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The Neumann U47 microphone. Designed by Georg Neumann circa 1949. A brilliant design that has withstood decades of audio innovation.

Audio recording is superficially simple. Place a microphone in front of your subject, set the record levels – and you’re done! However reality is very different. Correct microphone selection, placement and technique is critical to good audio quality. And nothing will kill a production like bad sound.

We’re going to look at the types of microphone that are relevant when shooting video. There are many more types available for applications ranging from instrument recording to air traffic control. However we are primarily concerned with recording ambient sounds and especially voice. Spoken voice is a notoriously difficult thing to record well. It’s a sound we hear every day and are very well accustomed to. Any artefacts created by the recording process will quickly be noticed, and unlike vision, for which our brain commits huge amounts of its computational power to resolving, poor sound just plain drives us crazy!

Types of Microphone

Condenser Microphones
With a few notable exceptions a condenser mics’ natural home is the studio. They are normally powered externally and are the most sensitive microphone types. The classic Neumann U87 has been involved in the recording of just about every classic album since the 1960s and probably one the most recognisable microphones in the world. Like all condenser microphones, its high sensitivity isn’t always desirable. See dynamic microphones below.
If recording vocals in a treated room i.e. one with good acoustics you’re going to want to use a high-quality condenser.

Electret condenser microphones
These are a type of condenser microphone but can usually be powered by an internal battery. They offer quality that often rivals condenser microphones but allow more flexibility in their application – and their lower cost helps too. Most of the microphones videographers use will love this type. Handheld, lapel (lavalier) and shotguns all benefit from the high sensitivity and lightweight diaphragm of the electret condenser.
Some of the most popular shotguns mics include the Rode series NTG1, NTG2 and NTG3 and the Sennheiser modular K6/ME66 and ME67.

Dynamic Microphones
These relatively inexpensive and robust microphones are often the microphone of choice for voice-overs. Their relative lack of sensitivity means they will only record sounds that are adjacent to the microphone. If you’re recording a voice-over in a location other than a recording studio, with its acoustically treated walls and relative silence, you’ll want to use a microphone with these properties. Microphones like the ElectroVoice RE-20, Rode ProCaster, and the Shure .

Microphone directionality – polar patterns

Microphones vary in their ability to pick up sounds in relation to the direction in which they face. They fall broadly into three camps:

Non-directional (Omnidirectional)
The lapel or lavalier microphone is a classic application for an omnidirectional microphone. Typically worn on a tie, or as the name suggests, a lapel these small microphones combined a high sensitivity with their ability to record in all directions. At a wedding for example a lavalier placed on the groom will record not just his voice but also the brides and the vicars.

Unidirectional
A unidirectional microphone is sensitive in one direction only. There are typically used to pick up individual sounds whilst ignoring the other sounds around them. They are typically used the recording speech was rejecting the ambient sounds from other directions.

Shotgun
By mounting the microphone elements at the end of a long tube these microphones become very directional and have excellent off axis rejection. Slots in the length of the tube create standing waves which help cancel out sounds emanating from the sides and the rear.

For most event videographers their audio setup will be a combination of direct connected shotguns with radio lapel mics providing close-up live speech recording.

Applications

The only problem is I don’t have the Macintosh. To edit video you need a fair amount of power so a 15″ MacBook Pro or 27″ iMac seem like the way to go but with both costing around £1600 they seem prohibitively expensive.! You can buy a hell of a lot of PC for that kind of money. I used to be a Mac developer so I totally get the quality and the style arguments. I guess I just need to find the £1600. Good job Final Cut Pro has come down to £199

If you’re shooting live events, which for a lot of us is going to be weddings, you’ll

Panasonic's AG HMC41 AVCHD Camcorder

want a second camera locked-off and at the back of the church or wedding breakfast, shooting wide-angle. This is especially true when you’re shooting on your own. The safety camera gives you constant and reliable coverage to which you can cut away in the edit to hide the re-composing, refocusing and general tweaking of your main camera. The problem with a DSLR, with its shallow depth of field and limited recording length, is not exactly a fire and forget camera. That’s why you’re almost inevitably going to need a classic video camcorder

Just like still photography the technology behind video cameras has moved on in leaps and bounds in the last few years. Ironically one of their biggest leaps has been the introduction of large format sensors i.e. the ones in our still cameras. However video cameras incorporating these large format chips tend to be expensive, starting around £4000 and having all the same strengths and weaknesses that our DSLRs have – shallow depth of field and very manually operated. For a safety camera we don’t need the bells and whistles. Just good autofocus good white balance and the ability to work well on its own without a human constantly pressing buttons and pulling focus.

Sony's HXR-MC50E

Products like Sony’s HXR-MC50 and MC2000 at around £1300 inc vat will give you a pretty good lowlights sensitivity, record on its internal 64 Gb solid-state memory or SD cards and will provide good autofocus and auto exposure. For a thousand pounds more the Sony NX70 at £2500 and the Panasonic AG-HMC41 at £2200 add professional grade XLR audio inputs, better lowlight performance and, in the case of the NX70, rain proofing.

There are times when the ergonomics of a simple camcorder are hard to beat. The ability to grab the camera, switch it to auto everything and grab the moment can be invaluable because of the and unplanned and spontaneous nature of live events. Your DSLR will give you beautiful film-like shallow depth of field and great colour and all the benefits that interchangeable lenses will bring. However, if your job entails capturing the most important moments of someone’s life you need to be prepared for every option. A traditional video camera will give you that.

Thanks to Graham at H.Preston for advice while researching this article. Their web site is http://www.videokit.co.uk

For DSLR users the most significant improvement is probably its reduced size. At just 150mm it’s considerably smaller than the original and far less likely to appear in shots when used with very wide-angle lenses. I was shooting with a 16-35 2.8L on my 5DMkII and the mic was not visible even at its wider setting. It’s also very light weight of around 85 g so it isn’t really going to affect the handling of your camera.

Rode have made a smart move by introducing a +20dm sound option to the mics preamp. This considerably raises the output level of the microphone the idea being that you can then lower your cameras relatively low quality input stage to reduce noise. I found the output a little hot on my 5DMkII and referred to run it at 0db. There’s also a low pass filter which you’ll probably want to use most the time.

It uses a standard 9 V battery but with a quoted battery life of up to 70 hours. That’s a hell of a lot battery life but always carry a spare because you know it’s going to run out exactly 1 min in to the shot of your life! Find the battery compartment a little awkward to open but once mastered it should pose no problem. It also has an integrated shock mount to reduce handling noise. It uses for a elastic suspension bands to hold the mic in a cradle. It ships with spare bands and their relatively straightforward to replace should it be necessary. I found that they occasionally came away in transit but it’s quite trivial to reattach, taking no more than a few seconds.

In use
I really can’t fault the sound coming from this microphone. It sells at around hundred £150 including VAT and for that kind of money you will be hard pushed to get this quality anywhere else. It’s a mono microphone and a surprisingly good at picking up spoken voice with good clarity even in a noisy room. There will always be times when the budget doesn’t run to a sound recordist and radio mics aren’t practical. I find it the perfect microphone for run and gun shooting outside churches, at receptions etc.

If you’re going into serious video making then you’re going to have to record good audio. The Rode Videomic Pro is a great place to start

Beautiful and elegant engineering.
Great tech support (yes, I did need it).
I totally get why people rave about their Drobos. This is RAID storage done right.

More to follow…

Safety Camera
The greatest benefit of a second camera is that you always have a shot to cut to. It will typically be locked off, on a tripod, in wide or semi-wide framing. The safety camera allows you to recompose and focus your camera without having to worry about the end viewer seeing. Being able to cut to a safety shot gives you the freedom to experiment, pull focus, kick the tripod etc., safe in the knowledge the second camera is there to cover your back. Even if you are working with a second camera operator you should use a third camera in the safety camera role. It’s sods law that you’ll both be recomposing at exactly the same moment – it happens all the time.

Higher Production Values
Watching video shot from one viewpoint gets tiresome surprisingly quickly. If you’re shooting a wedding ceremony at the front (always from the right so you’re looking at the bride) it will add immeasurable interest to your production to be able to cut to a view looking up the aisle. I would go as far a to say there is no live event that wouldn’t benefit from a second (or more) cameras.

Technical Considerations
To be able to cut easily between shots they need to look similar. You should set all cameras to the same white balance and ideally shoot on similar equipment. Video shot on good quality domestic camcorders will cut reasonably well with professional video cameras. But they don’t work so well with shots from DSLRs. The different contrast range, colour rendition and depth of field can make cuts visually jar. The effect can be greatly reduced by good grading in post-production – which is fine you’ve the time and budget but not fine for the rest of us. If you’re shooting your main video on a DSLR you’ll be best served by using one for your safety camera too.

Sound Base
A second camera also provides another opportunity to record sound. You should capture your primary audio where you are located. Either to your camera, an audio recorder, or both. It has to be where you are because you have to be able to monitor it. Your second camera can provide an “if all else fails” backup. It can also be used as an ambience mic. Many times I’ve had funny heckles from guests during the wedding speeches totally inaudible on the speakers radio mic, but clear as a bell on the safety camera. As the main mic is usually recording speech it is nearly always in mono. Bringing up the second cameras ambience mic just a little in the mix will add some nice stereo width to your soundtrack.

Easy “Big Wins”
A great crowd pleaser of a shot is the set up and run your safety camera before people enter the room. In post you can reduce the 10 minutes or so it takes everyone to fill the room in to a 30 second high speed clip. I like to add a little motion blur and end by switching to real time just as the bride walks down the aisle. It looks good and is easy to do.

Editing multi-camera shoots in NLE’s
With the exception of Final Cut Pro 10.0, all the major NLE’s (Avid, Premiere Pro and Grass Valley Edius) provide powerful multi camera editing. The basic idea is you line up your camera video clips with each on their own track on the timeline, put the software into multicam editing mode and simply click the image or press the button that corresponds to the camera you want to switch to. It becomes rather like directing a multi-camera live shoot, but with the benefit of being able to go back and correct edit points by simply dragging them on the timeline. Just like all editing, there are is a real art to knowing when to switch between shots. The secret of any good edit is that you shouldn’t notice it. Don’t wait for the ends of sentences or other natural pauses. This will draw much more attention to the cut. Like everything with video – it’s practice practice practice.

Synchronisation
So you’re going have at least two video tracks and probably a separate audio track recorded on a field recorder. Most DSLRs have fairly short maximum recording lengths, typically around 20 min per clip. With wedding ceremonies and speeches often running between 30 and 60 min you can end up with a number of separate clips where the camera has had to be stopped and started during a natural pause. When we put all the video from each camera on one track on the timeline there will be slight jumps where the camera wasn’t recording. The second camera will have exactly the same but in different places and the audio recorder will usually have one continuous file. The real issue becomes how to synchronise all these separate media clips so they can be cut between.

The traditional way of doing this is by synchronising all the devices together to a master clock. However this is complicated cumbersome and expensive. The way it usually ends up being done in low-budget productions is by looking at the audio waveform and finding matching peaks and troughs. It’s exactly why clapperboard is used in movies where audio is nearly always recorded separately to the picture. For the video clips it’s also possible to look for visual cues, like a flash going off, but that’s not going to help you synchronise the audio track. So three or four separate clips per track on the timeline on two separate tracks and a continuous audio track. Fancy manually aligning those anyone? Of course it can be done but now there’s a better way.

See my Plural Eyes Review for more…