need advice for seminar taping

[Mark Suszko]

Run the lav’s reciever output to an audio mixer, run outputs from the mixer to one channel each of BOTH cameras. Set one to record a little hotter and one a little lower. This is what I do with multiple cams.

An alternative if you lack a mixer is to run the audio into the first camera, then run audio OUT of that camera, into the second camera. That only costs you one extra cable. Second camera’s audio is not as easily controlled for level that way, but better than just on-camera shotgun alone. And NOW, long as the audio runs E-E thru the first camera regardless of transport status, you should be able to switch tapes on either cam, as long as one is running to cover the other, and not miss a word.

If you can set the camera’s to free-run time code and time-of day time code, before you leave for the location, no matter how often you stop and start them for these kinds of events, you can find the shots in the edit and line them up for match-cutting quickly. Even if they drift a few seconds off, magnify the audio waveform display on the audio track and you will see where the waveforms match up. The time code only has to get you “in the neighborhood”, so to speak, and you can tweak the final re-alignment by eye and ear.

Another reason to use time-of-day for your time code is that no matter where in the room they are, someone who is following the action can note a section of interest, glance at their watch, and write that time down, and the notes they take will match up pretty close to what the camera shot for the edit. We do this a lot in news shooting, where the reporter or producer may not be anywhere near the shooter. Long as they can tell time and write it down, they can keep a good shot log anywhere they can hear the action.

[Alan Lloyd]

If your presenter is wearing a wireless lavalier, put a Y-adapter inline behind the receiver and run lines to both cameras.

It will probably work if you’re using a hardlined lav too. XLR Y-adapters are pretty standard things. You need a single XLR-F to two XLR-M to make this work.

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks for the tip Alan! The gig is tomorrow and I can’t get to a store but I’ll keep this in mind for future projects.

Thanks again

[Mark Suszko]

So, Gilles, how did it go? Don’t leave us all hanging!

[Gilles Gagnon]

Hey Mark! Thanks for asking! I just got back.

Well I can tell you that the responses and info in this thread helped me out A LOT!

I think it went fairly well. I’ll really see when I start the post. I had the lav on the Speaker connected to the roving cam and the other (safety cam) was using a condenser mic on one channel which was on a stand.

One thing that I hope won’t be too much of a problem is that the seating was in a U formation (13 attendees) with the Speaker at the open end of the U. I broke the 180 rule several times taking shots of the attendees asking questions, etc. I will establish right off the bat in the video, this configuration and hopefully, the eye-line won’t be confusing when the 180 is broken (by that I mean at times I was a the bottom of the U shooting “up” and at other times I was on the left side shooting down toward the bottom of the U to capture attendee comments or discussions with the Speaker.

I’m sure I’ll have some color corrections to do and lots of vol level adjustments but I’m hoping it’ll be a good product in the end. 3 hours shot… 6 tapes.

Thanks sooooo much to you and the others who took the time to share their video wisdom.
GIlles

[Mark Suszko]

A quick and dirty audio solution is the free plug-in called “Levelator”, just drag your audio file onto the icon and done, if you’re in too much hurry to do everything by hand.

The 180 rule can and has been broken at times when the reasoning is good. One reason yuo shoot a lot of cut-aways is to bridge that change with the intermediary shot.

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks Mark,

Levelator sounds great! I just downloaded it!

I will first clean up the audio of the condenser mic with soundsoap as there was more hissing. Then I’ll give levelator a try. It may be tricky because this one track contains various audio levels due to the various distances of attendees to the mic and various softness / loudness of voices.

I may end up having to do lots of manual vol adj.

Do you have tips on how to make the audio (voice) sound best? (ie. normalize, compress, etc).

[Mark Suszko]

The COW Audio forum is the better source to ask than me, but what I rely on is a combination of parametric EQ and downward expansion to clean up most noises. The noise killing plug-ins work best for things like lamp ballasts and fridge motors that make steady sounds that are audible but out of the normal range of the human voice. When you apply the filter too aggressively the voice character also takes a quality hit you can hear.

Levelator is supposed to normalize levels all across a file and tweak the EQ all in one step. It’s nothing you can’t do and maybe do better on your own, the main attractions are it is free and fast.
Also, it insists on “phoning home” thru your internet connection every so often when you’re using it. That makes me a little nervous.

[Gilles Gagnon]

I know what you mean about overcranking the noise reducers. I’m hoping to elimiate some of the hiss that the condenser mic picked up (room tone).

what do you mean by “phoning home” ?

[Mark Suszko]

The app checks in periodically with it’s creators. What they say to each other, I don’t know. You can read about it in the shrink-wrap agreement when you activate it. Mostly I guess it will periodically try to sell you something.

Well, the week’s wrapping up, I’m going to go help judge state science fair finals, then my date and I are going to see “Iron Man 2”. Kind of a Geek’s Weekend. Have yourselves a great weekend, everybody, and don’t forget to call Mom Sunday…