recording music and video separatley

[Rigaud]

I need to record and video a little concert in a church next weekend and am trying to work out the best/easiest way to get a good quality sound recording. I have a canon mini dv (880i I think) and a mac and was thinking I could video the concert with the camera and record the sound with Audacity on the mac and then just cobble the two together. My issue is I am more bothered about the sound than the video, I'm more than happy with the video quality - it's only a home movie but I want the sound quality to be as good as possible. It's only my 7 year old playing recorder but he is playing with a couple of really good flute players, one of whom is very good and I just want to have something of quality to show him when he's older and has decided to be a footballer or something and to show his grandparents who love classical music. So, can I do this? Do I need a good quality mic or will any old mic plugged in to the mac placed in front of them be better than the sound I get from the camera? Should I just go with the camera and stop worrying about the sound quality? Any help greatly appreciated. Now back to looking at the netgear eva8000 thread....

[redsox_mark]

You certainly can record the audio and video separately, and that is often a good technique. Use a loud clap or similar as a point to line up the audio and video tracks in post production.

But you need a decent mic. If you use for example a mic off a headset, it may be quite directional and limited in range.

You could experiment at home with the mics you have (compared to the camcorder) and see if it is good enough.

[senu]

Agree, incidentally I had not tried it myself until a while ago ( must be 2 years now ).And it was actually Mark who encouraged me to " fight the fear"
Do record audio off camera as well though for comparison and ease of synchronisation; you can always remove the camcorder derived audio once you are satisfied

I have tried using another camcorder with an external mic . and a minidisc : the results dont vary widely ; It is the microphone that makes all the difference

In Music videos , most times they dont even use the audio from the video ( they either use a CD or sudio recorder audio recorded under optimal conditions) while the singer or artistes mime to recorded music

[A n d r e w]

I see you're a Mac user. Might be worth a look here then. Of special interest to anyone who would like to reduce the trial-and-error experimentation to a minimum is the sticky entitled "I want to use my Mac to record but i'm confused: a primer" (fourth thread from the top).

You don't say what kind of Mac you own, but it's important to note that most "line in" or "mic in" inputs on Macs are really just "line in" and not "mic in" (even if they say "mic in") which means that there is no preamplification, which you usually need to get a good signal from a microphone (i.e. one that can be recorded at a high enough level that the result isn't mired by staticky noise). See the sticky for some solutions.

Best,
Andrew.