Video Soundtracks on a Budget – Part 9: Listen to the difference

To demonstrate the techniques covered in this blog series Russ of naturetalksandwalks has let me use some of his footage.

This video production has been created on a budget with the following equipment.

• Two low cost video cameras
• Two tripods
• Zoom digital recorder – as covered in Part 4: Recording Devices
• Clip-on mic – covered in Part 2: Lapel Microphones
• Movieplus X5 software

The audio was recorded separately using a lavalier mic (covered in Part 3: Recording Video Dialogue)

By recording the audio separately, this provides us with more flexibility in terms of achieving the best possible soundtrack.

Why bother recording the audio separately?

Admittedly, this is more trouble to go to, but the result is far more professional. The best way to demonstrate this is to show the difference in audio quality on an actual recording. This demo compares the audio recorded on the cameras and the audio recorded separately using a zoom digital recorder and a lapel mic. We used two cameras simply to vary the angle of the shots.

The mic had a makeshift windjammer placed on top. The the mic was hidden under the top of Russ’ shirt.

As you can hear, the audio recorded from the camera microphones suffer from poor sound quality and are strongly affected by the wind, whereas the separately recorded audio is much better, has less background noise and less of a problem with wind.

The raw audio is then processed using techniques covered in Part 8: Audio Editing Tutorials

From watching the video you should be able to hear the difference in sound quality when using camera microphones vs an external clip-on microphone and digital recorder (a Zoom H4n in the case but the Zoom H1 would do the same job at less cost).

Please comment and tell us about your video / audio experiences.

Here are links to all of the posts in this series

• Part 1 – Introduction
• Part 2: Lapel Microphones
• Part 3: Recording Video Dialogue
• Part 4: Recording Devices
• Part 5: The Problem with Wind and Popping
• Part 6: Recording and Syncing Your Video and Audio
• Part 7: Audio Editing Software
• Part 8: Audio Editing Tutorials