Thoughts on this audio?

[Richard Crowley]

Yes, it does sound like it is clipping. Although the waveform does not show the typical flattened peaks, so something more complex is going on there.

The background noise is a different issue, and all the usual techniques apply to increasing the signal to noise ratio.

[Noam Osband]

thoughts on what might be happening? I’m figuring the signal from the shotgun is clipping so it’s clipping before it enters the camera hence the reason the wave form looks the way it does.

[Richard Crowley]

Yes it seems possible that it is clipping in the microphone, especially in a noisy ambient where the subject is likely speaking loudly. That is one of the reasons why it is popular to use a low-sensitivity dynamic microphone in a loud environment. Of course you MUST hold the microphone close to the subject’s mouth in order to hear them. This is not the kind of ambient where distant shotgun mics perform well for dialog capture.