here's a rather unusual item to find at
the thrift store
it's a Rode VideoMic. With this slash
through the O you may think
Rode is a Nordic company from
Denmark or Sweden or Norway or somewhere
like that
but they're actually based in Australia
so the slash is
purely for show and they just pronounce
it
"road". It's a professional shotgun-style
microphone for video cameras
this is the original version; they've
since released a smaller and less
expensive version
called the VideoMic Go which costs about
a hundred dollars
this is similar to what they're now
selling as the VideoMic Pro
for $229
because it includes a battery so it does
not require
a plug-in-power microphone jack and it
has this switch setting for a high pass
filter
to help reduce background noise and wind
noise
and I believe there's more switch
settings inside the battery compartment
it has rubber shock mounts although you can
see some of them have broken on this one
especially at the front here where they
have all broken
and this is a common problem with these
and here's the cable that plugs into
your
camera's microphone input 3.5 mm
jack and you can see the price I paid
$9.99 so not bad for what
would cost me over $200 if I was going to
buy a new one today --
if it works and if I can find
replacements for these broken shock
mounts. Opening the battery compartment
we can see it runs on a 9 volt
battery
and it has a traditional full sized
mounting shoe which is actually a bit of
a problem for me
because the camera I use most often for
making my
YouTube videos has what it calls a Mini
Advanced Shoe which is smaller
and will not fit this. Yes, you can get an
adapter for that
but it would be rather silly to have
this big of a
microphone on this small of a camera
it's a similar issue
with this Sony Handycam it has what they
call their
Intelligent Accessory shoe or something
like that
I forget the exact name of it but you
can see that logo there
this is another proprietary smaller
sized accessory shoe
which this microphone will not fit on
without a special
adapter. This microphone would fit and
work fine on many of my vintage
camcorders such as this Sony Digital8
Handycam it has a proper old-school
full-sized accessory shoe
and an external microphone jack so I
could actually use this to record my
videos
although the peanut gallery does tend to
get a bit upset
whenever I upload anything in standard
definition
but I do have one camcorder which
records in high definition
and has a standard accessory shoe -- this
Canon HV20
so I could use this microphone with this
camcorder it would fit fine
and under this little flap here
is the external microphone jack but
first I have to see if this thing
actually works
I don't get a power light so I think it
has a dead battery in it so I'll change
the battery
and yes this battery is totally dead so
I put in a new one
it's a cheapo brand battery but it
should work fine for now
so close the door, turn on the power and
we get a green light
we also have this second setting for the
high pass filter
but I'll put it in the normal position
it's already plugged into the camcorder
so I'll turn it on
and there you can see the audio level on
the screen so yes the microphone
is working and if I stay quiet for a
couple seconds
you can see the ambient background noise
level. My
furnace is actually running at the
moment so I'll turn on this high pass
filter
and we'll see if that makes a difference
yeah, maybe a little bit -- it depends on what
kind of frequencies
of the noise versus that this thing is
filtering out
so it does have some effect to put it on
the high pass filter setting
so the microphone is working but
obviously I need to work on
replacing the shock bands because this
is not acceptable
and unfortunately the official
replacements are no longer available
from Rode
but I have this O-ring assortment kit
which I think I can use to make my own
replacements
first let me pull off all the old ones
there are a few still
hanging on but they're eventually going
to break anyway so I might as well just
remove them all -- see, that one just
snapped off when I tried to pull on it a
little bit
so they're all eventually going to break
so I might as well remove them all
and make my own replacements for all of
them. So, we have to try to find
replacements for these things -- it
doesn't necessarily have to be this
exact shape but it has to be a similar
size
they're not really that stretchy so I
think O-rings should work
fine if I can find ones of that size
this is the size I'm going to try
first you can see it's a little bit
shorter
but I think once it gets stretched out
it should be able to
make a good replacement for these. So far
so good with the first two on there
so let's install the second two
on this side
and that looks like a success. I just
need to repeat that
on this side -- it still has a couple broken
pieces on it
So how about that? The equivalent of a
$229
professional Rode VideoMic video camera
microphone which I got for
$9.99 at the thrift store repaired with a
new battery
and a couple of O-rings. The O-rings I
used are what it calls
P9 -- inner diameter 8.8
I guess that's millimeters outer
diameter 12.6
section is 1.9
so if you want to order just that size
those are the dimensions
and in case you're wondering, that's what
it looks like with the wind sock removed
and there is the completed setup. Those
replacement O-rings seem to provide just
the right amount of shock
absorption still looks kind of silly to
have such a big microphone on this size
of camcorder
but there's one other thing I can add to
make it look more professional
It's this wide angle lens -- it's an official
Canon part
WD-H43
it's a 0.7X wide angle lens
and we can just screw that
onto the front of the camcorder
and that makes it look a little bit more
professional
but before I can use this new
professional looking setup
I'm going to need a new tape because the
two tapes I've been using to record
HDV video on are both full so here's a
new
MiniDV video cassette which can also be
used to record
HDV and if you've never seen one of
these before
here's the size comparison to a standard
audio cassette and here's the size
comparison to a microcassette
here we go opening it has this arrow
pointing in this direction so I think
that's the way to go
and yes that's actually quite a bit
easier than opening
the wrapper of an audio cassette
so there's the new Maxell MiniDV
video cassette, also compatible with HDV
and luckily even with this big
microphone attached we can still open up
the tape
compartment to put in our new tape
now I'll give you a sample test of
recording using
this Canon HV20 HDV
1080i camcorder with the Rode
VideoMic so here we go recording with
the Rode
VideoMic on the Canon HV20
this is a shotgun style microphone
pointing forward
so it's probably cancelling out some of
my voice because it's coming from behind
the microphone
but I can see I'm still peaking out the
level meter at 0 dB
so this thing is putting too hot of a
signal into the camcorder
I believe there's actually DIP switch
settings inside it
I can use to reduce its output level but
it should do a fine job of picking up
sounds in front of the camcorder
such as this portable radio
Ashens: "Very old man whinging...
Good grief!
No idea what this station is.
It really is just an old man whining
I've never heard anything like it!"
and now I
actually installed the microphone facing
backwards
which looks very funny but should do a
much better job of picking up my voice
and now I switched it into the high cut
filter option to see what difference
that makes
in the sound quality of my voice and
just for comparison I switched over to
the camcorder's built-in microphone
I reviewed the footage on the tape and I
could tell this thing was overloading
this camcorder's microphone input a
little bit
but inside the battery compartment
there's these switch settings for the
output level
and I can't get a good angle to show
this but they're in the 0 dB
setting which is probably the factory
default but I'll try switching it to
-10 dB
which will reduce the output level and
hopefully then it will not
overload the input of this camcorder. Now
trying the Canon HV20 camcorder with the
Rode VideoMic with the output level
reduced by 10 dB. The audio level is now
peaking
far below 0 dB but I can always bring
it up in post
and I'm leaving it in the high pass
filter mode now because that did not
seem to negatively affect the sound
quality in any way
but did slightly reduce the background
noise and again this is facing forward
when I'm talking behind it
so it's going to sound a bit strange and
echoey
and now I have the microphone installed
facing sideways which
may provide a better balance between my
voice
and the sounds of whatever I have in
front of the camera such as the
squeaky feet of this old Apple laptop
but the disadvantage of this setup is
that the microphone is now totally
blocking the camcorder's
zoom control. So tell me what you think
about the video and audio quality
of this setup using a totally obsolete
15 year old
tape camcorder and a broken $10
thrift store Rode VideoMic repaired
using some cheap O-rings
I know it's not really the ideal
microphone for the kind of videos I do
it's meant for people who are in front
of the camera when they're talking
or for doing interviews and things like
that so I probably won't be keeping this
microphone but at least I was able to
repair it and get it working like new
again