I am visiting family and wanted to record a track with my dad's narration to slides for his video. I just realized my sony gvd-1000 deck does not have a mic input.
THe only other tape recorder they have is pure junk. One of those fifteen year old table top models with the cheesy little mic.
SUggestions? thx =)

go to radio shack and buy a xlr to 1/4 inch and then a quarter inch to mini jack and plug right into the line in of your computer and record in whatever program you have. or see if they have an xlr to minijack. i hope that helps a little.

oh, the mic had a mini adapter. It fit in the av in jack but would not record except with a level so low you could barely hear it even turned all the way up. I don't see anyhwere in the menu settings that allows you to adjust your levels. I guess this thing won't take a mic. Which seems odd for such an expensive deck. Well, expensive by consumer standards, it's more of a prosumer item i think.

It might be the mic just can't drive your input enough, or the cam has a manual level in a menu somewhere?
One cheap option that works great is to get one of the cheap Olympic Pearl recorders with USB out, and record to that. They're sub 100.00. I'd never use it for much, but for a dialog at 32k mono, it sounds pretty good.

hey thanks i'll check it out.
Well we never did get it recorded.
Oh man, three weeks visiting the parents - no disrespect to them but boy it's great to be home! Nothing like three weeks of mom and dad to drive you wacko batty.
I'll look into that for future situations. Now that I'm home I'll also check the manual -- although the guy from Sony said I couldn't do a mic input.
I can't believe Sony would overlook something like that in a thousand dollar deck. What were they thinking?
Well have a good one folks.