(jazzy music)
- In the never-ending quest for high quality audio,
you might ask yourself,
"Is it possible to connect the RODECaster Pro
"directly to your camera?"
And the short answer is yes, you absolutely can.
You can use all of these features directly into your camera,
but it's something I've always been scared to try,
and I'll explain why at the end of this video.
So, I'm gonna show you how to do it.
It's very simple, but I'm also gonna give you a few warnings
just to make sure that you keep your gear safe.
And then also explain situations
where you might not want to take advantage of this feature.
So, a few weeks ago, I made a video all about
how to use the RODECaster Pro
as an external audio recorder for your videos,
and in the comments to that I got a lot of questions
asking why didn't I just connect this to my camera directly.
And I also had several people say
they had done it successfully themselves,
and that I should just jump in and give it a try.
So that is what I did.
Right now, actually, this audio is being fed
directly into Canon EOS R.
I have a cable plugged into the headphone output
of the RODECaster Pro,
going into the microphone input of the EOS R.
So, in theory, this should work on any camera
that has a mic input.
The RODECaster has a lot of different output options.
I'm using the headphone output
because that's the cable that I had available to me.
If you just wanna use a long aux cord,
you could put one end into the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack
on the front of the RODECaster
and just straight into the microphone input on your camera.
You can use monitor outputs,
you can use quarter inch outputs,
so there's a lot of different options
in terms of how you would send your signal to your camera.
Right now, I'm using just the headphone output,
which the volume from the RODECaster can be controlled
with the headphone knob.
But these levels don't really matter.
The levels that matter the most
are actually the recording input levels on your camera.
So, I'm doing this with the Canon EOS R.
It should work kind of the same on any camera
that has a mic input,
but the first thing you wanna do
before starting any of this is turn down your audio input.
Don't use auto audio levels, use manual audio settings,
and turn it all the way down.
And then what I have found
is that by turning the RODECaster's headphone output
to about 10 or 11 o'clock,
that's when I get the best signal.
If I turn it up you can hear gain noise.
(static crackling)
And if I lower it too much
then you can't hear anything at all.
So, I have found that about 10 o'clock works well,
and then starting with your audio levels
as low as they can go on your camera,
slowly boost them up until you're getting a decent level,
and that's gonna give you the cleanest signal,
and it's also gonna prevent
the loud signal from the RODECaster
from overloading the preamp on your camera.
And that's one of the things you wanna protect
when it comes to your gear
is you don't want your audio level turned all the way up
on your camera, and then you play audio from the RODECaster,
and it just blows everything out because it's way too loud.
Now, once you've got the RODECaster
connected to your camera,
you have all these features available directly.
You don't have to sync anything in post.
It's all being done for you, right has you record.
So, it's a great time saver.
You could have separate mics.
I've only got the one pod mic right now.
You have the Bluetooth phone connectivity.
You even got the sound pad
so you can play little cheesy musics and things like that.
So, you have all of the features of the RODECaster
as a mixer going directly into your camera.
It's really cool, and I'm happy you can do that,
and it's something that I'll probably be using a lot more
now that I know I can do it,
but it's something I'm not going to use all the time.
So, one of the benefits you might notice,
the record button on the RODECaster right now is green,
so I'm recording all of this
with the RODECaster in standby mode.
You don't need to have this recording at all.
But if I press record, now the RODECaster's recording
and the camera's recording,
so it's really helpful if you're doing something
really important like an interview
that you don't wanna lose, and you want backup recordings.
Now, just using the RODECaster,
you can have it recording directly to the camera
and to the RODECaster.
You've got some redundancy built in,
which is really just good for peace of mind
and good for things go wrong in the editing process,
which they sometimes do.
The main reason you'd wanna use this technique
is because it's really simple.
You don't have to do anything in editing.
Everything's done in camera.
But I don't think you'd necessarily wanna use it
all the time, and the reason for that
is because camera preamps, depending on your camera,
aren't always as good as something like the RODECaster.
The RODECaster is really quiet,
so its audio signal is just really clean, really quiet.
Cameras, they're made to do a lot of things,
so audio is just one small part of what they do,
and depending on your camera model,
you might have a noisy preamp which means you're gonna get
some of that hiss, and that fuzz
as you try to bring up your audio signal.
So, it's not necessarily going to be
the highest quality audio, again,
totally depending on which camera you're using.
Just to give you an example,
with this signal coming from the EOS R,
I'm going to stop talking,
and you can listen to the ambient white noise.
And now I'm actually going to switch over
to the recording from the RODECaster.
So now I have it recording and (snaps)
now this audio is coming straight from the RODECaster,
and I'm going to be quiet
so you can hear the ambient white noise.
And we'll do that again, so here's the EOS R,
and here's the RODECaster Pro.
So, they both sound really good,
and they're both very usable,
but because the RODECaster is designed only to do audio,
it excels at audio in a way that a multi-use,
hybrid, video, stills, mirrorless camera just really can't.
Even though the EOS R, I think,
does have pretty great preamps overall,
this is gonna sound better.
So, if you want the best possible audio quality,
I would still recommend recording directly to the RODECaster
and then syncing up your audio in post,
but if you want the easiest way to do it,
this works really well,
just plugging it straight on into your camera.
Now, of course, I'm not a professional audio engineer,
and do you know why you should always
listen to audio engineers?
Well, because they give really sound advice.
But speaking of not being a professional,
at the beginning of this video,
I mentioned that I was scared to try this, and here's why.
And this is why I would recommend being careful
when you just connect stuff to your camera.
So, there's a camera I had when I was a kid.
It wasn't this exact camera,
and you'll know why in a second, but it an analog output.
This is an eight millimeter camera.
The video outputs for this camera, there's video, audio,
and then there's this little,
what looks like a 3.5 millimeter microphone jack.
So, what I tried doing when I was about 14 years old
and my camera was my most prized possession was,
I tried plugging in an external microphone
that had a power source in it.
And I plugged the 3.5 millimeter jack into this,
turned on the power on the microphone,
and it shorted out a fuse in the camera,
and completely broke it, and it couldn't be repaired,
and that sucked.
And that was my fault
because that was not where the microphone should have gone.
There's a lot of reasons that I shouldn't have done that.
But as painful as that was, what it taught me was
to be very careful when connecting your devices together,
when trying something new, because you wanna make sure
that you're not going to damage
the really valuable equipment that you have.
So, this method does seem to work.
I really appreciate everyone who pushed me to give it a shot
because it works great.
So, just be careful as you're connecting everything.
Make sure to protect your investment, protect your gear,
and keep everything safe.
Now, one of my favorite things about this technique
is it combines my two favorite pieces of gear,
the EOS R and the RODECaster Pro.
I've done a lot of videos about them,
so I put together two playlists.
One playlist is all videos
about the RODECaster Pro and podcasting gear,
and the other playlist
is all about the EOS R and I love that.
So, check those out,
and I will see you over in one of those videos.
(jazzy music)