I am shooting a commercial with a JVC ProHD 100 camera. I have XLR and shotgun mics as well as lapel mics. Is this how i should capture audio, right to the camera inputs? Is there another way that professionals capture audio for commercials? If so, do places rent this equipment.

I am shooting a commercial with a JVC ProHD 100 camera. I have XLR and shotgun mics as well as lapel mics. Is this how i should capture audio, right to the camera inputs? Is there another way that professionals capture audio for commercials? If so, do places rent this equipment.

There are a variety of answers to your question so about all one could honestly say with the info you've supplied is "it depends." While direct to tape in-camera is certainly a practical method, especially where budgets are tight as in commecials for local television, the exact way it all comes together, what kinds of mics and other equipment are needed, what crew is needed, etc, depend on the exact details of the shoot and could range from a simple standup with a handheld mic like a local news reporter out in the field might do all the way up to a set, cast and crew, and production methods that can rival a Hollywood feature production.

With commercials, as with any other type of filmmaking, the script dictates the complexity of the shoot for both video and sound. You could be doing a car commercial ranging from nothing more than Ralph Spoilsport standing on his used car lot all the way up to a helicopter flyby of a Hummer parked (airlifted into place, of course) on top of a rock spire in Monument Valley. Just like the camera requirements of those two shoots are going to be different, so will the sound requirements. And the same considerations apply to almost any other type of commerical you shoot.