Good audio certainly seems important to the experience of consuming video, but I dont know if it needs to be 'broadcast quality'.
Apart from th external mic options which I know little of, fixing in post-production or using a totally seperate device to record the audio are options, the latter especially making sense in the 'subject is far away from camera' scenario. In this area we can copy the best practice that I assume podcasters have been discussing for a few years. The probelms are that re-syncing audio to video can be a right chore, and mixing & other post-processing of audio can only do so much to make up for bad recordings, and requires a fair amount of knowledge to do properly. Id like to think the tools and hardware will get better in future, but I dont see all that much room for improvement. Individuals may bring their knowledge up to the required level from experience, but its hard to see this stuff becoming a simple one-button operation any time soon, so hard to shield newbies from these issues. Ive sometimes hoped that in the future there would be lots of people online who have skills & equipment that previously only very few had access to, and we could see a new era of post-production services provided online at mass consumer prices. So someone else could take care of these things for you. But this doesnt necessarily translate well to things like audio because the golden rule seems to be to get the audio captured right in the first place, maybe nothing can make post-processing significantly better or easier. Its a shame radio mic's arent all they're cracked up to be. Whilst its certainly possible to get a wireless mic working nicely, if you dont have too much control over the environment you are filming in, it can be a nightmare. I wonder if people are universally more susceptible to bad audio than differences in video quality - eg the video framerate issue I sometimes mention, that clearly doesnt bother many people or we'd here more about it, yet does make a very real difference to what the brains of the viewers are getting. The only audio I know I cannot stand is when you cannot quite hear the person talking, without straining. Wind or people in the audience coughing are 2 causes that spring to mind. Oh no Im having flashbacks to when someone asked me if they could fix their wedding video, and when I got it just about the entire ceremony was obliterated by strong wind noise into mic. It was possible to remove that noise but there still wasnt much talking left underneath. I guess lighting is the video equivalent of these audio issues? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Beth Kanter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > I had the pleasure to meet Jonny Goldstein at Beyond Broadcast and shove a > camera in his face and interview him -- ... I'm still working on the video > ... > http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/02/oh_yeah_and_i_s.html > > I'm still thinking about the comment someone made in the Beyond YouTube > Working Group about audio quality and how it makes them shudder that the > user-generated content doesn't have good audio. What does that mean? > Certainly not everyone can afford to purchase expensive professional level > equipment to ensure broadcast quality audio. How can you get acceptable or > decent sound quality but use inexpensive equipment? > > Jonny Goldstein left me a comment on that post that asks "Acceptable to > who?" > (http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/02/oh_yeah_and_i_s.html#comments) > > But, it is a good goal to work towards improving one's production values. > Here's my problem. I have a cannon SD800 with built-in mic. It's cheap > and easy to use. It captures the video as mpeg on a card that I can easily > get into my aging pc laptop with USB thingy and use the free windows editing > software to edit. > > So far, I've learned that I have to get really close to the subject to get > passable sound or I have to control the environment - take the subject to a > quiet place. Thus, it makes hard to get an interview in a room with a lot > of people chit chatting unless I put the camera right in their face and end > up getting interesting footage of their nose hairs. Are there other > creative workarounds? What are the cheap cameras that allow you to plug in > an external mic and capture as mpeg on card? > > Beth >
