OT: Audio mic, how to suggestions?

DWhitevidman wrote on 1/19/2010, 3:25 PM

I have a wireless lapel mic, and haven't used it yet. I need to tape about 18 hours in a seminar classroom enviroment. I thought, here's where I need to use the lapel mic on the teacher, to eliminate possible chater from the students, adults. But then I wondered, what if a student asks a question, I'll probably want the mic to pick that up.

Will the lapel mic pick that up? If so, I should be good, if not..........

Or do I need to somehow mix the camera mic and the lapel mic. Don't want to have to use two cameras using a tall stack of tapes.

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 1/19/2010, 3:56 PM

If the lapel mic is omnidirectional as opposed to directional (cardiod), then it will pick up the students questions a little better. However, the questions will be considerably lower in volume and be much more distant sounding. While you can increase the volume of the questions later when you are editing, there is no way to make the questioner sound closer to the microphone than they actually were.

Since camcorders have two audio channels, you could use one channel for the lapel mic and the other channel for a microphone in the audience. How you do this depends on which camcorder you're using and it would help if the audio level of each track can be controlled separately. You can very easily split the two audio channels into separate mono channels in Vegas and mix them during editing.

DWhitevidman wrote on 1/19/2010, 4:20 PM

Good answer. I hadn't thought about using the stereo channels seperately, thatnks.

Grazie wrote on 1/19/2010, 8:46 PM

I have done exactly this as suggested by John. Works a treat.

My camera has great channel control to which I've added a Beachtek. I get good audio, and with the wander mic ButtPLug or in a "Blimp-on-a-Boom" plus the ButtPlug into a Sennie, on a different radio channel its the Bees Knees! And yes, dead simple back at base with Vegas.

Grazie