How to make the best A/V recording with this equipment?

Maine-Man

New member
Want to use a camcorder to record a talk I am giving next weekend.

The equipment is a Cannon VIXIA HFM31 camcorder, an Audio-Technica AT2020 Condenser Microphone, and a Behringer UMC202HD audio interface. The camcorder has a 3.5 mm balanced mic input and the mic needs 48 V phantom power supplied by the audio interface. Plan to use a laptop USB port to power the Behringer and connect a 6.35 mm to 3.5 mm cable from the Behringer output to the camcorders mic input.

Beyond that is there anything I am missing?

I know I can record the audio on the laptop and sync the A/V with Adobe Elements software but am I just asking for trouble? Is the better audio recorded to the laptop worth syncing the A/V post production? I am thinking not but looking for advice from more experienced people.
 
Just record audio and video separately and join them together in post. Gain staging will be easier this way.

Record video with the Canon and let it capture audio via the internal mic. Plug the AT2020 into the Behringer, engage phantom power, and plug that into your computer via USB. Record the audio in a DAW.

Clap a couple of times when you get the audio and video rolling so you'll have an obvious transient spike in the audio tracks on the camera and in your DAW so you can sync them in a video editor. In your video editor, mute the audio from the camera track and use the audio that you recorded to your DAW.

Keep the mic pretty close to you, but just out of frame of the camera. This will minimize the amount of room ambiance you'll end up with in the audio tracks.

Best of luck!
 
Thanks, what is DAW? I have audacity on the laptop. Would recording the audio in the camcorder through a lavaliere mic help?
 
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Technically Audacity is an editor rather than a DAW (digital audio workstation), but it should work.

On the camera I'd stick with the onboard mic.
 
Record the camera audio, and the audio from the closer mic, as you plan. The advice to sync afterwards gives you TWO alternative tracks for safety. Sync is a doddle as long as you press record on both devices and let them run. If you pause the camera you just do more syncing, so need the clap. Sliding two tracks in the editor with a visual waveform means it's usually very simple.

If you try to connect them, expect hums and buzzes - laptops are pretty unfriendly things sometimes - Macs are better than PCs, and out of all of them in my experience, Dells are the worst at hum free audio when you try to connect them to anything! If you replace the camera audio with the computer audio, you also need very good headphones to make sure the audio quality is 100% - you cannot guarantee what you can't hear!
 
Rob, just asking, not my area but would it be best to set Audacity to a 48kHz sample rate?

Dave.
 
Just throwing this out if recording with the laptop is not possible or inconvenient. Laptop with a DAW will give better audio.

I bought one of these a few years ago used from B&H for a Canon camcorder Marantz Professional PMD-602A 2-Channel DSLR Audio Interface .
It works OK recording into the camcorder and will supply 48v phantom off batteries. Mounts nicely under the camcorder.

That's a pretty cool device, but for not much, if at all, more he could get a decent portable recorder which would be comparable to a DAW recording through a decent USB interface, and it wouldn't be tethered to the camera.
 
That's a pretty cool device, but for not much, if at all, more he could get a decent portable recorder which would be comparable to a DAW recording through a decent USB interface, and it wouldn't be tethered to the camera.

I've done that with both a Zoom H4n and R-24 recorders. It is very easy to pull the audio out of those and plug into the video editor. I prefer using the R24 in lieu of a laptop/interface portable rig.
 
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