Will This Work?

G

Grasshopper

Member
I haven't been able to accumulate the funds for a good wireless microphone and I was thinking of a low tech solution.

I have a small Sony mini dv camcorder that I use mostly as a deck. It could fit inconspicuously in a jacket pocket and I could plug a lappel mic into the microphone jack.

If I used the small camcorder to record my audio and then synched it up with my dvx footage in post, would it work?

What do I need to be mindful of before I make this attempt?

Is there audio quality issues with this type of set up?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
The audio quality will be as good as the audio quality of your mini camera. However, would there be 24p/60i audio sync issues?
 
Ahhh...I believe your right.

I actually shot the scene already. And I synched up the audio at first, but then it eventually goes out of synch. I didn't think about the fps issue. That's why it goes out of synch.

Thanks for your help.
 
The fps issue can be negated in your NLE. The synch issue is gonna happen with any second system audio that is not jammed to your camera (you can correct for synch drift in post but it is a ton of extra work).

The problems I see are the noise from the camera you have on the talent and more importantly, lav mics require power and I am pretty sure your camera will not provide the power from it's mini-jack (I could be wrong without knowing the details of the camera and lav you are considering).

Also as Horse said, the quality of audio on this 2nd camera is likely to be very poor.

A lot of wedding videographers will use a MiniDisk recorder with a lav on their subjects to record audio. You can pick up a MiniDisk recorder for a few hundred dollars. The issues there are, you would probably need to bring the audio in through analog connectors and you will again have synch issues but those can be tweaked in your NLE. Ultimately (IMO) it's a lot of extra trouble to go through for a few hundred dollars in savings.
 
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