I’m trying to come up with a better process for my voice talent to do narrations. Right now he uses his video camera to record the voiceovers. Surprisingly this provides good quality audio with no computer or expensive equipment. This is fine except for one major problem, one of us needs to drive an hour to pickup/drop off the dv tape and he plans to take extended trips out of state. It would be more convenient if he sent it over the internet.

I thought it would be as simple as plugging a mic into his pc, recording and uploading the file. To my surprise I learned that PC sound cards don’t provide enough amplification or introduce too much noise. So I’ve thought of a couple of solutions:

1. Buy him a studio mic and pre amp.
Costs around $200 depending on the quality of the equipment. This is kind of an expensive solution since his current method is work just fine.

2. Buy him a firewire card and have him import his audio from the camera. Firewire card is inexpensive but he has an old computer and he isn’t tech savvy. I can’t see him using Avid. Does someone know of less complicated software to capture and save audio?

3. Buy him an inexpensive powered mic or a sound card that would provide enough applification without excessive noise, comparable to that of his current method (recording with a video camera). Anyone have an opinion on those high end soud cards (turtle beach or sound blaster Audigy)?

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

2. Buy him a firewire card and have him import his audio from the camera. Firewire card is inexpensive but he has an old computer and he isn’t tech savvy. I can’t see him using Avid. Does someone know of less complicated software to capture and save audio?

He can buy a firewire card for ~$25 (newegg.com, pricewatch.com, pricegrabber.com) and get Scenalyzer (~$40) to capture the audio.
Scenalyzer I believe can be set to capture live.

The advantage to that program is that it can capture audio without having to capture the video too.

If he's tech savvy enough, he can encode the audio using (lossless) compression like Windows Media or iTunes. And then send the file over the internet through yousendit.com

Or setup a FTP server on your side via Filezilla or Bulletproof FTP; make sure you setup dynamic DNS, I suggest going to namecheap.com to get a domain name, they have free dynamic DNS; port forward port 21 if your internet is shared via a router).

2- Is he using the microphones on his camera?
And does it actually sound good?!

thx for the quick suggestion. i'll give the program a quick look see. as for the upload im thinking of signing up for a free or paid storage service he can upload via a web page or transfer files by aim or msn.

If the files are not too big, i.e. he compresses them, then yousendit.com is free and easy.

Scenalyzer (~$40) to capture the audio.
Scenalyzer I believe can be set to capture live.

The advantage to that program is that it can capture audio without having to capture the video too!
I have mixed feelings about the program. I find the interface isn't intuitive and the program is lacking a manual. I'm not quite sure how to capture live audio from the camera (even though I selected it on in the Option menu). Not sure how to do narration where you can see how much time has elapsed, timed recordings, the ability record over a previous take until you get it right, and playback a take. But I do like that it can capture just the audio.