audio feed

[Jim Stamos]

i shot a rehearsal tonite with the r. thank god it was a rehearsal.
i got a line feed from the board, put it on channel 1, put xlr on line and back switch to ext. not sure what happened, but i heard no feed from that board, just the other channel on cam mic.
i changed the audio output to that channel only and still no feed.
have no idea what happened. sound guy said he gave me an line feed, but it wasnt there. the meters were moving, but not the audio from the board of actors. i cant believe i didnt get the feed.
any ideas?

[Marty Welk]

how were the meter"S" moving ?
about 50% of the time after a pro audio board person connects the wire, there IS nothing there. , those boards are more complex than the profiles in our cameras.
how can you do any checking testing NOW?
you had to be there well before the thing started, actually get cooperation from the stage manager/board operator , and had to hook it up have isolation headphones and tested what was comming in, and then he and you adjust stuff till it works.

what could you do ? Bring the audio guy a Harvest fruit basket , or a wine and cheese basket, or if the operator is a woman a big bouquet of flowers, and beg :-)

could it be that you have a tiny bit of something? even say HUM? on the other track, did you headphone it and crank it up, analise the audio waveform in a audio program?

[Richard Crowley]

In that circumstance, I would try:

1) Switch that input to "MIC level" just as a troubleshooting technique.
2) Try the same drill in the other input.
3) Try another cable.
4) Plug the cable into somethign else with an XLR input to confirm whether the cable is live.

[Jim Stamos]

theres one more rehearsal tomorrow morning, im going to try everything to make sure its right

[Bob Grant]

Feeds from desks are rarely line level from my experience. At +4dBm there's enough level coming out of the desk and into the amps to shake the building.
It really does pay to spend the time to get to know the guy running the desk. Have your own leads, attenuators, adaptors and isolation transformers. If you seem like you're serious and able to handle anything or better yet be an asset to the audio guy life is ever so much easier.

[Paul Hudson]

Check with the board op to see if they are sending a mic or line level. Then set your camera to the same. This should take care of your issue.

_______________________

Paul Hudson

[Bruce Rawlings]

I usually have a sound man to look after the sound coming from a board. The guy mixing the show has a enough to do and cannot usually worry about the feed coming out of his mixer. I would record auditorium sound on your own mike for back up.

[Jim Stamos]

i do record on the other channel the auditor sound.
thanks for the replies

[Ed Kukla]

take a small mixer with you. it will give you a headphone output separate from the camera. If you have no audio thru the mixer OR direct to the camera, it's for sure not you.

Did you check your menu settings? Could be you have very low menu setting levels. Did you pliug in a mic of your own? As mentioned, it could be mic level vs line level. That would have been the first thing to check.

House feeds are notoriously fickle. Try to get a pre-fade level. That means you get the signal before they muck with it. They will ride levels all over the place that might give you headaches. Having your own mixer and soundie watch levels for you is the best solution.

If you can't have a soundie on site and the signal is mono, run a splitter to ch 1 & 2. set ch 1 to your best level and set 2 on auto, just in case.

Do they have a tone generator? A lot of house operators do not. You can buy a small tone gen for under $100. Plug that into theboard and sent it to your camera so you can set tone where it belongs as a reference level.


* What's good for house is not always good for video. *

[Jim Stamos]

all is good, the guy ended up giving me a miclevel feed, sounds great.

[Marty Welk]

Just hooked the EX1r DIRECT to the board feed at the venue this saterday (99% of the time i have a mixer this was for testing).
switched it to LINE and i got Barely any sound, the meters were way at the bottom, and i could barely hear through isolated hedphones over the sound in the building.
They had the sound levels low, because house was about to open (people outside) but he assured me it was "line level" and +4db or some such thing.
it wasnt untill i switched it to MIC level on the XLR input that i had enough level comming into the camera.

i didnt test further (the show must go on), like with the full force audio, but that was strange. i was going to adjust the Menu item TRIM things, and they were still ghosted?
What are the TRIMS for? and when do they show up?
i am soooo confused.

with line level the meter averaged like this
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with mic level it averaged more like this
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the same thing shoved into my mixer would be going into the line input , certannly not the mic input.

[Richard Crowley]

"Just hooked the EX1r DIRECT to the board feed at the venue this saterday (99% of the time i have a mixer this was for testing).
switched it to LINE and i got Barely any sound, the meters were way at the bottom, and i could barely hear through isolated hedphones over the sound in the building.
They had the sound levels low, because house was about to open (people outside) but he assured me it was "line level" and +4db or some such thing."

So from that description, I don't see that there is a particular problem here? Unless they send you a reference level tone or something identifiable, you don't really know what you are getting, regardless of what they are telling you.

"i didnt test further (the show must go on), like with the full force audio, but that was strange."

I'm not sure what that means? Did you record the event or not? What levels did you get during the program? What does "full force audio" mean?

"What are the TRIMS for? and when do they show up?
i am soooo confused.

with line level the meter averaged like this
||
with mic level it averaged more like this
|||||||||||||||||||||||"

If you were getting reasonable levels with mic level, then you were getting mic level. Doesn't matter what they said or what they thought. Dunno why trims are an issue?

[Jim Stamos]

i ended u;p switching to mic level and it was perfect

[Marty Welk]

Originally Posted by Richard Crowley

"So from that description, I don't see that there is a particular problem here?

. Dunno why trims are an issue?

I didnt say there was a problem, i was just doing a test and relaying the info, i really doubt that it would have worked on line at that place even with the full audio.

trims are shown in the audio menu, but they are ghosted? I still dont know the point of them?

[Mitchell Lewis]

Unfortunately the Trims (in the Menu>Audio) are only available when the inputs are set to MIC. They are ghosted when the inputs are set to LINE.