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HVX200 audiio distortion
So I had a video shoot the other day that i completely butchered because the audio was distorted. I am new to the HVX200 camera.
For this shoot I used two lav mics. Put the first receiver on channel 1 and set it to mic line. then attached the second receiver to channel 2 and set it to mic line. Channel 1 and Channel 2 were ON. the audio levels were low. mic’d up my speakers and listened to them on headphones. I heard them all distorted but when i would hear one ear i could hear one mic and the other ear heard the other mic. is that normal? i couldn’t do anything because of time constraints and thought i could fix the audio in post-production. which i learned the hard way you can’t.
Any tips to avoid this again.
should i be resetting the lavs everytime i use them? like scan everytime i shoot somewhere different? is that protocol?
thanks,
Golnaz -
3 Replies
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Hello Goinaz welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.
OK, you heard there was distortion and you recorded anyway and you got what you got, a mess. You are not alone. Many people have made this first-timer mistake.
So you leaned that doesn’t work and you learned to pay attention to your headphones. What does work is knowing how loud you can set the inputs of your camera and/or the outputs of your receivers so you don’t record at levels that are too high.
This is not rocket science, it’s called gain staging. You can do this, but you have to pay attention to the details. The transmitters have sensitivity adjustments, the receivers have output adjustments, the camera has input adjustments. They all have to be adjusted correctly to get the best results.
You have one receiver feeding one channel and the second receiver feeding channel 2. That’s as it should be. That way you can adjust each voice separately, as needed in postproduction.
I don’t know what you mean by resetting the receivers, but you may need to adjust the entire gain stage, depending on how loud the person speaking is.
Perhaps my little book would help.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Audio Forum Leader
Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog -
thank goodness i am not the only n00b that has made that mistake. I am purchasing this book right now! thank you so much!
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“Put the first receiver on channel 1 and set it to mic line.”
Not sure exactly what that means. Note carefully that “Mic-Level” and “Line-Level” are VERY DIFFERENT things.
It sounds like your wireless receivers were putting out “Line-Level”, but your camcorder was set for “Mic-Level”. Generally speaking, the output level of the source and the input level of the destination must match. If your wireless receivers are putting out Line-Level, then you must set your camcorder inputs for Line-Level. And conversely, if your source (wireless receiver or microphone or Direct Box or whatever) is putting out Mic-Level, then set your camcorder for Mic-Level.
Good choice getting a copy of Ty’s book. Welcome to the wonderful world of audio.
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