Zoom H4N owners

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I just got my Zoom tonight from B&H. I have a shoot tomorrow and won't have time to fully read the manual and understand it. Just wondering if someone could give me a crash course on using this device. For my shoot, I just need to get a feed from the audio board to the Zoom. I bought a 8gb card. My shoot should last around 3 hours give or take.

thanks in advance!
 
As much as I like the Zoom, I think the manual is not so great. Fortunately, it's not too hard to figure out by just experimenting. The main inputs can take either a xlr or a balanced phono plug in. So the work flow would be plug in your source, push record once and set the record level, when ready hit play to begin recording.

You can go into the menus to select mode (most likely you'll want stereo) and can choose between mp3 and .wav. you can get a lot more recording time with mp3, but you may have plenty of ram to use .wav (I think the manual does have a chart showing record times).

Play with it as much as you can tonight.
 
XLR input is mic level, and the 1/4" and 1/8" jacks are line level, although they're consumer line level (-10dBV instead of pro +4dBu) so it'll clip a little easier. Never set the level below 1.0 as it'll be recording a clipped signal.
 
Gohanto said:
XLR input is mic level, and the 1/4" and 1/8" jacks are line level, although they're consumer line level (-10dBV instead of pro +4dBu) so it'll clip a little easier. Never set the level below 1.0 as it'll be recording a clipped signal.
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Very true. I'm glad I made that same discovery before leaving for Lollapalooza last year. It would have ruined nearly 20 hours of band interviews...

Great unit! I absolutely love mine. It has held up very well. The only thing I can suggest is to get a better case for it. SKB (I think) is making a case for it now that has space for all accessories. Or you could just go to Dick's sports and buy a gun case for it like I did.
 
Does the H4n have issues with sync drift like the H4 has? When I record audio in the H4 along with video, there were major issues with it not keeping reasonable sync without cutting up the wav file.

Is this fixed with the H4n?
 
Chadfish said:
Does the H4n have issues with sync drift like the H4 has? When I record audio in the H4 along with video, there were major issues with it not keeping reasonable sync without cutting up the wav file.

Is this fixed with the H4n?
Click to expand...

It seems to be much better than the H4, however, it does not have professional timecode, and on very long recordings, you may have to make slight adjustments. You might get lucky, you might not, but it does seem to be relatively easy to fix.
 
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