Getting Professional Quality Sound From Your Camcorder
Nowadays camcorders are used for more than just filming home movies. A large community of amateur videographers now film short clips to put on web sites such as ‘Google video’, ‘You Tube’ and their own personal sites. Some of these are purely for entertainment while others are for information purposes e.g. local history societies interview people for their memories of the locality.
The quality of modern camcorders and computer based editing systems combined can produce excellent visual results which are often let down by poor quality sound. The main reason for this is that the built-in video microphone is usually too far away from the people being filmed.
At the time of filming, our ears, eyes and brain work together to effectively suppress the reverberation and other unwanted sound sources in the room to allow us to hear what someone is saying, what we hear is different to what a microphone ‘hears’.
This is where external microphones are required, the closer a microphone can get to the subject, the quieter other unwanted sounds effectively become.
If at this stage you don’t have any external microphones then the best advice for getting good quality sound from the built in video microphone is to get your camera as close to your sound source as possible i.e. about 3 feet away, however you might still hear some camera motor noise. If you are taking videography seriously then it’s best to wear closed-back headphones so that you only hear what will be on the audio tracks.
Usually camcorders have a built in stereo electret microphone which can either be unplugged from its socket or there are external microphone sockets and some means of switching between them and the built in video microphones. An A/V socket is usually available for plugging in an external audio mixer.
It might be necessary to buy a ‘stereo plug to two mono sockets’ lead so that you can make full use of the two tracks that are available on most camcorders.
Presenter
If your presenter needs to be mobile then it would be best to buy or rent a radio microphone kit (make sure you get a kit that has a small battery powered receiver - not a large mains powered one), this allows a lapel microphone (usually omni pickup characteristics) or a plugged in handheld microphone (usually cardioid pickup) to be permanently close to the presenter’s mouth. The lapel microphone is usually worn on a tie, suit lapel or shirt, try to avoid placing it on a shirt collar since this picks up too much sound from the throat, which sounds un-natural.
If the presenter is always static and fairly close to the camera at all times then an electret ‘line microphone’ can be worn connected via an extension lead, which should be framed out of shot.