VideoMic HD

henryqiu said:
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Please read my original post again: with this new Rode VM HD, every HD SLR shooter can focus on getting great shots without having to deal with audio equipment to get quality audio (if you don't think this is pro-quality, that's fine. Just read on from here), thereby leaving the pro audio work to those pro sound guys who typically carry mixers, and/or use boom poles, and/or wear headphones, etc. You may be one of those rare people who are really good at both video and audio. Yet, generally speaking, it's harder to do a good job if you have to deal with both video and audio at the same time, than if you concentrate on either video or audio but not both. And Rode VM HD is a great way to let you focus on video.

Rode VM HD seems to be an all-in-one deal. If you give a HD SLR shooter such a mic (which is also a recorder) to replace either a built-in mic or a recording chain, how likely will he NOT be very pleased?

4) Now, the only question left unanswered is: how much will it cost to get such a wonderful convenience?
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I think you miss the point. You state this mic lets the HDSLR shooter focus on great shots without having to deal with the audio equipment required to get great audio. "The top priority of a HD SLR shooter should always be capture great video, not "record good production sound"; in case they only need to shoot silent video, they won't even need to capture sound." But great shots without great audio to accompany them is not an acceptable compromise. "Getting great shots" is not enough - great video deserves great audio, especially if you're charging someone to shoot it. The results are the only thing that count, not how they are obtained, and for a professional, anything the compromises the quality of the results and makes them look or sound amateurish is unacceptable. Certainly circumstance can make compromise necessary - if you only have an on-camera mic available when a major news event suddenly happens in front of you, you're not going to shut off the camera because you're not getting Hollywood Sound. But compromise in the name of convenience or compromise due to an unwillingness to do the job the way you know it ought to be done is simply unacceptable for any serious practitioner of the art. Great images accompanied by marginal sound means the job is only half-done and ANY mic mounted on the camera, be it a $150 Azden or a $2500 Neumann will usually be incapable of producing anything better than marginal sound. Same with recorders and mixers - whether you record internally in the camera, use a $300 Zoom, or are recording on a $20,000 Cantar, using a mic at the camera position to feed the recorder will lead to margnial results 99.99% of the time. The problem is not due to deficiencies in the equipment but rather to the physical laws of acoustics that govern the behaviors of sounds and the mics recording them.

Mounting a pro-level strobe on an amateur camera body is not a valid analogy. Even if doing so limits your ability to fully exploit the bells and whistles the strobe provides when interfaced with a pro-level body, it still functions as intended, providing proper illumination to the scene. This is not true in the case of a great mic mounted on the camera.

You suggest that someone who's main interest is shooting video doesn't need to be a stickler for perfect sound as well. This is true ONLY when the video shooter has a dedicated sound person working with him, When he's a one-man-band, such as most event shooters would be for example, and he aspires to be a serious practitioner of the art, he MUST become a perfectionist for both video and sound. Compromising on sound because his focus is on images means the job remains half done. As a working or aspiring professional, or as an enthusiast who wants professional looking results, you have just two alternatives - you team up with someone who will get you perfect sound while you concentrate on the pictures or you invest in the equipment and take the time to learn its use so you can get it yourself. But perfect images with less than perfect sound is never an option.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the new mic. Rode's Videomics have traditionally been a good budget mic, a significant improvement over most in-camera mics, and I would expect the additiion of an internal recorder to make it an even better value for DSLR shooters. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend one to a hobbyist or beginning student of videography. But as a tool to get great audio to accompany your great images in a situation where quality matters, lots of luck with that if it's mounted on the camera.
 
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Nicely put, Steve.

I like to equate using a mic mounted on a camera to using a camera with only one lens and fixed settings. Will it capture images? Yes. Will it be good? Maybe one shot/take in a myriad of bad ones.
 
Great post. got the innovation wheels churning in my head. off to livescribe it all.
Do bear in mind that the venerable Sanken CS1 is a very good compromise that is used by lots of news crews as run&gun indoor as well as last ditch back up for ENG. I have ot and the Sennheiser mkH416, which is what I use outdoors for the same purpose.
I'm guessing the these two new mics are cheaper versions to cater to pros and amateurs alike.
The recording feature must be a great back-up solution too. Grab n Go. But the Lavs and hand-helds still live in the location kit.
Taky can someone show us patterns for these two mics?


Steve House said:
Don't hold your breath about it letting you capture "quality audio." It still doesn't address the main reason for poor quality recordings with mics on or in the camera, which is that 99.99% of the time, the camera position is the absolutely WRONG place to put a mic to record anything except ambiance. Even for closeup dialog, the camera position is going to be 3 or 4 times, usually more, farther away from talent than is the optimum working distance for even the best directional microphones recording his speech. In addition the axis of a mic at the camera will be pointed at the subject parallel to the lens axis, happily picking up all the background noises from activity behind the talent. There's no substitute for proper location and that usually puts the mic above and in front of the talent about 18 inches away from his mouth pointed down at an angle. Do the math ... consider a shot that's a CU of the talent speaking, as you might shoot in a location interview sequence. Camera is about 6 to 8 feet from the subject with a short telephoto setting so you render the image with the most pleasing perspective without distorting his facial features. Mic on the camera puts it is ALSO 6 to 8 feet from the subject, resulting in hollow, distant-sounding, noisy, low level audio. Doesn't matter if you're recording in the camera or with an external recorder - any deficiencys in the quality of the recorder and its preamps, or conversely any excellence they may have for that matter, will be completely masked by the poor quality of the sound picked up by the mic from attempting to record with the mic in that position in the first place .
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Maybe we have to wait untill somebody can show us something ? But then in 99,99999% of the times there will be music on it with the direct sound muted :-p
 
We are talking mostly theory here. This mic is a convenience and a darn good idea. We have no idea about it's noise floor or the quality of it's sound. A completely self contained unit might have a great noise floor precisely because it is not passing through a lot of cables. Nor do we know it's actual pick-up pattern or it's pre-amplifier. We know it is modeled after their NTG-3. What that actually means in practice is anyone's guess. Here is the thing, no one said we couldn't take it off the camera. No one said we couldn't mount it on a mic stand or in a fixed position on a mini boom.

As I said, shooting from an on camera position is only a starting point. No one ever said that I had to use an on-camera flash exclusively on-camera. 99% of the time, I do not. What if these are cheap enough that I could buy 2 or 3 of them and place them around a room? Or put them on a boom and use a remote to see my levels? Or use them as the audio equivalent of a crash cam?

What is important here is that it is a new design concept with big consequences for the industry. My guess is that it will not be very longer before Sennheiser responds. There is no reason on earth that this concept could not feature interchangeable microphones either. What we may be witnessing here is the death of the portable recorder as we know it. Who knows? This could be akin to the arrival of the HDSLR and the death of the adapter. Time will tell.

In the meantime, try thinking a little outside of the box guys.
 
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I dig this out because I regularly check the Rode site for news on the RMHD - but nothing new?
Is this vaporeware?
Not to start the discussion again, but for run´n gun work this just can´t be wrong. And I can even see soundguys having use for a remote shotgun with build in recorder...
Ok maybe only soundguys who work for the government ;o)
 
I met with RODE regional sales manager. He informed the mic will be available near the end of this year with a price tag around $1k.
 
I was guessing around 500€, but oh boy... Anyways, this thing can be put on a boom too, so if it get´s the sound of the ntg3, this can still be a good investment.
 
So when you input it into the DSLR, will it basically just sync for you instead of syncing in post? Are we expecting much better sound that Rode video mic pro?
 
Victor Nhat Nguyen said:
So when you input it into the DSLR, will it basically just sync for you instead of syncing in post? Are we expecting much better sound that Rode video mic pro?
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I assume you're talkikng about the VideoMic HD? If you output the audio into the camera as you shoot, the camera track will be in sync with the picture but the tracks recorded on the mic's built-in recorder will still need to be sync'ed in post. In that situation the camera track would be a scratch track used to aid in sync'ing the actual production tracks, then discarded.
 
Steve House said:
I assume you're talkikng about the VideoMic HD? If you output the audio into the camera as you shoot, the camera track will be in sync with the picture but the tracks recorded on the mic's built-in recorder will still need to be sync'ed in post. In that situation the camera track would be a scratch track used to aid in sync'ing the actual production tracks, then discarded.
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so the track that is in the camera will not sound as good as the track from the sd card inside the VideoMic HD? So what then is the VideoMic HD outputting to the camera?
 
Victor Nhat Nguyen said:
so the track that is in the camera will not sound as good as the track from the sd card inside the VideoMic HD? So what then is the VideoMic HD outputting to the camera?
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It would be outputting a copy of the same signal that is being recorded on the mic's SD card. I would expect that signal to be as good as what the mic itself is recording, the problem would be what subsequently happens to it as it passes through the camera's generally poor preamps and other audio circuits on its way to being recorded along with the video in the camera and with a DSLR there's no way to bypass those preamps.
 
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