[Richard Crowley]

What kind of clip-on lavs require AC power? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

[Richard Crowley]

I already have two Shure clip on wireless mics but was considering something more boom like.

Why? What are you trying to accomplish? Is there some problem you are trying to fix?

So for your suggestion two shotgun mics pointed respectively at the interviewer and subject would get the job done?

1) I never suggested two shotgun mics. It is very rare to see two shotgun mics except on larger scale cine/video productions. Again, I have to wonder what you are trying to achieve by replacing your clip-on lavs (wireless or not) with shotgun(s)?

2) You never confirmed indoors vs. outdoors (or any of the other clarifying questions). But if this is indoors, you won’t find much favor for shotguns. There are typically too many close reflections indoors to permit shotgun mics to work properly. Please review my response where I mentioned hypercardioid mics for use indoors.

[Richard Crowley]

Not clear whether you are talking about a microphone just for the interview subject, or a single microphone to be used for both interviewer and subject? Also not clear whether you are shooting video and whether the mic visible in the shot is acceptable or not?

1) It may be possible to find a microphone such as a (relatively exotic) figure-8 microphone that can be placed on a table with interviewer and subject on opposite sides facing each other. But this typically requires constant vigilence to be sure that both people remain within the working distance (no more than 18 inches) from the microphone. I wouldn’t recommend this for a beginner.

2) I can’t think of anything you could place on a coffee table and expect to get decent sound from someone on a couch. Way too far away. Unless you are talking about “transcription grade” audio where the only purpose is to transcribe the speech into written word (i.e. nobody is going to hear the recording)

The time-proven methods of doing this kind of interview is one of these options:

1) Use a sensitive hyper-cardioid (indoors) or “shotgun” (outdoors) microphone on a boom which is kept aimed at the subject’s mouth. The reasonable working distance is rarely greater than 2-3 feet depending on how loud the subject talks and the acoustics of the room and the ambient noise and how good the microphone is (sensitivity and self-noise, etc.) If the subject and the interviewer are close enough together, and if there is little incidence of talking over each other, it is possible for a good boom operator to use the same mic for both the interviewer and the subject. If you are using the mic for only one person (the subject, typically), and the subject is not moving, it is reasonable to put the microphone on a boom stand. But if you are using the mic for both subject and interviewer, or if the subject is moving around, you really need a skilled boom operator with headphones to monitor the microphone signal.

2) The interviewer can use a hand-held “stick mic” and hold it up to the subject’s mouth when they are speaking, or bring it back to their mouth when they are speaking. Again, it is possible to get good results with this method as long as the interviewer remembers to ALWAYS hold the mic close to the mouth of whomever is speaking. Note that most amateur interviewers quickly forget to do this and ruin the audio.

3a) Use a clip-on lavaliere microphone on the subject. Although most professional production sound people prefer the sound of a good boom mic (hyper or shotgun), the clip-on is the most sure-fire way for someone with limited experience and/or resources to get decent results. It is highly unlikely that you could expect to get decent sound from a single clip-on lav mic shared by both the subject and the interviewer. The interviewer needs their own microphone if the sound of the questions is important for the production. (Some styles edit out the interviewer and use only the subject’s dialog.)

3b) A variant of the clip-on lav is a “headset mic” which clips around the back of the head and rests on the ears (like a pair of eyeglasses worn backwards).

[Richard Crowley]

“even using the DNxHD codec I am not even getting an hour of recording on a 120 Gb drive.” – Neil Adamson

“120GB SSD drives at my computer sales outlet (nearly wholesale) are about $100. That allows 1 hour of ProRes or DNxHD recording on my HDStudios.” – Shaun Roemich

These statements appear to disagree. My impression was that there were only a few SSD which would perform properly in the BMD recorder products. And last time I checked, none of the recommended models are available at my (relatively well-stocked) local vendor. (https://www.euninc.com)

[Richard Crowley]

“I don’t understand how you think closed captioning would be needed for an on camera recorder?”

But if they were in business to make a profit, why would they deliberately limit their horizon to only the “on-camera recorder” market? That’s the part we don’t understand. The introduction of the “studio” rack-mount version at least shows that they are thinking beyond “on-camera” use. But still not quite there when you can buy a whole case of tapes for the price of one hard drive that won’t even hold 60 minutes.

And even if codec licenses added $100 to the price of each unit, it would still be a very attractive replacement for tape machines. And codec licenses are likely a tiny fraction of that amount.

[Richard Crowley]

“Personally, I do not understand wanting an AVCHD codec on a device such as this.”

Yes, and apparently BMD doesn’t understand it either. But BMD could sell thousands (perhaps 10s of thousands) more of these devices if they offered higher compression, and the support of timecode and closed-captioning for broadcast users (where it is required by law).

My local dealer recounted an exchange with the BMD people at a recent trade show where they seemed to have never considered that people are actively seeking replacement for the dead tape technology in these kinds of applications. The solid-state, no moving parts technology is so much less expensive to produce that they could really clean up the market as all those millions of tape machines die off.

[Richard Crowley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Adamson for your review. I was thinking many of the same things about those products. I had the same Mac/PC issues with my AJA KiPro recorder, but it offers much more manageable compression codecs, and provides an extremely handy variety of transcoding and conversion and connector input/output options.

And for single camera recording, I have found my Panasonic AG-HMR10, even at $1000 higher price to be more convenient and more economical to use. Now, if BMD offers some more “real-world” compression and codec options (as you suggest) it will be a very compelling product.

I fully expect the price of SSD to drop quite significantly as the price of semiconductor memory continues its historic $/GB decline, as well as SSDs slowly overtake rotating mechanical drives in everyday use. So the price of the media I believe is only an early-adopter issue.

I agree that BMD has a rather incomprehensible pricing philosophy. On one hand they make some amazing products with killer features (granted, not necessarily all available on first release), at remarkable prices. But OTOH, some of their products and accessories seem unbelievably overpriced by comparison. Almost like the big-ticket items are “loss-leaders” and they make it back selling accessories.

[Richard Crowley]

I had thought about normalizing each one, but I am under the impression that this will not amplify them equally. If one or two of the files has a relatively loud sound. Normalizing will make the overall file quieter. Am I correct.

No, that is not correct, at least as I understand your question. If you have several files of varying peaks, and you want to get them all to peak at -8dB, then you do NOT want to “amplify them equally”. You want to amplify each one by the amount necessary to bring it to -8dB. That is the definition of “normalize”.

It sounds like you want to normalize each file to -8dB. By definition that will NOT “amplify them equally” because that would not achieve getting each of them to -8dB.

OTOH, if you mean that you want to combine all the clips and then normalize the lot all together, you are correct, it will normalize the loudest part to -8dB, and amplify all the other clips by that amount (which will mean that the rest will probably all be below -8dB)

I use the batch function in Adobe Audition to do tasks like that.

[Richard Crowley]

Depends on what is wrong with them. If it is something obvious like a munged output connector, it is probably worth a shot at DIY repair. But if the problem is unknown or difficult, you have to make the trade-off decision whether it is worth the risk and effort to try DIY.

[Richard Crowley]

If you look at the Countryman page that Mr. Reynolds cited, the Samson T32 appears to use some sort of 3-pin connector. Pin 1 is clearly the ground/shield, and in all cases pins 2 and 3 are connected together. I suspect that one of those pins is the audio input and the other is the DC bias voltage output. If you have the transmitter, it should be nearly trivial to work out which is which, and what the DC voltage is.

And, refering to the same Countryman page, the Sony UWP appears to use a 3.5mm mini TRS phone connector. The sleeve is ground/shield, and I suspect that the tip is the audio signal and the ring is the DC bias power. (Or possibly vice-versa, but I don’t think so).