check check one two I'm just gonna come right out and say it
*GARBLED NOISE*
sorry about that what I meant to say is that having good
audio in your videos is as important if not more important than having good
quality video what is up people Dunna here and today I'm gonna tell you how to
get better audio in your videos if you're new around the channel welcome I
do videos every Monday about video photo music and life so if you're into any of
those things make sure to subscribe to the channel to see more I try my best to
answer every single comment so drop one down below and let's chat so how do you
get better audio for your videos and today we're gonna be specifically
talking about choosing the right microphone believe it or not
I am NOT a full time youtuber I know crazy right for the past 10 years I have
been working as an audio engineer and music producer so I record people and I
produce music for people so audio is a pretty huge part of my life and with
that being said I am pretty confident in telling you that there is not one
microphone that is best for every single situation there are a pile of different
types of microphones that you can use and some are best in some situations and
some are best in other ones so today we're gonna go over three different
microphones three and a half that you can be using on your videos I'm gonna
show you what each of those microphones sound like talk about what they're good
for what they're not so good for when it makes sense to use them and I'm also
gonna give you some tips on how to get the most out of them first and foremost
the most popular choice amongst youtubers is the on-camera shotgun
microphone now you've seen this in videos before where the youtubers have a
microphone right up on their camera it's like this big kind of handle looking
thing don't pick it up by the microphone it's not good for it a popular choice
for this is the rode videomic series I personally use a microphone called the
Sony ECM GZ 1m and it's built just for Sony cameras it fits in the hot shoe so
rather than actually using the audio input port you just slide this thing
right in the hot shoe and it automatically connects to the camera one
of the things to note about this is you don't get to set the volume with
this microphone it automatically does it for you in the camera so if you want to
set your own volume maybe something like a rode videomic might be a little bit
better for you an on-camera shotgun mic is gonna be great for run-and-gun
situations if you're vlogging or if you're running around town and you're
not sure what you're gonna be capturing exactly this can be a great microphone
for you because it's just kind of always there it does a good job of picking up
high-quality audio with that being said there are two ways that I transfer files
from my camera to my phone the first way being that I shoot Sony and I know that
a lot of other camera manufacturers have this built in as well it's super easy to
set up you throw it on your camera you plug it in and you're good to go one of
the best things about this setup is that there's no syncing of audio and video
and post because you're going straight into the camera it's already synced up
for you so when you pull the video in it's already got the audio lined up some
of the downsides to this setup is that you can only really use this well with
the wide-angle lens the reason that I say this is because you want to be close
to the camera general rule of thumb is to keep the microphone as close to you
as possible so if you're using the wide-angle lens you can get the camera
closer which means you're gonna get better quality audio another downside to
this is that sometimes because of the proximity of the microphone to the lens
it picks up some of the sounds in the camera it depends on the lens and how
loud the focusing system is but I noticed sometimes it can pick up some of
my lenses generally it's not a huge deal but it is there so it's something to
consider for example right now my camera is sitting about five feet away from me
because I've got a thirty millimeter lens on the Sony ECM gz1m microphone
is on top of the camera and you'll notice that it's picking up the whole
room all of that echo and reverb that's going on so this is not an ideal
situation for the way that I'm currently shooting where this does best is when
I'm out and I'm holding the camera on a gorilla pod or something and it's fairly
close to my face and you don't have to worry about cables or any of that kind
of stuff you can just run a gun and you're good to go
the second microphone setup I want to talk about today is the lav mic now
we've all seen these guys too they clip onto the shirt or they go inside the shirt
and generally the idea is to try and hide this as best as possible one of the
things that I really hate is when you can see a lav mic it just kind of takes
you out of the whole experience now this microphone for me was kind of
an experiment I wanted to see how this would stand up against something like
the on-camera shotgun microphone and I was pleasantly surprised this is just a
super cheap lav or lapel mic that they sell on Amazon from a company called
poweredewise I'm pretty sure I picked it up for pretty close to $20 it says
that it's normally like $55 but it was on sale when I bought it and I just
checked now and it's still on sale so go check that out if you want and it does
perform really well one thing that's awesome about this is that I can plug it
straight into my phone well not straight into my phone you know iPhone users
no headphone jack you can either use the built-in voice message app or if you
want a little better quality there are lots of apps out there I personally use
the one made by Rode you don't have to have a rode microphone to use it and
it's totally free and it works great recently I made a video about my 16
millimeter Sigma lens and I tested this setup and it worked awesome I can say
from personal experience that I use this thing all the time it's a little bit
deceiving because 16 millimeters on an aps-c size sensor like this camera it's
actually the equivalent of a 24 millimeter if it was on a full-frame
camera so what that means is it's actually cropping in a little bit more
than the name suggests some of the nice things about this are that the
microphone ends up being very close to your mouth so you're mostly picking up
what you're saying and not so much of the surroundings another thing is that
you don't need to be close to the camera because no matter where you are the
microphone stays close to your mouth because I just plug it straight into my
phone I can move around as much as I want and the setup kind of goes with me
like I said this one was really cheap and it still does a great job some of
the things that aren't so good about this is that you can get a ruffling
sound from the clothes or from people moving around or touching it with this
one if you're gonna record to your phone you do have to sync the audio later and
setting it up is a little bit of a pain the little clips that come with it kind
of suck and I don't like when you can see it so the way that I prefer to do it
is I use a little bit of gaff tape make a
gaff tape triangle put it on the front side and I take another tiny little
piece of gaff tape put it in front of it like this there on it
up my shirt I'm gonna tape it just out of sight plug it into my phone and now
we can listen to what this lav microphone sounds like so you can hear
that because it's so close to my mouth we get a nice clean signal we're not
hearing a lot of what's going on in the room now one of the things that I'm not
crazy about about lav mics is they often kind of sound muffled now you can fix
this in post-processing but there's something about the fact that it's under
my chin and it's hidden under my shirt then it kind of muffles the sound and
you have to brighten it up in post also there's this
so any kind of movement can
kind of make a muffly sound and the third option for microphone setup is an
overhead shot gun or boom mic I'm gonna switch lenses so you can see mine so
this here is my rode ntg-2 this is my favorite option for sit down and talk at
the camera type of videos because I can just kind of set it up here and totally
forget about it I can move around a little bit and it still does a good job
of picking up what's going on around but I don't have to worry about something
being attached to me like the lav mic I just make sure it's set slightly out of
the frame and then I'm good to go some of the good things about this is
that you can get it very close to your face right now this is like six to eight
inches away from my face and it's pointing directly at my mouth so it's
picking up exactly what's coming out because it's a super cardioid microphone
it picks up just what's in front of it it's a very directional microphone so if
you point it directly at the source you're good to go
some of the downsides to this setup is that it's not very portable so as you
can see in the shot here I actually am hooking it up to an
external recorder and the external recorder has to have phantom power I
think this can be powered by battery as well but I find it a little bit easier
if I just do it with the phantom power built into my zoom h4n but again I had
to buy a whole separate unit so this is starting to get to be a bit of an
expensive kind of setup and then because I've got the whole thing in the XLR
cable and the power it's not a very portable thing I wouldn't want to go
running around with this and having to set it up every time the only time that
these things can be portable is if you
actually have someone holding a boom arm with the microphone on the end of it
doing sound so if you've got a team around you again with this one you're
gonna run into the thing where because I'm recording externally I'm also gonna
have to sync it afterwards which again I don't think it's that big of a deal but
a lot of people like to complain about it so I figured I'd mention it anyway
just so you know so now we've talked about the main three setups we've got
the on-camera shotgun which I think is best for if you're running and gunning
you're not sure what you're gonna be shooting lots of vloggers like this
setup because there's nothing going on you just put it on the camera and it's
ready to go the second one is the lav microphone which has become one of my
favorite for being out if I'm doing like a planned video and I'm going out the
third microphone is the overhead boom shotgun microphone I personally like
these for these kinds of sit down in one place and talk at the camera kind of
setups now earlier I mentioned that there were three and a half that's
because I wanted to show you what it sounds like to just use the microphones
built into the camera if you're new to making videos you might think that it's
okay to use the microphones in the camera and if that's all you've got then
that's better than nothing but I do suggest that you invest in some better
quality audio because usually on most of these cameras the audio quality is
terrible so let's do a comparison between all four different styles in
this current setting so that you can hear what I'm talking about so again
remember that the lav microphone is very close to my face the boom microphone is
very close to my face the shotgun on the camera is about five
feet away and the in-camera microphones are also about five feet away so in a
setting like this this is what that would sound like what is up people
Dunna here and today we're talking about how to get better audio for your videos
by choosing the right microphone what is up people Dunna here and today we're
talking about how to get better audio for your videos by choosing the right
microphone what is up people Dunna here and today we're talking about how to get
better audio for your videos by choosing the right microphone what is up people
Dunna here and today we're talking about how to get better audio for your
videos by choosing the right microphone now I've told you about the microphones
but I want to give you a couple of tips on how you can get the best quality
audio for your videos first and foremost if at all possible
record to an external recorder the quality that's going to come out of that
is going to be far superior to the quality coming off of the camera and the
reason for that are something called the preamps the preamps are what take the
microphone signal and boost it to a level that is recordable if you have
good quality preamps there won't be very much noise or hiss on the signal if you
have bad quality preamps you're gonna get some noise in your signal and it's
not going to be as good quality this isn't always an option depending on your
situation and some camera manufacturers have better preamps than others but if
you can record to an external recorder another tip is to get that microphone as
close to your subject as possible the closer the microphone is to the subject
the more it picks up of that subject and the less of the surroundings so if you
don't want to hear the echo or the reverb in the room or if you don't want
to hear the birds chirping and the traffic get that microphone nice and
close another tip is to make sure you're setting the right level general rule of
thumb is that the loudest sound you think you're going to get set that so
it's about three-quarters of the way up on the meter then you've got a little
bit of room just in case something louder happens but also you know you're
not going to be distorting the signal you can always turn it up a little bit
in post-production if you need to another tip that I have for you is to
plan ahead if you can if you know you're going out to do a shoot try and plan
your audio just as much as you plan your video and your lighting like I said
before it's as important if not more important just kidding it's definitely
more important leave a comment below and let me know what is your audio setup why
do you like it or if you don't like your current setup let me know what you would
like and why all of the products that I talked about today including the
microphones and the recorder are all linked in the description below as well
as most of the rest of my setup as far as camera and lenses and stuff those are
affiliate links so if you feel like buying something and use those links it
helps me out and it doesn't cost you any extra click the thumbs up if you like
this video it really does help tell youtube to show it to more people if you
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you want to watch some more there's a video right here I think you'll really
like it I really hope you had fun thanks for
watching and I'll see you guys next time
How To Get Better Audio In Your Videos