Wireless Audio to Camera for a big event.

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DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I got a big shoot coming up in April at a local university. They are bringing in lighting people to rig the stage and lights and audio people for clean audio. This will be sorta like a concert type setting. I am going to have 2 DVX100a cameras. One camera is going to locked down on a tripod on the upper level of the basketball arena and the other camera will be on the floor, roving. I need to run good mixed audio to both cameras.

So do I just give the audio folks my 2 Lectrosonic Wireless transmitters (XLR Cube) to the audio engineer to plug in to their board? Do I need anything else like a 1/4" cable or adapter?

My only concern with getting a wireless audio feed to the camera is that the audio might have drops or interference with other wireless mics or equipment in the arena that night. If we do a sound check and I notice that, I am probably gonna be screwed since I can't hard wire a cable to either camera from the board. The distance is just to far for the locked down camera.

The "wide shot" camera is positioned to far away to hard line it into their board since the audio board would actually be on the floor near the stage. I guess they would have to run a "Multi" box from the floor all the way up to the upper level of the arena for me to hard wire the audio feed to the camera if I went that route.

Wireless seems like the best way for my situation....what do you all think?

This will be the biggest paid shoot I've done to date and I want to make sure I get the audio locked down in advance. I want to have a back up plan in place in case the wireless option is a no go. The event is not till the end of April so I still have some time.

Thanks!
 
How far physically is the lock down camera?
What model Lectro plug on transmitters?
Stereo feed or mono?
Music? or speech?
If speech how many mics on stage?
With it being your "biggest paid shoot" ever do you have a dedicated audioguy on your crew?
Reason for having to send audio to both cameras? (usually not a bad thing, but when the
situations are difficult sometimes you have to weigh that option)

Seems a bit odd that as your only camera at the back of the room..
that you would WANT to be so elevated looking downwards on peoples faces like that.
Personally I think you'd want that camera more eye level back at the board.
There's a reason why its traditionally done that way. If this is your biggest paying job ever, I have to assume you're newer to the biz, and at this point perhaps reinventing the wheel should be left for the future? Not to mention it helps your sound issues.
 
Well, a good thing to start with would be to get the name and number of the university's contact at the audio company and have a chat with him about what they can do for you.

Assuming they can give you a balanced audio output from their system, that can go several hundred feet over XLR (assuming there's a patch for the cable); I don't know how far you're thinking is too far for wired, but if possible, I think a wired feed for the stationary camera would be the way to go. Then you could go with a wireless feed for the roaming camera, mostly just for purposes of syncing the footage to the master audio track from the stationary camera in editing (as I understand it :) ).

I've done a show that sounds somewhat similar to this in the past, and one thing that I noticed (and this is going to apply to probably most times you get a feed from the sound guys)--the sound guys are mixing for what sounds good in the room, which is not necessarily what you're going to want. For example, the show I did started with a bagpipe, of all things, leading a processional. Obviously, there was no need for the sound guys to mic the piper, you could probably hear him three buildings away :D, but on my audio track there was nothing. So my advice would be to get a better idea of what's going on during the event than I did, and based on that, maybe bring some of your own audio to try and capture anything that the PA won't be.
 
Imagine your at a basketball game in a decent size arena. The lockdown camera would be 1 level up from the floor at about half court. This arena is not an NBA type arena. I'm thinking it sits no more than 10,000 people.

The stage is being set up on the court. So the locked down camera is providing a wide shot of the stage not people's faces.

This going to be a dance performance type show. Various dance groups competing for the top prize. The only dialogue that I know of would come from the Emcee or host. Everything else is all performance from the groups.

The distance from the board to the locked down camera is about the length of the court plus half of another court. Its a pretty good distance. Its not my decision why the audio guys need to set up where they are going to be which is on the side but in front of the stage (I will try to post a diagram to better explain this!).

I have a Lectrosonic H187 and a UH190 transmitter. Not sure on the feed choice of stereo or mono.

Rippie, I am not new to the biz as I have been working in TV News for 14 years now. Ive been shooting small projects on the side since 2005 but this is my first big paid job to shoot an event and deliver a professional quality dvd. Are you suggesting that I hire my own sound guy and not use the people that are doing the audio for the show?

Good ideas Captain Pierce! There is a production meeting tomorrow with all parties involved and I will tell you all what we came up with. I agree a hard line cable would be the best bet for the locked down camera.
 
Seconding Captain Pierce's suggestion of pre-pro meetings... when wireless is in play, it's helpful to coordinate frequencies so that their systems don't interfere with yours, and vice versa.

The suggestion of hiring your own sound guy... this is key. This is not an audio engineer to work in lieu of the arena/event sound crew, but rather a dedicated sound person who can be attentive to YOUR recorded sound for the duration of the event.

I would suggest this:

Run hard-line and/or wireless to one channel of each camera (mono feed). For the roaming camera, record on-cam mic to the second channel. For the locked-down, set up an external shotgun mic on a stand next to or near the camera, and plug it in to the second channel. These will give you ambient sounds that can really help smooth out your mix in post.

Hire a sound person, and have them possibly work on a hard-line feed direct to a solid-state recorder, for a reliable board-fed recording to be laid in during post. This can locate the audio recorder very close to the board, and if something interrupts the camera feed, you have a net. Depending on the equipment available, the recording can be a stereo feed from the board (if available), which is only really crucial for the PB music for the dance teams, or if amulti-track recorder is in play, a stereo feed plus crowd reax mics, or floor mics for movement from the stage. Said sound person can also keep an eye on the feeds to the cameras.
 
DVX100Shooter said:
Rippie, I am not new to the biz as I have been working in TV News for 14 years now. Ive been shooting small projects on the side since 2005 but this is my first big paid job to shoot an event and deliver a professional quality dvd. Are you suggesting that I hire my own sound guy and not use the people that are doing the audio for the show?
Click to expand...

It wasnt a diss towards you saying you were newer, and if you're not great.
When i say you should have an audioguy for this its not to replace
the "house pa" guys. Realize those guys arent there to worry about a feed
that they give you.

House PA's more often than not have issues regarding their feeds. (buzz, hum, just a bad signal in general)
Im sure since you do news you understand and have done hundreds of presser's with mult's.

You could get totally lucky and the signal to you is great, but the odd's are
there are going to be issues with it that need quick solutions, and the right
gear to fix it. adaptors, ground lifts, etc..etc.

As far as using your 187's. Thats a pretty dang old vhf model that I wouldnt trust to do jobs where you CAN redo the takes if there is a problem.
With this you dont get another chance. And as far as music going through them, you're goin to take a quality hit. You're also going to take a quality hit recording music into the dvx. Im not dissing it, im just making you aware.

Is the music prerecorded? If so perhaps you can lay it in later. Get a scratch on site.
and try to get some ambience crowd stuff to lay over the music.
Could be an easier solution for you if you want to keep your crew small.


If i was doing this for the limited info I have..
I would probably do the following.
Set up 2 stage mic's to get dance team noise, countoffs, feet noise..etc
2 crowd mic's .
Pa feed.
If there was a single Stick mic for the MC I would if possible take a split off that mic prior to it hitting the PA board. (right out the back of the receiver if possible)

I would run through my own mixer creating my own mix of all the elements,
and go hardwired to the lockdown camera no matter what the distance. Line level can go quite a ways without any issues.
2nd camera I would either flip to camera mic for one more sound element that post could possibly use later,
or send a 1 track reference wireless feed for sync'ing reasons.

(if i was paid for my recorder as well, i would do the exact same but also record iso's of everything)
 
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Wow great ideas....this is beginning to be overwhelming for me!!! I am glad I am thinking of this now and not waiting till its like two days out! Since you stated my 187 and 190 are old models that you wouldn't trust, what do you recommend I use in the event I can't get most of what you stated in terms of my own audio person etc. I got my B&H catalog here and can try to order something if need be.
 
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Today a friend mentioned to me that I could get an Audio Interface box made by companies like Edirol or M-Audio as an example then bring my laptop to the shoot and pull up either Soundtrack Pro or Garageband and use that to record clean audio to an external hard drive. I am told I could come out of the Audio board into that audio interface box and then from there into my laptop/external hard drive. Would you consider that an option or scrap that idea? He mentioned that there might be a setting in both applications that allows me to set the recording frame rate to match the same as what I am shooting with. I looked in the pref's in both apps and didn't see anything that allowed me to select a recording frame rate.
 
Live event once in a lifetime recording + laptop recording = good chance for a crash, losing everything. Something like a Sound Devices 788T would be the right tool for this. I would just hire a guy like Rippie or C2V and let them worry about all of this for you. Audio at live events can be a ***** and you get no second takes. A good sound mixer is worth their weight in gold in these situations. You hire someone good and then you get them the gear that they need. If you don't, chances are you will regret not doing this.

Very timely you mention this, I have a meeting this week with a corporate client exactly about this, how to best document their live events on video and audio cleanly. They gave a presentation to me to cut that they had shot down in the Bahamas by hotel AV staff that was a freaking nightmare, wireless mics cutting in and out, tons of noise and RF hiss and hits. I told them to hire me and I can tell them what they will need to get a good picture and sound quality. $300 million dollar company that lives and dies by its live presentations, glad they are hiring me.

Dan
 
And you'll get a free trip to the Bahamas. :-)

Not to start too deeply into the laptop recording issue again, but laptop recording, with the laptop using the right software and treated properly is just as safe as a Deva or Sound Devices recorder. Lots of features are now being recorded with Boom Recorder or Meta Corder as their primary recorder and even more are now using one of those software products as their backup system.

Don't get me wrong, if I could justify purchasing a 788 or Deva or Cantar I would love to have one. But, I've recorded numerous shorts and features using Boom Recorder and have never had a problem. On the last feature I recorded, I turned in more than 180GB of audio and not a blip.

Phil
 
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