- Hey, guys, welcome to Travel Feels.
Today we're gonna talk about five tips
for getting crispy audio.
(upbeat electronic music)
We all know how important audio is, but if you're like me,
then sometimes you end up neglecting audio a little bit
just because you're so consumed with the visuals,
and I just like the visuals way more.
I'm not an audio guy, but audio is super important.
I've been getting a lotta questions about my audio setups,
what microphones I'm using,
so I thought I would show my setup
but also give you guys some tips
on getting better audio for your videos.
Now to preface this, I am not an audio guy,
but I have learned some things about audio
over the years that I've been doing filmmaking.
So these aren't really high-level tips,
but they're so crucial for getting really good audio,
and audio is kind of one of those mysterious things
for a lot of us where we don't really know what we're doing.
We kinda just put it together and hope it's good.
And I'm gonna try to keep this video
nice and short, nice and to the point.
Tip number one is to use a microphone.
Huge tip, I know.
But it's actually so important to just use a microphone
because the built-in microphones on any
of the cameras are just not that good.
For example, right now I'm playing the audio
from the built-in microphone on the camera,
and now I'm playing it from the shotgun up here.
So for my videos I like to use
shotgun mics for the most part,
but then sometimes I'm also using lav mics.
Shotguns are always gonna be the best quality
and the best range of sound.
It just captures so much more sound than the lav mics,
but sometimes you just need to use a lav mic.
Sometimes it just makes more sense,
and they're better at isolating sounds than shotgun mics.
Shotguns just pick up a lot more noise.
For the studio stuff that I film,
I'm using this guy, the RODE NTG3.
It's up here.
It's kind of expensive,
but it's a super high-quality microphone.
And the nice thing about microphones
is that once you buy one really high-quality microphone,
you can pretty much use that
for the rest of your filmmaking career.
Microphones don't really change that much.
For run-and-gun stuff, I'm using this guy,
the RODE VideoMic Pro.
Super good, super handy.
Fairly small, small enough.
And it's just a really good microphone
for vlogging and this kind of filming
where you're just running around,
and you need some ambient sounds.
So that's my vlogging microphone.
And then if I need to use lavs
or I wanna double up on audio,
get a shotgun and a lav just in case,
then I'm using these guys, the Sennheiser
ew 100 G3s.
That's what I'm using for lavs.
Now there's a bunch of different options for lavs,
but I bought these a super long time ago,
and they just still work perfectly.
So those are the microphones that I'm using,
and you don't need to be using those exact same microphones,
but you do want to use a microphone.
Number two, I would say use a shotgun
for sit-down situations like this,
and then use a lav for roaming shots
where you're running around and you don't wanna be
always so close to the camera.
For vlogging, I'm still usually using
the RODE VideoMic Pro and not a lav,
and that's because I wanna capture some ambient sounds also
at the same time with the shotgun mic,
whereas with a lav mic, you can't really be
recording ambient sounds and all that kind of stuff.
And also if I'm with somebody else,
I can quickly just turn around and point it at them,
and I don't have to switch lav mics onto them
in order to get audio from them.
So I find for vlogging,
it's still way more useful to use a shotgun mic.
But let's say you're filming a video just by yourself,
and you don't wanna be always close to the camera.
You wanna be running around showing examples, whatever,
then a lav mic is perfect for those situations.
And the reason for that is tip number three,
if you're using a shotgun,
keep it as close to you as possible.
For example, right now I have the shotgun mic
just out of frame right here.
You guys can barely see it, just out of frame right there.
You wanna keep the shotgun mic as close as possible
because this is where you get the best results.
For example, if I'm this close, it sounds pretty dang good.
But if, for example, if I'm even right over here,
it doesn't sound as good as when I'm right under the mic,
really close to the mic.
So when you're using shotgun mics,
no matter what shotgun mic you're using,
try and keep it as close as possible.
You're gonna get way better quality audio.
And that's probably one of this biggest pro tips
that I've learned watching the actual professionals,
the audio guys, do audio.
They get nice and close.
Number four is to aim your audio recording levels
at minus 12 dB.
Just like in video, you don't wanna overexpose your video
or underexpose your video.
The same way in audio, you don't wanna overexpose
or underexpose your audio.
That's not what it's called, but you get what I'm saying.
So for example, you don't ever wanna go above minus six dB.
That's like overexposing video.
That's the same thing in audio.
You're gonna get really bad-sounding audio.
And then also at the same time,
you don't wanna go too low on the audio levels.
You don't wanna underexpose,
so if you're way down at minus 30 dB,
then it's not gonna sound very good
when you turn it up in post.
You're gonna get a lotta noise,
and the audio's just not gonna sound as good.
So make sure your audio is staying around minus 12 dB.
This is a really important thing,
and this is one of those things where I had no idea.
I didn't know where the levels should be at all.
But now you guys know,
and you guys should stick to around that level.
That's where you're gonna get
the best results for your audio.
Number five is to just monitor your audio.
That's one of the big things that most people just don't do.
First of all, you should definitely
be looking at the levels, but even more importantly,
you should actually listen to it.
Stick in your headphones and listen.
See if it's good quality,
especially if you're doing a higher-quality production,
like you're doing some interviews with people,
or you're doing corporate jobs or weddings or whatever.
Listen to it and make sure there's no weird sounds going on,
because the audio levels might look good,
but then when you listen to it,
you might be getting all these crazy different sounds,
which sounds terrible, but it's still staying
within the right levels.
If you're not listening to your audio,
it's kind of like you're filming without an LCD screen.
You need to see what you're gonna film.
You also need to hear what you're recording.
Now for me, I have the luxury of plugging in this NTG3 mic
straight into the camera using XLR inputs,
but most DSLRs and smaller cameras don't have XLR inputs.
So, what you're gonna need to do
is use something like the RODE VideoMic,
or if you wanna step it up
and get a higher-quality shotgun mic,
then you can use something like this, the Zoom H4n.
This is just one kind of audio recorder,
and it works super well.
You can plug in your XLRs so you can
use really high-quality shotgun mics.
And you can also record a few different channels,
so you can get a lav and a shotgun mic at the same time,
which you can't do in DSLRs,
and it's super handy sometimes to just have that backup.
But also what this allows you to do is monitor your audio.
Sometimes you can't actually monitor your audio.
So let's say you plug in your shotgun mic
or your lav mic into this,
then you could have this right by your side,
and you can just plug in your headphones
and monitor the audio
even though the camera is farther away,
which is actually super handy in certain situations.
But if you are using something like this recorder,
then make sure you do a sync clap.
What you're gonna do is hit record on your camera,
hit record on this thing,
and then you're gonna just give
a good old clap, (hands clapping)
and what this gives you is a nice audio spike
that then you can use to sync your audio
between your camera and the recorder.
Now there's other ways of syncing sound,
but it's really good to have this
just in case all those other things don't work.
So audio recorders pro tip,
you can still listen to the audio
even if you're not able to do it on your camera
or if for whatever reason you can't
because it's so far away or whatever.
Audio recorder's really handy.
I'll link it down below.
And a last little bonus tip is to use something
like a dead cat when you're shooting outside.
This basically just cuts out all that wind noise,
which is really distracting
if you're hearing it all the time.
These are really handy.
They are a little bit expensive
I've heard that you can even use a sock
if you don't wanna buy one.
And just as a warning,
don't put these things through the wash
'cause this is what happens.
Ew, it's all dreaded.
It should look like this, nice and fluffy.
And not like this.
So don't wash it; it doesn't help.
All right, so those are the audio setups
that I use for my videos,
and I hope these tips will get you
that really nice crispy-sounding audio,
because audio is so important.
It should be one of those things that just goes unnoticed
because it just sounds natural and good,
and it's not distracting in any way.
All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed this video,
and I hope you learned something.
Guys, enjoy the filmmaking process
and go get some of those travel feels.
(upbeat electronic music)