been so easy to avoid if Panasonic, Canon, etc. had simply put headphone jacks on these *&%@#$ cams. It would have cost them mere pennies per cam to do so.
External audio recording devices such as the H4 have headphone jacks that let you monitor the audio _internal_ to the recorder. In most cases this is the same sound the recorder is recording while in record mode. That means if the sound you hear has a problem (crackles, pops, hiss, caused by bad a microphone, mic battery, wireless interference, or wiring, etc.) while recording, then those problems are being recorded, too, and hopefully you'll be able to address them ASAP.
It's a very different situation when you're monitoring the sound coming out of a mixer or preamp before it goes into a GH1 or 7D camera. Listening to the output of the mixer can't insure the cam is recording good sound, or any sound at all. For example, the small connectors & cables used by these cams' mic-in jacks are notoriously unreliable and prone to crackles, pops & hum -- or being partially or fully disconnected. Whatever the problem is, you won't know about it until you listen to playback from the cam later, perhaps much later; e.g.: usually too late.
Obviously it depends on the nature of the production situation how big a deal the difference between these two monitoring approaches is, but it's a fact that connecting any kind of external audio device (microphone, mixer, etc.) to a camera that doesn't have a built-in headphone jack for monitoring is a inevitable disaster waiting to happen.
There's a slim hope that the Magic Lantern firmware hack folks might someday give us live audio monitoring from a 7D via its AV I/O connector, but there might be a long wait for this, or it may never happen.
Likewise Panasonic might be able to enable something similar though a future GH1 firmware update, but I'm not holding my breath.
Bottom line: If you want reliable sound recording when shooting with these cams, use an external sound recording device designed for the purpose -- not the cam's mic input jack -- and monitor the external recorder's audio before, during & after each take very very carefully!
P.S.: All of this BS would have been so easy to avoid if Panasonic, Canon, etc. had simply put headphone jacks on these *&%@#$ cams. It would have cost them mere pennies per cam to do so.
Last edited:
Ian-T
Veteran
Smart choice.:thumbup:but I'm still not gonna sell my H4 to go beachtek !!!
Illya Friedman
Well-known member
It's a very different situation when you're monitoring the sound coming out of a mixer or preamp before it goes into a GH1 or 7D camera.
P.S.: All of this BS would have been so easy to avoid if Panasonic, Canon, etc. had simply put headphone jacks on these *&%@#$ cams. It would have cost them mere pennies per cam to do so.
Exactly right. This sums up the situation perfectly.
P.S.: All of this BS would have been so easy to avoid if Panasonic, Canon, etc. had simply put headphone jacks on these *&%@#$ cams. It would have cost them mere pennies per cam to do so.
Ah, but then that would cannibalise sales of their really high end pro video cameras and we can't have that, now, can we? :grin: