I'm am hopefully shooting my first short film pretty soon. I need some advice on audio though. Our equipment right now consists of 1 Sony trv950 and 1 Azden SGM-X mic (unbalanced). To capture the audio I have come up with two suggestions (these will seem extremely ghetto to most of you but I have no money at all)....

1.) make a home made boom and attach my Azden mic to it with a long cord running straight into the camera. Upside about this is that I dont have to worry about sinking anything in post, but the downside, and this is prolly a huge downside, is that the boom operator will have to stand by the camera all the time.

2.) buy one of these cheap cassette tape recorders http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=getItemDetail&Q=&sku=179515&is=REG&si=spec#goto_itemInfo and run the mic straight into that. Problem with that is, I dont know how good the audio will be on this. Also, how would I get the audio onto my computer with it? Would I be able to run it into the mic input of my sound card (soundblaster 5.0 live) and record it with some sort of app.? If so, what app would be able to record it from my sound card? I have Adobe Audition, would that work? Or what about that sound recorder that comes packaged with windows?

I know all these options sound silly but its all I can really afford right now. Thanks for all your help.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Waits : I'm am hopefully shooting my first short film pretty soon. I need some advice on audio though. Our equipment right now consists of 1 Sony trv950 and 1 Azden SGM-X mic (unbalanced). To capture the audio I have come up with two suggestions (these will seem extremely ghetto to most of you but I have no money at all)....

1.) make a home made boom and attach my Azden mic to it with a long cord running straight into the camera. Upside about this is that I dont have to worry about sinking anything in post, but the downside, and this is prolly a huge downside, is that the boom operator will have to stand by the camera all the time.

It may be that your biggest problem will be interference. I once tuned into the local radio station with a long unbalanced cord. But try it. There is nothing wrong with something that works.

2.) buy one of these cheap cassette tape recorders http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=getItemDetail&Q=&sku=179515&is=REG&si=spec#goto_itemInfo and run the mic straight into that. Problem with that is, I dont know how good the audio will be on this. Also, how would I get the audio onto my computer with it? Would I be able to run it into the mic input of my sound card (soundblaster 5.0 live) and record it with some sort of app.? If so, what app would be able to record it from my sound card? I have Adobe Audition, would that work? Or what about that sound recorder that comes packaged with windows?

You can feed the sound card via the line input (preferrable). The microphone input will be too sensitive and you would have to obtain an attenuator to avoid overloading the input of the card.

Auditon may be able to record for your. The Windows recorder is limited to 60 seconds IIRC.

Soundblaster software should have a recording capability.

Try the boom idea first.


I know all these options sound silly but its all I can really afford right now. Thanks for all your help. -->>>

Thanks a bunch. As you can tell, I know nothing about audio. So any advice helps alot.