Recording Live Gig in Stereo

[Stefan Immler]

Hi there --

I need to shoot a (small) jazz ensemble live on stage. Since the band is not miced up and there is no mixing board I could use, I thought about putting a high-quality stereo mic in front of the band. The room is large and I want to avoid long cable runs to the camcorder someone could trip over. So my question is, what do you think about the following method:

- Quality stereo mic in front of jazz ensemble.
- Each of the two mic outputs goes to a Sennheiser wireless transmitter.
- Two wireless receiver at the camcorder feed each of the two signals into the XLR input of the camcorder.

Would this give a time coherent and high-quality stereo signal or are there better ways?

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Brooks Harrington]

Yes, High Quality Stereo mic..... which one? Or stereo pair.
Run the mic cables to a High Quality mic preamp/mixer and then to a 2 channel recorder.
Split out of the mixer to your Senn RF system to camera.
Don't rely on your RF rig to send music quality signal to your camera...... replace it with the media on the audio recorder.

Or, run the cables on the floor to your camera and tape them down. Why do you need wireless........?
Mixer almost a must for this.

[Stefan Immler]

Thanks for your input, Brooks! (I don't want to use cables because there will be a live audience and the venue managers are nervous that someone might trip over a cable)

You are right, that seems to be a good choice:

Quality stereo mic -> premap -> mixer. From the mixer I can route one stereo output to a field recorder for a high quality audio track, the other stereo output can we routed to the RF units into the camcorder so I have a reference track (to sync it with the field recorder's signal) and to have a backup track with lower levels in case the field recorder clipped.

Brilliant!

[Gary Nattrass]

With my set-up I would just place a sony D50 in front of them or rig my small mixer the sign eng-44 with a stereo condensor feeding it and then the sony D50, I would also add a sennheiser radio mic on the output of the D50 or mixer and radio a mono guide track back to the camera.

Multiple cameras could also be few with a receiver each with the master stereo sound being on the D50 recorder. If this is too much then the camera mic will be enough for syncing.

I have done may gigs like this have a look at the two Lucie Slater clips here:Real Ale - Real People - Real Community Spirit! - Black Horse Inn they were both recorded sep sound onto a mini disk before I got the D50.

[Ken Campbell]

I'm sort of a noob to videography, but not to audio. When I started thinking about better ways to get audio rather that with the on camera mic, I immediately looked into the various digital multitrack recorders and stumbled across the Fostex MR8HD. It's rediculously inexpensive and let's me record up to 4 channels of audio simultaneously. The only problems I have encountered with it so far are that it needs external power and only records at 44.1 not 48Khz. The cool thing is that it will record for about an hour and 40 minutes with no breaks, so when changing tapes you still have the audio. In combination with the camera, this gives 6 audio tracks to help you get a great final mix.

[Sherif Choudhry]

I would probably put a digital recorder hidden somewhere and take a simultaneous feed from the mic into a separate pre-amp. I do this with 2 Studio Electronics condensor mics into a Focusrite preamp and into my Korg digital recorder. I set levels during rehearsals. But i also engage a limiter to catch any high peaks, but otherwise its off. A simple handclap or synchronising to some event, eg hi-hat or intro speech means you can synch the tracks. There is some drift between the Korg and the camera sound track but i find that its easily adjusted by comparing the waveforms in your NLE, eg Vegas or FCP.

The quality is significantly higher then going straight into the video cameras mic inputs. I mean the difference is astounding. And since its music people will expect to hear professional quality sound.
Hope this helps.

[Sherif Choudhry]

Originally Posted by Gary Nattrass

I have done may gigs like this have a look at the two Lucie Slater clips here:Real Ale - Real People - Real Community Spirit! - Black Horse Inn they were both recorded sep sound onto a mini disk before I got the D50.

Gary, excellent, liked the video Great promo!

[Grayson L. Wideman]

One problem that can raises its ugly head is that the sync generator in the camera and the word clock in the recorder will not be locked to the same reference.

In high end systems either the camera and the word clock generators will be locked to an external sync generator. Or you might lock the sync source for the word clock to the video output of the camera.

I would suggest that you get lots of cutaways to cover the sync drift. A second camera getting close ups of the players and shots of the audience that can be cut in to cover needing to stretch or time compress the video to match the high quality audio track for the recorder would be a great tool.

Hope this helps:

Grayson

[Ty Ford]

Originally Posted by Gary Nattrass

With my set-up I would just place a sony D50 in front of them or rig my small mixer the sign eng-44 with a stereo condensor feeding it and then the sony D50, I would also add a sennheiser radio mic on the output of the D50 or mixer and radio a mono guide track back to the camera.

Multiple cameras could also be few with a receiver each with the master stereo sound being on the D50 recorder. If this is too much then the camera mic will be enough for syncing.

I have done may gigs like this have a look at the two Lucie Slater clips here:Real Ale - Real People - Real Community Spirit! - Black Horse Inn they were both recorded sep sound onto a mini disk before I got the D50.

Hi Gary,

On my system there are a lot of hiccups and obvious timing problems in her #2 cut. What did you do different between the two cuts? The music track was previously recorded, right?

I did a track for, Karyn Oliver, (htpp://www.karynoliver.com) one of my music clients last year. I shot with a Canon XL2 using the stereo camera mic to grab the room. I also recorded a separate stereo track mixed out from the house mixer. I time aligned the two stereo tracks and blended in about 25% camera mics to fill out the direct sound.

We got a nice blend with a good vocal. Without the direct tracks the audio was hugely roomy and unusable. The direct only signals weren't getting the drums right, among other things.

YouTube - Karyn Oliver, "The Rain" live

Sadly the key light in the overheads was GREEN. WTF? Who would put a GREEN light in a can that was shining on someone's face!!! In closeups, Karyn looked like she had some bad clams for dinner.

Regards,

Ty Ford

[Gary Nattrass]

Sorry the glitches are from the streaming company not the original video, I am having a few problems at the moment and we are not sure why one clip is ok and another has glitches.

[Jonathan Schwartz]

Stefan,

I probably film about 30 live band and choir events throughout the year ranging from outdoor marching band competitions to indoor choir concerts. I run a Wireless Sennheiser G2100 series with a AT825 Stereo Condenser Mic. I have found this to be a great mic for live events. As a former band director I am pretty picky about my audio and this mic does a great job for the price. I know there are more expensive mics and preamps and recorders, but if you want a simple clean setup, this is it. The mic is pretty sensitive so make sure to bump your camera audio levels down a bit! Hope this helps some. Just my 2 cents.

Jonathan Schwartz
CA Video Productions

[Stefan Immler]

Johnathan --

The Sennheiser G2 100 is a single-channel transmitter, right? Do you use two units to transmit the stereo signal of your stereo mic?

[Jonathan Schwartz]

The G2 tansmits a stereo image. I get on my camera different levels depending on where the sound is coming from. Hope this helps.

Jonathan Schwartz
CA Video Productions

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Schwartz

The G2 tansmits a stereo image. I get on my camera different levels depending on where the sound is coming from. Hope this helps.

Jonathan Schwartz
CA Video Productions

The G2 is a mono transmitter/receiver setup. I don't know what you're hearing but with only one setup you're getting mono. How about some exact details about what you're doing?