Hey. My name is Matt Johnson, and today I'm going to be showing you
how to quickly set up your Tascam Portacapture X8 to record flawless
32 bit float audio for YouTube videos, wedding films or anywhere else.
You need to record high quality audio.
First power on your X8 And you can ignore all these fancy presets
and other menu options because we first need to dig
into the general settings by tapping that in the bottom right.
First, go to the record settings at the top and make sure that you're
recording with a file format set to wave a sample rate of 48 kilohertz.
And most importantly,
make sure that your bit depth slash bitrate is set to 32 bit float.
This setting is going to give you all the magic that comes from 32 bit float.
That means you're
not going to have to deal with audio that's not too quiet or too loud.
So that's definitely why you need to make sure this is turned on.
You can keep everything else from the setting.
Turned off record, pays off auto record off dual record, off prerecorded off
time, followed from an off pressed back and go to the system settings now
and make sure that your date and time settings are set properly.
This is definitely going to help.
Whenever you're copying
and organizing your files, you need to make sure the date is correct.
It's also where you can change the file names that are saved with every file.
So if you go down here to file name, select, execute,
and if you're recording something specific, say a wedding ceremony,
you can go in and change the file name of the recording to say ceremony.
That way you can easily know which files from the wedding ceremony.
Whenever you're editing Also in the system menu is where you will find
the media format option, which will delete your memory card
any time you put a fresh memory card in your recorder.
I recommend doing this to make sure
the memory card is formatted properly for recording audio with the X8.
Lastly, go into the power slash display
when you and I would make sure that auto power saved is turned on
and make sure you select your battery type if you're using regular
alkaline batteries,
rechargeable or lithium batteries by choosing the correct battery type,
this is going to help the recorder properly report
how much battery life is remaining to you, which is really important
because you need to know if your quarter is about to die or not.
This is also where you can turn on a power save mode,
which is going to dim the screen and give you a better battery life.
But because we're looking at the screen
now, we're going to turn that off so we can see it.
Okay.
Press back and go back to the launcher because we are done with settings
and we're almost ready to get recording on the launch screen.
You're going to want to select the manual preset.
We don't need anything fancy manual all day, baby.
Now, the first thing
you're going to want to do whenever you access
the manual preset is you're going to want to tap the hamburger menu
in the top left and then go to input select.
The Exit is a six track recorder, but it's up to you to tell it
which tracks you want to record and where you want your audio to be coming from.
So select track one dash to here and you're going to be presented
with a helpful graphic showing you the recorder and all of the possible audio
inputs that it can take.
For this example, let's say I have an Excel R cable
that I'm going to be plugging in from the DJ soundboard
into one of the left Excel R inputs on the S8.
So in this case, I'm going to tap input three, dash four
because I plug this into input three, and that's going to tell the recorder
that I want
the first two audio tracks to be recorded from these two inputs on the left.
Now, if you have more audio than just two inputs, you can select track
three and four and select input five, dash six.
If you want to plug in audio cables to the two right ports of the recorder,
or if you want to use the recorder's
built in microphones at the top, select inputs one into at the top.
For now though, I'm just going to leave this on input
five, dash six and press back back on the home screen.
Now you'll see it on the bottom left.
There is a number three
that has some audio bars indicating that the recorder is picking up sound.
If you don't see this green audio bar, it could be that you've just
plugged in the soundboard and the DJ needs to bring up the audio volume
or unmute the microphone so you can hear it and test it.
Now you can come down here and press the Red Record button
that's going to bring up a really helpful guide
that's going to walk you through what you need to do to start recording audio.
This guy can, of course, be disabled, but if you're using
a recorder for the first time, this is what you're going to see.
The guide starts by telling you to select your recording track
by lighting it up with red,
then adjust the gain
and make sure the audio doesn't peek while you're adjusting it.
So the first thing you need to do is tell the recorder, which audio tracks
you actually want to record the inputs from. At the bottom.
Down here you have three, four, five and six, all of which are lit up red.
If they lit up red, that means there will be recorded.
But we only have one input that we've plugged in to input three.
So we don't actually need all these other inputs.
And if you leave them activated, the recorder is going to record
all of these separate audio tracks as silence.
And this is just going to make things cluttered
whenever you're editing and it's a waste of space.
So you're going to want to tap
on all these bottom numbers that you do not want to record.
So they turn gray
and even these two dashes here.
Of course, if I was recording from input four
or five or six, I would leave them red and next you can press here
and drag up and down to adjust the gain of the audio.
But there are some other settings we need to change,
so I recommend tapping this microphone icon here,
which is going to bring up input settings for this specific input.
First, I would make sure the stereo link is turned off.
If you have two inputs
plugged into these left to inputs and you have stereo link turned on,
that is going to mix the two audio tracks together,
which can be really bad news if you're recording a separate sources of audio.
Believe me, you want to keep this turned off
below that,
you're going to be able to select input and you can choose between mic or line.
Typically, if you're plugging directly into a DJ soundboard or into the back
of a wireless receiver, you're going to want to select MIC level.
And if you're plugged into the back
of a speaker, you're going to want to select line level.
In short, MIC level is usually much quieter than line level.
So the X8 is going to boost its gain automatically.
Whereas if you're plugged into the back of a speaker,
that's typically line level, which is dramatically louder.
So to compensate, the X8 is going to drop its recording gain dramatically.
Press back here and below this,
you're going to see you have an option to turn on and off phantom power.
If you're plugging into a soundboard or speaker, you always want to leave
this turned off because it can definitely cause issues
If you have it turned on, as you can see though, I have
it turned on, and that is because for this example,
I'm using a shotgun mic running into this Excel R input,
and if I don't have phantom power turned on
the recorder, won't be powering the microphone.
So the only time I would turn Phantom on is if you're plugging into a microphone
with cable directly into the recorder and you need to power that microphone.
Next, I would also have auto gain turned off as well
because you're recording 32 bit flawed audio.
You do not need to worry about making sure your gain is dialed in. Super.
Precisely. You can leave this off.
I would also leave the low
cut filter off the noise gate filter off the limiter, comp off IQ after phase
invert off, just like with auto gain because you're recording 32 bit audio,
you don't need to worry about any of these settings.
Just make sure they're all turned off.
Looking at the right side of the screen, now you have audio meters
that are telling you
how loud the audio is currently coming in as well as your gain controls.
If you notice that your audio is very quiet coming in.
First, of course, check the sound more that you're plugged
into and try raising the audio levels there a bit.
But if you notice that things are still too quiet, change
your input game at the bottom from low to high,
which is going to significantly boost your audio volume.
Next, you can tap and drag your audio gain level up and down,
but for more precision, I really recommend and prefer using the red control
dial down here at the bottom, which you can rotate for very precise
gain adjustments with your gain dialed in to a level that you like,
I recommend trying to hit around -15 to -12 decibels or so on your meters.
I would also keep an eye on this led down in the bottom left, which is labeled peak
if you see this lighting up red, that means your audio gains too high
and you need to turn it down some.
Also, if you have any other audio inputs, the recording
like say you've plugged in a separate cable
or you want to use the built in microphones, those can be accessed
by pressing the input settings numbers up at the top of the screen.
Press back now and down in the middle of the screen
you'll see that we're still in the built in test cam tutorial
and it says Next Step Tap that the tutorial is now going to tell you
how to adjust your faders and make sure that your audio does not peak.
Press. Okay.
And then we'll also tell you
to press the record button to start recording and
ask if you want to see this tutorial again in the future.
If you feel like you're going to forget or need me, help press. Yes.
Which will show this guy again the next time you want to record.
So what is this mixer here and why is it letting you change
all of your audio again levels again?
I thought we just did that right.
Well, the X8 includes a really useful feature.
Well, it will not only record all of your audio
inputs separately as their own audio tracks and files,
but the X8 is also going to record a mixed audio track as well.
That's going to include all of your audio sources mixed together.
Now, I don't see this as super useful for wedding filmmaking.
We're oftentimes want to make sure the my audio sources are kept separate,
but if you're recording something live and you want to save a bit of time,
you can adjust these levels and they will affect the audio recordings
of that mixed track that the X8 is going to record.
You can tap and drag up and down on these mixer bars
to adjust the volume level, but that's not very precise.
But notice that whenever I do that, they light up blue
and then I can use the control dial here to adjust the volume up and down.
Personally, I don't use the mixer, and if you aren't planning on it either,
you can actually completely ignore the screen.
And with that it is finally time to record so to start recording,
you can either press the big red record button in the bottom right,
or you can tap a record on the screen here which is going to start recording.
And congratulations
your X8 is now recording your audio input in beautiful 32 bit float audio.
And as one final step,
I would recommend bringing your hand over here to the right of the recorder
and sliding up the hold switch, which will disable all of the buttons
in case the DJ bumps into them, or a wedding guest goes rogue and tries
to take over the sound system.
Lastly, I'm going to turn off hold and then I'm going to press stop here.
And as you can see down at the bottom
of the screen, there's a home button, an input button and a mixer button.
So if you've disabled the built in task cam audio recording tutorial,
you can press the input button, which is going to bring up the input page,
or you can tap on the microphone
and dial in all of your settings for your specific input.
And if you press the bottom left button, that's
going to bring you to the mixer page
where you can adjust your audio gain for that mixed file with that,
your S8 is now set up and you're ready to record
audio at a wedding or anything else for that matter.
Also, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker like me,
I want to help you book more weddings I've created a free guide
that's going to walk you through some practical steps
that you can take right now in your business
to book more couples and film more weddings.
It's a completely free gift to you.
You can download it linked up in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day