greetings,
I just shot a seminar with my XL1s. the camera was on a tripod, 20-30 feet away from the speaker. he was speaking thru a mic, and there was a huge speaker on the other side of the room.
now, I know that the mic on the XL1s is directional (and the audio source in the seminar was not infront of the camera). So I set the Record Level to manual, and set the level to pretty high. I was monitoring the sound with a headphone while shooting. I was able o hear feet steps, small movements, and every tiny sound that comes out of the room.
When I went back home and played the video, I was surprised to find out that the audio on the tape was too weak. I could barely understand what the speaker was saying! and all of those small sounds i heard in the headphones weren't in the tape.

can someone tells me what went wrong.

(P.S: if you gonna advise me to buy audio accessories, I already have the MA-100, and I'm willing to buy anything that will help me in shooting seminars and meetings).


Appreciate your answer.

Nawaf Alali

Sounds like an audio setting was in the wrong position. How do you have the switches set on the side? MA-100 plugged into the camera? How are the internal menus set? How loud do you have the headphone monitor level set? If you play back through the camera can you hear anything?

well,
- Audio 1 on the side set to MIC.
- I didn't have the MA-100 connected.
- the headphone level was set to half excately (is that a good level?).
- the camera is set to 16-bit. i shot alot in this mode before, nothing went wrong before. but I always set the Record Level to Auto. could it be the manual setting ?
- I didn't playback with the camera (i don't have the tape anymore). But I imported the tape with Adobe PRemiere thru a Firewire (I think the sound on the computer will match the tape one).

You could have had setting incorrect on Premiere too. It sounds like you had the camera set correctly. Did you watch the audio meter? Did the levels seem normal or low on the meter?

Judge audio level using the meters on the XL1. Head phone sensitivity varies greatly by make and model so they are not a good way to judge whether or not recording level is high or low.

If the meter levels look OK, the "too low" issue is likely with your playback system.

Note that speakers often modulate their speaking levels, sometimes soft, sometimes loud. If you are comparing level to that produced by a consumer camera, it can sound low because consumer cameras use AGC that tends to make everything sound equally loud, destroying the dynamic range of the program material and adding a pumping noise floor. Even the XL1 in AGC mode will tend to make all sound equally loud, but not as bad as most consumer camcorders.