[Richard Crowley]

Don’t gloss over the LICENSING that Mr. Engelhardt mentioned. Possession of a recording (CD, MP3, whatever) does NOT give you the right or license to “broadcast” it. And that applies to live performance, as well. You can research internet “broadcasting” licenses from the usual suspects online (ASCAP, BMI, Harry Fox, etc.)

[Richard Crowley]

“Professional appearance” didn’t seem to be one of Mr. Landajuela’s problem statements. My take is that he is looking for something workable, not something “pretty” or “impressive”.

For that matter, experienced professionals have ended up using painter’s poles from the home improvement warehouse because the airline lost their baggage with the $1500 pole in it. Ingenuity trumps technical snobbery every time in my book.

[Richard Crowley]

You can buy (or make) an adapter to go from the large threads on a painter’s pole to the 5/8-27 threads for western mic threads, or the 3/8-20 euro standard.
Spending some quality time with Google will reveal several clever designs for DIY shock mounts and even windscreen solutions. It isn’t rocket surgery. If you have a zero budget, then DIY is a quite viable way of achieving decent results.
Of course, you can’t DIY a good microphone. Under those circumstances, my entire budget would go into the microphone.

[Richard Crowley]

Please tell us exactly what camera you are using. Else we can only offer generic advice which may not be useful to you. You say that your unidentified camera does not have balanced input, but that is NOT a show-stopper. Many people use cameras with 3.5mm mini-phone mic inputs. There are many ways around that which produce decent results. You may need nothing more than a decent microphone and a $20 painter’s extension pole from the home-improvement warehouse store.

[Richard Crowley]

I would FIRST try capturing for an hour from some OTHER source to establish WHERE the problem is. Since the audio and video are literally, physically locked together on the tape, I can’t see how that could be the problem, or how using an external sync generator would have any affect at all on this problem.

Do you have any other long-form capture experience with this Decklink card? There have been several infamous examples of computer interfaces that had problems with long-form audio/video sync. The problem was the design of the interface card. The audio and video sampling are, by necessity, done by separate circuits, and their rates are not locked to each other. Not a particular problem for short clips, but too much drift for long-form.

[Richard Crowley]

Are you talking about making an electronic circuit? Are you talking about putting it in the mic line? Does the mic need phantom power?
It would be much easier to do this in the mixer (whether physical or in post-prodution mix-down).

You didn’t mention whether this was for a live real-time mixed performance, or whether this is for a recording session with separately-tracked microphones? The optimal way of doing this depends a lot on details not disclosed.

[Richard Crowley]

One issue that might be a problem is that it only records in a compressed format (WMA). What editing software do you intend to use?
What does the audio from this recorder sound like when you convert it from WMA to WAV?

Do you have any microphones to use with this? Have you tried recording and shooting on the DSLR? How long can you shoot on the DSLR? I would try an experiment shooting the recorder with the DSLR and speaking the time every thirty seconds (on camera) just to see how long they stay in sync with each other.

[Richard Crowley]

Mr. Kadner is identifying one of the most significant potential problems with using a lower-end recording device for separate sync sound. Namely that equipment (even expensive equipment) drifts slightly in speed and your “sync” sound ends up not exactly in sync.

Some low-cost recorders have speed regulation that is better than you would expect from the genre. And most modern gadgets, even low-end, aren’t bad for short takes (2-3-4 minutes). So it is difficult to answer your question as a generic discussion.

[Richard Crowley]

It would help A LOT to know exactly what you are asking about. Is it some sort of little pocket voice recorder or something? It typically isn’t very productive to ask about something without revealing a make and model number.

It would also be great if you could define a bit better what you mean by “with”? Perhaps if you describe what you are wanting to do it would be better than asking abstract questions.

If I make a lot of assumptions here, I would be tempted to say that it takes NOTHING to make your Olympus work “with” your DSLR. Nothing except, perhaps some sort of slate/clapsticks to set the sync point.

[Richard Crowley]

None of the above. Try 1 phase.