DrD787
Prominent Member
I'm looking for a relatively cheap HD camcorder that records to SD cards and has an external audio line in (from a sounddesk). Microphone sockets on camcorders seem to be a thing of the past. Can anyone suggest one please ?
has an external audio line in (from a sounddesk)
You need to be aware that most 'line level' outputs from sound desks do not match well with camcorder mic inputs. Microphone inputs can be up to 1000 times (60dB) more sensitive than 'line' level inputs, and this is mismatch is further compounded by the AGC (automatic gain control) found on most consumer camcorder audio inputs.
In short, unless you choose a camcorder that has an external audio input with adjustable input gain, you're likely to get very disappointing results from a sound desk input, with every likelihood of serious overloading, and distortion.
Much better to consider recording the sound desk audio separately, with a minidisc or solid state audio recorder, and mixing this audio with the camcorder audio in your editor. Bit more fiddly to get the balance and sync right, but the end result should be considerably better.
Also gives you the chance (if you want) to include a bit of the ambience of the room, from the camcorder mic audio, rather than just recording the sound desk input 'dry' directly into the camcorder, with no ambient recording at all.
Ah, are you saying that there are techniques for syncing two audio tracks from the same original source, because that sounds interesting. Incidentally, I am using Macs.
Just to rewind this a little, what I really want to do is feed separate audio and video streams into a single box that contains a hard disk and a USB connection for transferring the result onto a computer, but I've not come across such a thing.
In software yes , if it has multi track editing ( all but the most basic do)
but it makes sense to use the original mic source even if you lower it in PP .. you can of course get an ext mic
Also there is always a slight possibility of AV out of synch which may need correction
I understand but relatively cheap, HD with line inout just dont sit inthe same camcorder comfortablyTrouble is I'm not interested in anything that has any manual intervention. The context for this by the way is in a church where we record the service every week. I just want to be able to press a button at the end of the service and end up with a usable video at some point on the Mac hard disk. I was actually doing this successfully using an Elgato EyeTV. Trouble is it just broke and also I wasn't too happy with the quality of the video it was producing (just a result of the fact that I was going via composite video). So I'm looking for a new solution but it has to be 'set and forget'.