Preferred way to record

[Jeff Kellam]

Originally Posted by Ryan Kincaid

New to the game so I will ask a stupid question with your permission.

Recording sound: do you generally prefer to connect the Shotgun mics to the camera itself or to an external sound recorder ie; portable Hi-MD or DAT?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of both?


Which do sound guys prefer? Which do editors prefer? or is it a matter of affordability? (I'm doing this for a modest budget and would like to see if I can keep the sound budget (equipment) down to about $500 (Even cheaper if possible. I already have a mic Audio Technica AT897). Would I need another mic?

Ryan as a relative newbie to good (not great) sound myself, I know where you are coming from and will try to add to the good answers you already recieved.

In the recent past I have been using a Sony PCM-D50 digital audio recorder ($500ish) to record the primary audio track from wireless or wired microphone feeds. I always record in 24bit resolution and 48K sampling frequency. This always gives a better result than recording to the camera and there is a ton more material to work with when you need to boost levels or edit the audio for whatever reason. The limiter and attenuators are also far better than the on-camera ones.

I also have a Panasonic camera and the onboard sound (not mics) recording is acceptable in most cases, but it's never as good as the digital audio recorder. However, I have have a couple projects lately that were just extremely time consuming to sync audio and video (doing multicam with timeshifting a bunch of scenes). I can tell you for sure that the edit is going to be much more time consuming, at least until you get a good work flow established.

So in short, getting the audio off the camera is the way to go, but you need some good equipment (including a mixer) and it's a lot more work on location and in post.

Here is a B&H digital recorders buyers guide:
The B&H Handheld Digital Audio Recorders Buyer's Guide | B&H Photo Video Audio

Have fun

[Karl Lohninger]

Originally Posted by Marco Leavitt

Lastly, as far as the main reason for double system being the elimination of the hassle of being tethered to the camera -- please. The less said about that the better.

Let the man talk. Marco, please speak up - say what you have to (...?) say for crying out loud ;-)