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Does 5D + Magic lantern + Juicedlink pre-amp = audio capture success?
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This news piece was shot on a Canon 5D. Audio (Sennheiser wireless) was recorded directly to camera; no other details were given. Sounds decent enough on my laptop – seems like it’s better than a “3”.
Rodney Morris
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Biill,
Biill said: “But ACCEPT that the camera is an Audio 3 and will NEVER be anything else, no matter how much you WISH it would be. The lightening struck in the Chip and in the Processor. There was NO lighting left to hit the beast’s Audio circuits. Sorry.”I have to tell you that I do appreciate the passion with which you explain the fluke that is the Canon series of DSLRs. As a wedding photographer for almost two decades, I expressed similar disdain when the digital world started to encroach upon the testosterone of my Bronica SQA. No one could tell me that anything digital could compare to the warmth and realism of my mediaum format film negative. As a teacher I would tell my students things that were eerily similar in tone to your thread comment. I find myself wondering how embarrassed I would be today were I to meet those same students.
Things changed Biill.
Let me know if I have this right. Based on your thoughtful analysis of my predicament, I am stuck with a camera that provides me Vista-Vision equivalent quality, and can purchase/own it all for what it would currently cost me to rent a PanaFlex Panavision camera for just one weekend. And worst case scenario, I can capture the sound separately similar to how the purists have done it for 80 or so years.
Biill, no apology necessary. I think I am in just the place I’d like to be. Here’s to lightening striking in the same place twice. Cheers.
Jared Cicon
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Hi Rodney,
Thanks for taking the time to provide perspective from the side of the argument that hopes for appreciatable atmospheric static electricity even if it doesn’t rise to the level of the all out lightening required of some of the creatives here at the C.C.. I watched the entire news report link you provided for viewing on the vimeo video engine and my opinion of the audio potential for the 5D has been strengthened.
Jared -
Hey Danny,
As usual, I love your passion. Good to see you posting your thoughts here on the C.C.. When we believe strongly in something, I believe it is our responsibility to stand and be counted. You are a stalwart. I am invigorated by your passion and refuse to accept Biill’s assumption that the 5D will only ever offer a ‘3’ out of ’10 where the audio is concerned. Funny thing: It is always proponents of the status quo (Biill) that inspire mavericks like ourselves to prove them wrong. Let’s aspire to a a 5D audio ‘8’ or a ‘9’ eh? “Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.”
Jared -
Jared,
While I think Bill’s assessment of the audio quality is a little off, he is correct in stating that the current 5D/7D audio offering (with ML) is not as capable as the video imaging and is still not as good as recording double system to a “quality” recorder (I’m not sure the Zoom falls into that category). It would be an interesting comparison to do an A/B test of audio recorded on the camera and recorded to the Zoom H4N. Neither one has great A/D conversion, though they are perfectly acceptable in many situations. Lucas film sound quality they are not, but most projects that I work on day in and day out don’t require that level of audio precision. It’s all about what the situation demands.Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer -
To All,
This is a great string. I really appreciate everyone’s approach and comments. We are here to throw the bones out on the table and pick them apart with passion to constantly improve our work.
As a tangential thought, I don’t like the HDV format because the audio is only 384 kbps mpeg 1. There’s the video compression too. I thought I had heard that some networks limit the amount of HDV. Perhaps someone can fill in the info about that. Anyway, my dislike and complaints by others have not stopped tens of thousands of people from using HDV professionally.
The conversion of analog to digital audio was a bumpy ride. Golden eared folks complained about the hardness and edge of digital audio. Most of those complaints went away after the shift from 16 to 24-bit recording.
Where are the Canons on this spectrum? Dunno. As mentioned there’s A/D conversion and AGC and who knows what else to consider.
Rodney’s clip sounds OK on my laptop, and I guess it’s been compressed to play on the web. That doesn’t help, but it’s not necessarily unfair because even broadcast DTV and cable are compressed to some degree. I’d be curious to hear what it would sound like before these compressions. Rodney, was this video shot with the firmware upgrade?
If the 5 and & can be fixed, like the Hubble space telescope, that’d be nice. That Panasonic may already have a piece of gear to replace the 5 and 7 is typical of the “buy the new thing” marketing approach that keeps companies going. The revenue from new gear funds more research to find better looking better sounding even newer gear.
Side thought: I don’t know but, perhaps part of the problem is that people have been sending line level to the cameras. That’s usually the preferred way to send audio to a camera but that was established back when feeding line level meant the preamp at the input was bypassed. These days, it’s much more likely that they just stuck a 40 dB pad in front of the mic preamp.
Has anyone tried sending mic level from a mixer?
Again, nice string folks!
Regards,
Ty Ford
Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field GuideWatch Ty play guitar -
Ty, good thoughts going on there. I’ll try to add something quasi-intelligent.
The point of the clip that I posted wasn’t to showcase the quality of the audio, in a sense. Rather, it was to show that the Canon 5D can record acceptable audio in relation to its intended broadcast means. It seems that for nearly any cable, over-the-air and web delivery formats, the Canon can capture audio that will be acceptable for news reporting and documentary style shooting. I say this because of the amount of processing/compression that occurs in every step of the broadcast chain. Audio can, and regularly does, get compromised somewhere along the line (aggressive comp/limiters, codecs, tape ops who are lazy with level referencing, etc.).
A couple of weeks ago I did a three camera shoot for FoxSports. I fed one camera line level, the second camera mic level and the third camera was mixed mono line level feed (for reference only). There was a perfectly rational reason for doing it this way, but I won’t bore you with the details of that. While A/Bing cameras 1 and 2 return in my headphones, I could not hear any discernible difference between the two feeds. Granted, the monitoring sections of most broadcast cameras suck. However, if I can’t hear any real difference between the two in this most basic test, then it’s doubtful that the end user will hear the difference from their TV set, AV system or computer speakers after the audio has been compressed for broadcast/download.
I know that I haven’t touched on the subject of how small audio compromises can become larger problems later in the processing chain, but again I look at it from the end user standpoint, not necessarily the purist, audiophile requirements. That doesn’t give those of us who work in broadcast the opportunity to be sloppy in our audio capturing techniques! But it does provide the proper perspective that often aids in good relations with producers, camera ops and anyone else on “set” that gets easily annoyed with an overly ambitious sound recordist.
Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer -
The sensor on the Canon 5D is four times as large as the sensor on the Panasonic, which has serious consequences, mostly good but some bad. The Panasonic is also a lot more expensive, and still requires additional gear for ergonomics.
What I’d like to see is a Panasonic GH2 type camera with a larger sensor, and either XLR with a good A/D converter or digital audio inputs. With digital audio inputs, you can feed it audio off of a nice mixer and not have to worry about sync. Alternatively, timecoding on both the camera and the recorder would make syncing a cinch.
I haven’t tried PluralEyes yet, but I am disappointed I can’t give it a bunch of clips and have it figure out what’s what. The way way some folks talk about that program, you’d think it can walk on (virtual) water.
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Tony,
I own Pluraleyes and I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but it works very well.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field GuideWatch Ty play guitar -
Ty,
I think the initial post stated that you need to identify the video clip that a particular audio clip corresponds to before PluralEyes can do its work. In other words, you can just dump a full days work on the program and expect it to sort it at all out. I haven’t installed the trial yet, so I don’t know how it works.
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