That's why Sony charges $300.00 for the short shotgun optional mic on the Z1 HDV camera.

JJK

I just recorded an indoor meeting using the new Rode VideoMic mounted on the camera from about 5 feet away. A door was open behind me and there was quite a lot of sound outside. I was amazed at how good the sound was.

Yes, you can always make a microphone sound like it was further away from the source by using reverb, but it is impossible to make it sound like it was closer than it was to begin with.

John

I'd like to hear the clip before making recommendations, but you might try a technique I use. I use it for live music when I only had an onboard camera mic and I'm trying to extract and boost the vocals, so it may not work for your particular source:

1) Duplicate the clip into two audio tracks.
2) On one track, add a mono filter (I use the free Ozone vinyl filter), compress it severely (say 5:1 or 8:1; select the auto-volume compensation), then EQ it to remove the extreme highs and lows and push up the 500Hz to 3000 Hz.
3) Blend this mono track with the original track using the track volume controls. Start with the original track at normal volume, then slowly increase the volume of the mono track listening to the difference.

Stop and think: How does this sound? Is it an improvement?

4) If necessary, play with the EQ of the mono track.
5) If necessary, add EQ to the original track and play with it. Perhaps reduce the mid range and increase the highs and lows to compensate for the mono boost.
6) Maybe add a small amount of compression to the original track.
7) If its music and I'm mixing 5:1, I may also add some reverb to the original track and feed it to the back speakers. But this has nothing to do with a hollow sound and could make it worse.

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I may have misinterpreted "hollow" sound, e.g., it may simply be that your onboard mic does a poor job on the highs and lows, in which case you may not need the mono track and can simply add EQ to the original to boost the highs and lows. Or you had some kind of cancellation and certain frequencies are missing, in which case play with a parametric EQ to boost a specific frequency

The hollow sound is often a time related function and what you are hearing is "comb filtering". You might try right clicking on the audio and selecting either right only or left only.

Some more info at: http://www.prosoundweb.com/install/cpm/lobes/lobes.php

Larry

Thanks to all for your valuable input.

Recently I was asked to videotape a seminar. All three speakers had the headphone-styled mics on them. They were moving all over the stage,one speaker even left the stage to mingle with the participants.So, my on-camera mic(a Sennheiser MKE300) was actually recording the sound bounced from the speakers in the auditorium. That's how I got the hollow sound. I had a set of wireless mic with me but due to the fast pace of events, it was not practical to use it.

What should I do if a similar situation arise ? Thanks again.

In this situation,

I've done this kind of thing in the past. I just get a boom mike near one of the speaker cabinets and mic that. That's where the sound is coming from.