Today we're taking a look at audio. I've learned a lot over the years with this
youtube channel. I really do more video than I do photography even though the
channel is mostly about photography. Because there's just so much to the
video stuff. There's a lot of time that goes into it. So we're going to look at all the different
microphones that have used. Have on hand, and also the software side of things.
With equipment, positioning, having sound treatment.. things like that are very
important. I have a microphone right up here. I have a storm in the
background if you can hear... When I do talking videos what I do with my
audio is they have another one of these cardioid microphones, facing downward
just out of frame. And it comes up on a cable. Got the arm, actually hooks into
this big shelving unit they have. And then here's the actual camera down here.
Talk about these foam pieces. These are not great, but they do something. At least
a little bit. You want to have a whole bunch if you're gonna go with something
cheap like this. I also have a similar one on here. These are also probably
too thin, but a different type. And maybe I'll eventually get more of them, but
they are better than nothing. They do something at least. At the very least, and
just blankets and things. So I have them covering.. Trying to block some of the
reverb. Now, it's not sound deadening. It's just reverb reduction. This is my newer
set up. Another cardioid microphone. Super cheap one. Here we have an M50 with a shotgun
microphone. Very narrow pickup pattern. Also, the zoom H1 recorder. This is very
wide. It has two microphones and there split stereo. Comes out maybe 180 degrees.
Rotates around to the front. Also, a standard cardioid microphone. These are
the ones that I used most time. It just comes out more narrow. Not super
directional, but enough that it works decently well. Another one to consider
are lapel microphones. In this case I have a little recorder that can go with it.
You put the microphone in this general area, and then you'll put this in your
pocket. The one negative with lapel microphones is that you
some shirt noise and things like that sometimes. I'm gonna do a quick test with
these cameras. All the sound, see how it works.
Here's a quick test with all the different microphones. I have the
lapel on. We have the shotgun microphone. In the center we have the Zoom. Also, we
have this cardioid microphone. Nice thing about this one on the end is it does not
need batteries. These two you do need batteries.
This is AA.. AA.. so, this one actually with the recorder. Of course,
the recorder needs batteries, so...
Generally the closer you
are to the microphone the better. However, you don't wanna get too close. Because a
lot of microphones will peak. You don't want that. I use manual levels on my
cameras usually. With these cardioid microphones I'm about 50 percent on the
M50. If I get too close you'll hear popping.. popping sounds that are not good.
With the microphones you're basically peaking. That's not a good thing. If you get too
far away from the microphones it won't sound great. But you get closer and
closer and closer and closer should sound quite a bit better. If you go to
the side a little bit then you have less risk of peaking, which is good. Another
important aspect of what I do is not talk for a few seconds at least. If not
longer, so I can have a sample to do noise reduction on. You can hear the
storm maybe in the background, which is pretty loud. I'm going to not talk for a
few seconds and I'll attempt to remove that in post...
You can hear the storm
maybe in the background, which is pretty loud.
I'm gonna not talk for a few seconds, and I'll attempt to remove that in post.
Alright, now we're going to try to edit some of those talking portions that I
did previously. We do a few different Clips here. Take one into the video editor.
Which is Magix Vegas Pro 15. And then just drag that into the timeline. You can see when I
have it set to 50% levels it's still not super loud, but I want to go in here and
do a quick normalize on that footage. Just to make it work properly.
Just to get an idea of what I would normally do here. I would just clip some
of this stuff out.
"With the audio I think some of mo..."
"With audio I think some of the most importan..."
So we just take pieces out.
Let's say... this area.
But you get that idea. Where are you just trying to make it cleaner.
I would definitely not be going this quick.
That should be good. This back portion here is where we
want they silent clean background ambient noise to use. And then from here
I would export as a WAV file just pulling the audio from the source video
file. So I have one set up 48 kilohertz 32 bit. That's the raw audio fully
clipped in the video editor. It's pretty quick usually. And then go into Audacity.
Now, I skined this. It's darker. I prefer the darker applications. And some
customizations which I'll get to. Actually have this guy here, which is
basically a numpad that I put little labels on. And it works as a numpad. And I
just have some different setups for just Audacity...
I've got zoom in, zoom out, zoom normal, normalize, repair.. If I can even read my
own things. But I use compress, normalize, equation, noise reduction,
repeat... So quite a few little things here that just make it faster for me to
edit. Of course, you can go to the menus. You could see all of my settings on the
screen. Numpad 6, numpad 1.. 2.. for those things.
I drag in that fixed up audio. What I do here is I go individually to some of
the peaks that are really extreme. I'm gonna use my little numpad, but you'll
get the idea. So zoom in. Go into this peak. I select just the edges of it. Then
go into normalize, which is in effects, normalize. I do usually.. it depends on
your setup.. but in my case -5 dB. So you could see that peak is much lower.
I zoom out again. I look for another one. Now, I'm just doing this just to the
specific ones that are really extreme Peaks. Then go into normalize again.
I do this pretty quick.
So with this one I might take this entire thing or I might
take just that area.
That.. that.. generally looks okay. So we're just gonna go with that. And then what I
do next is a compressor. On my little numpad, or also in the menus. Effect,
compressor. You have to select all the stuff first so I do control-A on the
keyboard. Or you can just go like that. Pull up the compressor. These are the
settings that I have in here. I don't change them. Probably not great, but I'd
usually do all this just for the talking portions. It depends, but.. So we've got
-18 dB for the threshold. Noise floor -30. Ratio 2 to 1. Attack time 0.5
seconds. Release time 1 second. Compresses everything down to make it
more equalized. And then I do a normalize...
To -1...
So now we're more equalized. Now I'm going to actually use an actual
equalization filter. See these peaks here. That's what I have it set. Because from
what I have learned. Whether it's perfectly true or not, that's where the
human voice is centered. So we want these peaks and we don't want a lot of other
stuff. Just run that. And in this case we can tell that we're very much peaking in
a lot of areas. We're going to do another normalize, -1, so at that
point we're going to do a noise reduction.
The challenge here is listening to your noise. Your ambient sound.
You don't want weird noises that might have happened like click, anything like
that. So I'm going to delete some of these peaks that don't look proper to
background noise. And a lot of the time I turn up my audio. Just be careful so you
don't try to play the standard audio at the same time. You'll mess yourself up. But I
turn up my audio, and listen to the noise. And I delete stuff that I don't like.
So I just heard myself.. do.. move around or something.
I just heard myself breathe, so
That's a really bad sample. We're just.. we're just gonna have to go with it, but
in general, I delete little pieces that don't sound right. What you want to do is
select that sample for background noise. Go into noise reduction. I have to get
the noise profile first. And then select the entire clip. CTRL-A on the
keyboard. Just to zoom out, you can see that entire thing is selected. Then you
pull up noise reduction again. In this case I have these settings for it. So
I've tried to make it and that sounds super weird. But noise reduction...
We've got 15 dB. Sensitivity 1.5, frequency smoothing 12 bands, and reduce.
So at that point the audio should be good enough to re-import. "Background
which is pretty loud... I think some of the most important things are: One
positioning of the microphone..." In this case I'm going to export as a WAV file.
Then pull this back into the video editor. Go here.. drag that in.. whoops! I have a
setting on that moves.. shifts.. that clips. So it's this little auto ripple. You have to
turn that off. Pull the clip in, so it's... You can't edit your video after this.
Until you've re-imported the audio. Because then it'll be..
not aligned and that's not good.
And then I do is delete my old audio. Of course, I'm saving the project as I go.
Different files, so if I mess something up I can still go back to a previous save.
Just delete these...
so now we have good enough audio. "I think some of the most
important things are: One, positioning of the microphone." Two: Sound treatment in
your space. Of course, we're talking vocals. It's actually not bad, it was raining
pretty loud.
"Which doesn't give a great sample. Otherwise is you have to pick out
little sections." so at that point you might want to clip things up again a
little bit more. But of course, you have to either link these clips together or
just be careful when you're moving stuff around. So that your voice doesn't shift
in comparison to the video that is in there. Of course all that depends on
what editor you're using. In this case Magix Vegas can use whatever. It's all
the same for the most part. That is the extent of my editing for audio. It really
depends on what I'm doing. if I'm going to do clips of outdoors indoors. I might
put them on different tracks. So that I can edit them
differently in Audacity. Sometimes I don't edit them in Audacity if the outer
stuff is good enough. I don't there's no way to do noise reduction and outdoor
stuff because the ambient is changing constantly. So I would take pieces of it.
Edit.. edit.. and then do a big bulk edit of audio in the end. That way it's all
equalized and normalized compressed all the same amount. There is a lot to it, but
you get used to it. Once you figure out a process that works
for you. Anyway, I'm Scott of Photography Banzai. hope you enjoyed the video, thanks!