- For several years, the Rode VideoMic Pro+
was my main mic for video productions
plus other things like voiceovers
and even some of my early podcast episodes
but a new mic recently rode into my life
that made me say NTG Wyze,
this thing is real, it's really great,
it's a good microphone.
Pretty much anytime you see an angle like this for me
where the microphone is not in the frame
I am using a video mic
and like it just said for quite a long time
that was the video mic Pro+
which is an outstanding video microphone
that costs about $300
and while this video is not sponsored
about six months ago Rode did send me the video mic NTG
for free just because they were being nice,
they didn't ask me to make a video about it,
they didn't pay me for it and it worked out great
because up until then my wife, Heather and I
were sharing this microphone when we made our videos.
So now she uses this microphone in her office
and I use the NTG.
So today I wanna cover some of the basic features
about the NTG.
I definitely want to do some comparisons with the Pro+
and I also want to explain why I prefer
and recommend that the NTG over the plus,
even though I think technically the plus
is the higher end model.
So let's start with some of the basics and if you know me
and the way I review and compare things,
I don't usually spend too much time
on these super technical specifications
because there are plenty of people
who do that better than me
and what I'm more interested in is how these things function
in your actual real-world use case scenarios.
So the video mic NTG not only delivers great sound quality
but it also has a few killer features
and the mic itself is sort of a hybrid
because Rode for many years has had video mics
and for many years they've also produced
XLR, NTG shotgun microphones
and the VideoMic NTG is the hybrid
of the video mic with the NTG.
So you're kind of getting the best of both worlds
and especially for anybody that's on a budget.
Well, $250 isn't the cheapest microphone you can get,
I think it's just about the best value you can get
especially if you need to use it for more than one purpose.
So let's put the NTG in the shot just so you can see
what I'm talking about as I'm talking about it.
First and foremost, the design of the microphone,
the biggest difference comes with the build quality.
The Pro+ is all plastic
and if I take the windscreen off of it,
the actual microphone element itself is a long plastic tube
within the, I dunno the capsule at the end of it.
The VideoMic NTG is all metal, it's all aluminum.
It feels like a regular shotgun microphone
and in fact, you can just snap it out of the shock mount
and then position it or use it
in other places if you want to.
It has a 3.5 millimeter output
right next to the power button
there are three little LED lights.
One has a negative 20,
one has volume bars and one has a symbol
that represents audio clipping,
levels that are too loud and they're getting clipped off.
And what this lets you do is fine tune and adjust
and protect yourself and your audio while you're recording.
If you press the power button once
it's gonna turn on the negative 20 decibel pad
which means it's going to lower the output
of the microphone.
So if you're in a really loud environment
and no matter what you do your sound is clipping
and it's too loud, you can turn that on,
it's gonna push everything down.
The VideoMic Pro+ has a similar feature.
You can press a decibel button on the back
and you can go down to negative 10.
If you press the power button twice on the NTG
then you turn on the safety channel
which means one channel of the output
is gonna be just whatever levels you have it set as
but the other channel is going to be 20 decibels lower
and it's gonna do both at the same time.
And that is good because if you're filming something
and the audio clips and it's too loud,
you have like a backup safety track
that you can then replace that with
because it's gonna be recorded lower.
Since you are boosting that up in post,
it probably means it's gonna be a little noisier
and not gonna be quite as high quality,
but it's almost like almost like recording
with two microphones at the same time.
You have your main mic and then you have a safety track
and that's a very cool feature.
And the LED that's under the clipping symbol
is basically a peaking meter,
when it starts flashing that means your signal is too loud
and you know you need to adjust something
and that's cool feedback that other Rode microphone
other VideoMics in the past just haven't had.
And the EQ button on the VideoMic NTG
is where it starts to share a lot of features
with the Pro+.
Basically you've got your high pass filters,
you can press it once to engage a high pass filter
that's at 75 Hertz, you can press it again
to engage a high pass filter that's at 150 Hertz
and you can press and hold it
to actually do a high boost or high signal boost.
And I should've mentioned too earlier
that the Pro+ also does have the safety channel,
so you have that option on both microphones as well.
Now, some places where the plus out does the NTG
really has to do with battery life.
The plus has a battery door
which is so much easier than the old VideoMic used to be.
And it has a removable rechargeable battery
and you can also put in AA batteries right in here,
which is great because that safety right?
You have the safety channel
but you also have safety power,
so you'll pretty much never run out of battery power
and you battery believe that that's a powerful feature.
And actually, I mean if you think about it,
charging this doesn't take very long,
the battery itself lasts a really long time.
It lasts like a hundred hours is what it's rated for.
You could in theory have a few of these batteries,
so that way if you're doing a long shoot day
or you're doing a lot of traveling,
you don't even need to charge it,
and you have more than enough power
but the fact that you can also just put in
some double A's right into here
means that even if everything's dead,
you can just, I don't know, stop at a gas station,
get some batteries and you'll be up and running.
How do I put this back in here?
The VideoMic NTG does not have a removable battery,
it has a built-in non serviceable battery.
So that's definitely a negative.
It's battery also is only rated for 30 hours
instead of a hundred hours.
So it's not nearly as long lasting as the Pro+.
I use the mic several hours a week
and I usually charge it about once a month.
So, it's not an issue.
I mean, 30 hours is still a lot of hours.
Both of these microphones have removable audio cables
which is great.
Again, the older, older VideoMics had built-in cables,
so if something happened to it,
the whole microphone would need to be sent
in for repair or wouldn't work anymore.
This one, the Pro+ was also the first VideoMic
that had an auto power on and off feature
which was amazing because the older ones again
you had to remember to turn the mic on or turn the mic off.
I would always forget to turn it off
and then the battery would die
and it'd be a nine volt battery.
That was a total pain to change as a whole thing.
Don't worry about it, I'm old
you don't need to worry about that.
This microphone will turn on when the camera turns on
and it will turn off when the camera turns off.
Same with the VideoMic NTG.
It will turn on with the camera turn off with the camera.
But, there's a huge benefit to the NTG
that like, that just makes me love it so much more.
This mic has something that drives me crazy.
When you charge it, you plug it in with a micro USB charger,
there's a little blue light on the back of it.
When the blue light stays constantly on
that means the microphone is charged
and then you unplug it.
When you unplug the Pro+ from the charger,
it's just on, it doesn't turn off.
So what I've done on more than one occasion
is charged up the microphone,
see it's fully charged, unplug it, put it in my camera bag
and then a day or two later or more,
when I go to use it thinking I got this fully charged
microphone, it's actually dead
because it was just on the whole time
and it ran out of battery.
The VideoMic NTG, when you charge it with USB-C,
you unplug it and the microphone turns off.
So you take it off the charger and the microphone's off
until you plug it into your camera
or you turn it on manually.
And while we're talking about charging
the VideoMic P+ does use a micro USB charger
like I mentioned, whereas the VideoMic NTG
uses USB-C and you will see why that is amazing
not just because it is a more common,
more universal charging thingy,
but because one of the killer features of the VideoMic NTG
is that it can be used as a USB microphone.
If you plug it in to your computer,
it will show up just like a NT USB or Yeti,
any other USB microphone you've used
works great on conference calls.
I do need to clarify that I haven't used it too much
as a USB microphone personally
because I have my Rode caster
and all my other mics and stuff,
so when I'm on my computer, that's what I use.
But, if you're somebody who doesn't have all of that,
you get this microphone, use it for all of your videos
and then plug it to your computer and use it for streaming,
for voiceovers, podcasting, whatever.
And the biggest, bestest, it's the most greatestest
killer futurist in my opinion of the VideoMic NTG
is what Rode calls the infinitely variable gain control
which is just this dial on the back
as you adjust the gain, total game changer
or game changer, if you will.
It makes things so much easier.
I've done a few videos, if you saw
like my sound treatment video
or my zoom teaching setup video,
I filmed both of those with the NTG
and when I was filming those videos for part of it
you know, I would be in front of the camera like normal
and so the microphone was pointing at me
and I was talking to it and I had the level set
but as I was kind of giving a tour of my setup,
I just turned the microphone around,
so when I had the camera pointed away from me,
the microphone was facing toward me
and I could just point and talk about what I was showing,
but because it made me so much closer to the microphone,
the level changed and since this dial not only exists
but also has numbered markers on it,
I quickly knew like, okay,
when I'm in front of the microphone, I need it at 11
because it should go to 11,
when I'm behind the camera that means
I should turn it to eight.
And as the whole day just quickly switching the microphone
back and forth, I knew switch it forward, turn it to 11,
switch it back, turn it to eight
and it kept the levels consistent
and it sounded so good.
If you watch those videos
and it looks like there's a voiceover with B-roll clips,
there is no actual voice over.
It is just me with the microphone pointed
towards me on the camera, like talking as I'm filming.
And the first camera, the main camera is my ESR
which is actually in a small rig cage,
it has a little monitor attached to it.
All of those things are 100% unnecessary
but also very, very fun.
So now let's do some comparisons
and before we even jump into that,
I will tell you if you already have the Pro+,
I don't think you should spend the money to get this
unless you need any of those very specific features
I mentioned.
So this is the Pro+ with the plus 20 boost on it
which is normally how I use it with my camera's game
turn almost all the way down
and this is with no boost
but raised a little bit in final cut pro during the editing.
So you can kind of hear the difference in quality.
Both microphones are about the same distance away
from me right now, but while we're talking
into the Pro+, maybe you can hear
some of the difference in tone.
I do think that this microphone is a little bit fuller.
It seems like it's a little bit better at picking up,
you know, rejecting sound while having directional sound.
I can even test that out.
So if I turn the microphone
and you can kind of hear how my voice changes
as it goes around and then comes back,
you can sort of hear the rejection.
Switching back to the NTG
maybe you can hear a difference in quality.
If I go to the side of the microphone,
you can hear how it's rejecting,
I go behind the microphone.
If I go back over here to the other side
you can sort of hear the pickup pattern.
I'm gonna switch back to the Pro+
so I can show you some features on the NTG.
So when you get the microphone,
it comes with a cable that's kind of flat
which is great because depending on where you're running it,
you can run it through this mount
and it has these little clips
and you can just clip the cable right in there
and then run it into your camera
and it's got sort of a built-in cable management system.
But a couple other big benefits,
if you've used a VideoMic before
and you put it on your camera, you might know
that then if you go to use your viewfinder,
it sometimes bumps you right in the head.
If it's the microphone is too far
and it's getting into the frame of your shot,
you can move it backwards.
If it's bumping you in the head, you can move it forward.
So that way it's positioned exactly where you want it
depending on your camera and your mount
where it's not going to get in the way.
Also this mount that comes with it
lets you do something else, which is really cool.
And I am so sorry, somebody gave me this idea
in like the comments or a live stream
and I know it's somebody who I talk to a lot
in the comments of my channel, but I don't remember who.
So, if you're the one that gave me this idea,
I am taking it from you and I'm grateful to you
and I'm sorry that I forgot that, that came from you.
But it involves the Rode wireless GO
because of the hot shoot needs to slide back
and forth to let you adjust it,
there's like this rail in here.
So, if you have the NTG and you have the wireless go
you can actually slide the transmitter into the mount
connect it to the microphone
and now you have a wireless shotgun microphone
and then you could put this on a boom arm,
you can put it, you know, that the other end
of our room or something, you can even get, you know,
a little handle like this or a little tripod like that
and now you have a wireless handheld microphone
which is also your camera's shotgun microphone,
which is also a USB microphone.
Here, let's go back to the NTG.
Very quickly I would like to point out
that if you're wondering how I'm connecting
these microphones to the little tripod here
or this little handle which is just a little recorder handle
from zoom, the microphones themselves
have three eighths inch mounts on the bottom
and so I'm using a little three eights to quarter 20 adapter
so that they will fit on all of these things here.
So at this point, I hope you can see why I'm so excited
about the VideoMic NTG.
Like I said, I really love the Pro+
in terms of battery and power,
it does offer some edge over the NTG
but pretty much in every other way,
including the fact that the NTG is smaller
and more compact at least a little bit,
I have no idea why you would get the plus over the NTG.
If you wanna know more about microphones and audio
and getting good audio for your videos,
because audio is half a video,
check out these videos right here.
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