This brings up a critical point on saving intermediate files while editing. Though you can undo all of the tasks described above while you’re editing the file, once you save the file, you can’t go back—Soundbooth applies all edi
Read More »Capturing High Quality Audio
It generally only takes a video shoot or two before you realize that the weakest link on your camcorder is the microphone. Don't worry: It's not you, or really your camcorder for that matter, just the simple fact of life that all onboard microphon
Read More »Checklist for using an external microphone
When you attach an external microphone to your camcorder, you're going to have to change some settings on the camcorder to tell it to ignore its internal microphone and record from the external. You'll also have to set gain controls to make sure that
Read More »Choosing a microphone: the three questions
This leads us to the three issues you need to address before buying a microphone. Note that you have to ask the same questions whether the microphone is wired or wireless, since the issues are identical.What is the pickup pattern?First is the pick
Read More »Choosing an XLR adapter for your camcorder
So, if you want to use a high-end microphone with your camcorder and you don't have an XLR jack, you'll have to find a way to convert from the XLR cable to the 3.5mm connector on your camera. We explored two alternatives.The first was a "line matc
Read More »Choosing the highest quality microphone option
So those are the microphones and the ways they connect. But how do they perform?To test performance, we used a high-quality, digitized recording of a woman speaking, played back over computer speakers at a standardized volume. To create ambient so
Read More »Connection options
There are two ways to connect external microphones to camcorders, though not all camcorders offer either or both options. First, of course, is your microphone port, which comes in two general categories. One is an XLR connector, which is typicall
Read More »Microphone options
Figure 3 shows a good cross section of the types of microphones you should be considering for your shoots. Let's briefly identify them, and then cover the three characteristics of microphones you need to learn before buying. Figure
Read More »Setting up Flat and Three-point Lighting
The dramatic shadows created by three-point lighting have been a staple of movies and television production since their inception, and three-point lighting remains highly touted in most tutorials, articles, and books on video lighting. However, a
Read More »Flat lighting techniques
After speaking with Chang, I was eager to try his idea of using one key light behind the camera because this would save transporting another light on portable shoots and would guarantee absolute even lighting across the face. Rather than using the
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