AV News 195 - February 2014
Alice is quite correct. If you are recording from a single, mono, mic, you would
normally be recording in mono, ie you would set your software to produce a
mono file. This would normally be panned 'centre' when you reach the mixdown
stage - beyond the scope of this article. But, as we've just seen, you must use
the correct connecting lead to maximise the quality of this mono file. (All leads I
supply are wired as Fig 5.)
Phasing problems are surprisingly widespread. Speakers at some venues are
connected out of phase and I have heard several soundtracks at festivals where
I'm pretty sure the voice was out-of-phase but the rest of the sound was OK presumably due to a problem like Alice's. I even own a commercially-produced
spoken word CD which has the channels out of phase. I wonder what equipment
they used to record that? And who was the producer? And what was he doing?
So do check!
On Saturday 19th October 2013, Howard and Suzanne Gregory ran a
successful Audio Visual Dayschool at Wilmslow Guild. An interesting report on
the day by two attendees, Carole Bourton and Bob Bishop, can be read either
on the 'Forthcoming Events' page of the Wilmslow Guild AV Group website or
on page 32 of the February edition of the IAC 'Film & Video' magazine. Ed's
By Popular Request
Howard Gregory
The October workshop dealt mainly with the picture preparation and AV
sequence assembly aspects of AV production. By popular request, we are
going to run a similar workshop on 29th March 2014, but this time we will be
concentrating more on the audio aspects of AV production.
We will discuss, and demonstrate in detail:
· the function of a soundtrack (more to this than you might think)
· mood, suggestion, using effects to tell a story
· choosing and importing music
· shortening music to fit the programme
· mixing a simple voice and music soundtrack
· different mic types, and which to choose for what purpose
· maximizing quality when using microphones
· recording a commentary or voice-over
· problems caused indoors by room acoustics
· problems caused outdoors by wind and ‘noises off’
· solutions to these problems
· recording, editing, manipulating and mixing sound
· mixing a complex soundtrack
· production of final soundtrack audio file
Details and supporting information are on the Forthcoming Events page of
www.wilmslowguildav.org.uk
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