Audio is VERY Important

Audio is very important. If you are serious about making videos, whether for broadcast, for the Internet, or for yourself, you need to seriously think about how your camcorder captures audio. Most camcorder microphones are not very good and are poorly positioned on the camcorder. (Consider the small DV camcorders with the mikes on top of them, pointed up - perfectly positioned to captured the sound of the camera operator, not the subject!)

 If you want the audio to sound good you need to spend some time planning on how to capture interviews, music and other room sounds. If you are going to edit MOS (mitt out sound – an old film expression) and just lay in a music soundtrack, it obviously doesn’t matter. You will need to use some kind of external microphone plugged into your camcorder’s audio in jack. Some camcorders, in particular, Sony, provide a mike power outlet as well. Either way, by using an external mike, you will be able to get much better quality audio.

Make sure the camcorder you buy has a external mike input jack. On home and consumer cameras, this will be a small stereo mini-jack. On better camcorders, this may be twin RCA jacks, 1/4 inch mike jacks or even XLR connections.

Your camcorder should also have some kind of shoe or connector on top of the camcorder to seat the microphone. If your camcorder has a mike jack, but no shoe or mike holder, there are a bunch of inexpensive, third party accessory holders you can buy that connect between the camcorder and your tripod.

 If you are working by yourself you can attach a shotgun mike to your camcorder and walk around the room, catching video and audio. Another option is to use a wireless microphone system. The receiver unit sits on your camcorder. You can then attach a wireless lavaliere mike to whoever is speaking or you can hold a mike in your hand. If you can recruit a helper, it is often helpful to have someone walk around the event conducting interviews with the guests and partygoers. I have done this before and recommend using several different interviewers as each will know different people and have different angles on doing interviews. By the way, it might be tempting to hand the mike to a drunk and boisterous volunteer but usually you end up regretting it…

 If you have a helper, you can have them do these interviews with a hand held mike, or by using a mike on a boom, actually move in close enough to mike the various guests. Whatever option you choose, make sure you hook up your mike system before you go to the event and try it out. Play with it a while and make sure the connections are secure.  Of course, if these are powered mikes, brings lots of extra batteries.

I have found that most external mikes are mono while most camcorder mike inputs are stereo mini-jacks. Sometimes, the mono plug does not sit correctly and you get noise on the second channel. Go to your local Radio Shack an dick up a small mono to stereo mini-jack adapter. For an investment of only a couple of dollars, you can solve that potential problem.