[Cora Romanow]

Thank you John! I see the little inputs switches and have them set up properly now.

I’ll answer your question first, but then I have a couple of follow-up questions.

I am a wildlife biologist who studies animal communication, and am currently in the field observing mule and white-tailed deer. I am taking video of the deer and hoping to opportunistically capture some of their vocalizations while I’m doing this. If I do capture the vocalizations, I’m going to need to figure out how to separate the audio file from the video file in order to analyze it in the acoustic software program I use called PRAAT (PRAAT likes .wav files).

When I make audio recordings using my Marantz recorder and directional mic, I always record in mono format because I am often recording animals that are moving through their environment. When I analyze the sounds they make, I want it all to be on one track rather than distributed over two as might happen if I were to record in stereo and don’t move the mic exactly in step with the animal’s movements. Does that make sense? I have never attempted to capture recordings from a video camera before, but I have my sennheiser directional mic hooked up here and I’m video-taping for a different project, so I figured why not also attempt to capture the vocalizations for my work on communication?

That being said, I have a question: The mic and xlr cable set up for both my Marantz and the nxcam only uses one of the inputs at a time. That is, for the Marantz I have an input for “mono” and a separate input for “stereo” – I just use the mono input. Here on the nxcam, I have the two inputs but only one lxr cable that goes to one directional mic … so how is stereo recording being done? Am I recording in mono by default by only plugging on input into the camera? (Maybe I am missing a fundamental concept about stereo recording on this camera.) See the second attached image to understand what I’m saying about just one input here if I didn’t make any sense.

One more question: Would converting the recording to mono in the editor diminish the quality or change the recording itself at all? I have never heard of doing that before.

Thanks so much for your response!

Cora