External Mic Mode Setting C100

[Stefan Gill]

Hi,

The MIC Mode is set to Automatic, and the MIC/Int. Mic Att. is Off.

This works fine in normal settings but when DJ announces grand entrances for wedding, or he is playing music for dancing, the sound often becomes terrible.

I can see the audio meter in the bottom of my LCD show that it in the "red" when this happens.

However when I set MIC to Manual, I find I have to constantly change the settings being afraid it is too low, then too high.

Any suggestions ?

[Matt Davis]

This is a big shout-out to Canon: you could have fixed this with different levels for each channel! Why did you fudge this key feature?

Stefan, most camcorders allow you to use one microphone and attach it to one input to your camera, then use different audio levels on the two channels it records, specifically so you can switch (in post) between the different levels.

It's been a standard part of 'working practice' for ENG (sorry - Electronic News Gathering), in that you set levels for your gun mic for normal situations and record this to Channel 1, then Channel 2 takes this same microphone and you set its levels to -12 to -18 dB LOWER - if CH1 distorts, there's a better quality version in CH2.

Sadly, Canon didn't attend that meeting and the C100 merely duplicates the audio. I have moaned, badgered and shouted at Canon about this, I've been pushed off Canon stands at trade shows, and I continue to petition Canon to sort this silly thing out, but it's not quite there yet. You'd have to use an external mixer to do this until Canon (yo!) fixes it.

[Stefan Gill]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your reply, yes that would seem like a good solution .. for yesterday's wedding I manually lowered and raised the levels for each scene, which worked OK but in run-and-gun weddings where scenery changes in an instant, this is just one extra step ... I also have to double check the input on the shotgun mic it may be too high.

Canon: slow motion (240fps HD) and improved audio, I'm waiting!

[Andrew Maclaurin]

Stefan, what mics are you using? xlrs? I have used a shotgun mic in 1 channel in auto and the camera mic in the other channel set lower as a back up.
If I'm using the rode video mic then I use auto most of the wedding but switch to manual (between 20 and 30) whenever there's music. Then I deal with the aftermath in the edit! Not ideal but there you go.

[David Dixon]

Yes, the camera mic at a lower setting is better than nothing I suppose.

The XF series has an audio limiter that I turn on (XF100). However, as most of my shooting is in a setting with pretty controlled audio (or no audio at all) I don't really know if it works all that well. Does the C series not have one, or is it not useful?

[Stefan Gill]

Originally Posted by Andrew Maclaurin

Stefan, what mics are you using? xlrs? I have used a shotgun mic in 1 channel in auto and the camera mic in the other channel set lower as a back up.
If I'm using the rode video mic then I use auto most of the wedding but switch to manual (between 20 and 30) whenever there's music. Then I deal with the aftermath in the edit! Not ideal but there you go.

I'm using the sennheiser mini microphone as it's small and lightweight. I found that when I switched it out with the same model mic, the new one works much better. I no longer need to manually adjust my input settings.

[Owen Kilgour]

Originally Posted by Matt Davis

You'd have to use an external mixer to do this until Canon (yo!) fixes it.

Why not use a Y cable and and feed the mic into both XLRs?

[Stefan Gill]

Originally Posted by Owen Kilgour

Why not use a Y cable and and feed the mic into both XLRs?

This is the Y cable I found online, http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/252312-REG/Hosa_Technology_YXM_121_XLR_Female_to_2.html

If I use this Y cable, how could I adjust the gain on one channel to record louder then channel two, for instance?

[David Dixon]

You'd just set the input separately for each channel - for example, if you set one channel to 5, you could set the other to 4. You could monitor the signal and just make sure that the peaks on one channel are 6 to 12 lower than the other.

You just can't do this if you have one mic plugged in and set the audio to have Channel 1 record to both 1 and 2, as Matt was talking about.

Did you ever check to see that you had the Limiter turned on in the menu settings as I suggested a few messages back? It's supposed to be there to take care of blown out audio like this, and I keep it turned on all the time. However, given my recording situations I don't know if I've ever had a situation where it's been needed or not.

[Stefan Gill]

Originally Posted by David Dixon

You'd just set the input separately for each channel - for example, if you set one channel to 5, you could set the other to 4. You could monitor the signal and just make sure that the peaks on one channel are 6 to 12 lower than the other.

You just can't do this if you have one mic plugged in and set the audio to have Channel 1 record to both 1 and 2, as Matt was talking about.

Did you ever check to see that you had the Limiter turned on in the menu settings as I suggested a few messages back? It's supposed to be there to take care of blown out audio like this, and I keep it turned on all the time. However, given my recording situations I don't know if I've ever had a situation where it's been needed or not.

Thanks, I'll try it out.

[Stefan Gill]

Ok, still can't seem to figure this out. I have my built-in mic and lavalier both recording but the built-in mic only records mono to the left audio track while the lav records mono to the right track.

Ideally I would like to record from the lav and built-in mic at the same time, to both tracks. I Matt Davis mentioned a mixer but I don't know anything about that :(

I have tried with the single XLR into one channel and also with a XLR splitter into both channels, with no difference in results.

I'm attaching some reference pics for setup help / advice both with the cables and internal C100 settings.

Thank you!

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Stefan Gill

...Ideally I would like to record from the lav and built-in mic at the same time, to both tracks. I Matt Davis mentioned a mixer but I don't know anything about that :(

Your camcorder is not going to give you a mix of two mics. Instead, as you've found out, you'll get two channels of mono, one for each mic.

This is by design, since mixing is typically deferred to post, where you can take more time with adjusting levels as needed. If your camcorder did mix, that's the mix you'd be stuck with, for good or ill. This is bad for the one-person-band; defer as many creative decisions to post as possible.

Matt's right, too; you can add a mixer to the setup. More wires, more batteries, more dials and meters, but yes, you can mix two microphones to the two recording channels on your camcorder.

But I'd suggest getting familiar with the audio channel tools of your editing software - that's best for many circumstances, and may be best for your wedding shoots.

[Stefan Gill]

Hey Seth,

Great tip, by using the Fill Left and Fill Right in my Audio Effects tab, I can create Stereo from Mono.

Stefan

[Bill Grant]

I record the announcements separate through a tascam DR40. DJ feed into channel 1/wireless over the speaker into channel 2. Tascam creates an automatically -12db padded second file. Pluraleyes synchs everything and were done. Camera audio is just scratch.
Bill