a few sound questions

[somedeadguy]

I've finally mastered Sony Vegas, and now can make my tape footage look "film like" enough to satisfy my desires. It doesn't look great, but it doesn't look like I shot it on 8mm tape either, which is all I wanted. Anyways, now that I've solved my appearance problems, and have finally been able to look deeper into my stuff, I realize the sound is awful. I've come to fully realize the crappiness of depending on the built in mic on my Sony Cheapest Available at Walmart HandyCam. As with most standard $200 camcorders (I assume) the mic picks up every single thing I don't want and drowns out dialogue or whatever I need. I bought a cheap but decent mic to boom, but of course Sony didn't provide my model of camera with a mic input. I soldered my own, which was successful, but the ohms or wattage or something is different, giving me an awful buzz. My next idea is to record sound seperate and dub it in.

I DO really want to mic the actual shots instead of dubbing it retroactively. We gave it a test run, and the four track that I'm using, either records or replays at a slightly different speed than the camera. I can rig it to fit by adjusting the pitch, but it's still kinda funky. Is there an easier way to do this that I haven't thought of, or do I just really need a new camera?

I will get a new camera eventually, but there's just some things I really want to get off the ground before that happens.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 02, 2005 02:58 PM: Message edited by: The Imaginable Sean Moss ]</font>

[miker]

Your buzz may be being caused by a bad earth.

Your four-track may not be crystal-sync'd and sounds like it's suffering from wow and flutter (tape stretching and other stuff just not being calibrated for absolute sync). I'd use a digital device to record sound separately.

You could dub everything in post but then you really need to match the ambience to the screen location.

HTH

[Matty2phatty]

This is actually something i'm kinda curious about, this sound being out of sync.

If i were to shoot on an XL2 and record the sound from the scene to an MD player would the sound be in sync, or is it not an issue when shooting DV and recording digital sound?

[TJ_the_director]

the $350 USD you saved by not getting a miniDV camera instead will come back and haunt you every step of the way until your film is finished. miniDV is synced AND digital.