Focus Enhancements‘ FS-C direct to edit (DTE) recorder is a high-performance, feature-rich product that’s the perfect complement to Canon camcorders like the XL H1, XH A1, or even XL2 (I tested with the XH A1). The only catch is price; at $1,799.95 for the 100GB model at B&H Photo, the unit may be hard to…
Dual-monitor editing stations used to be exotic, expensive, and hard to set up and maintain. Today, with virtually all new graphics cards offering dual-output ports, flat-panel monitors priced well below $300, and rock-solid support in Windows XP and popular prosumer NLEs like Adobe Premiere Pro, building a dual-monitor station is both financially and technically within…
I’m a big Adobe Audition fan, and when I heard that the
powerful multitrack audio editing program found in Adobe Production
Studio would be replaced in the upcoming CS3 bundle by a more
feature-limited version, I was less than pleased. That
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
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
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
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
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
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
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