Cheap cameras don’t have to have cheap sound

Experts will tell you…

One of the most important aspects of your video is the sound.

You heard that right.  Not the lighting, nor the 1080p, 24 frames per second, yadda yadda yadda.
The Sound.  The Audio.  That might seem funny as tend to think about video as being a visual medium.

There’s plenty of equipment out there to record sound.  Everything from the small pinhole on the camera itself to the Boom Mic Operator with 50lbs of equipment hanging around his neck.  There’s a reason the movie industry pays big dollars for ADR Editors, Foley Artists, Re-Recording Mixers and the like – to get the best possible audio into their products.

Each instance has it’s own unique needs and corresponding tool to go with it.  Use the right tool for the job and your video will be better.  Much better.  As in… people will watch it longer, better.  That’s what you really want, right?

“Ok, so audio is important, I get it, but I’m shooting video with my Cell Phone”

With the incredible video capabilities that today’s cell phones have – that’s great!  The same can be said for pocket camcorders like the Flip or Kodak Playtouch.  Their video can be fabulous.  Their audio recording?  Not so much.  Matter of fact, it’s pretty crappy unless you are in a silent enclosed room.  Unfortunately it’s hard to pipe in better audio into a cell phone.  There are some hacks out there but they are limited.  One of the big limitations some cameras have is the lack of a external microphone jack.  How can you get better sound if you can’t plug in a microphone?

I purposely shot the video below on the lowest definition camera I had – my very old Flip Ultra II.  It has no external microphone jack.  Instead of using the audio that the camera caught, I simultaneously recorded the audio on a separate device and then combined the better audio with the video in post production.  Links to the equipment shown or used are under the video.

• Rode Video Mic
• Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone
• Zoom H1
• Flip Ultra II – I would have given you a link to it but it’s so old it’s been discontinued and couldn’t find an example anywhere!

So there you have it – all you need to start producing better sounding videos!