audio into fcp

hi, thanks for a great forum!

please pardon me if my question seems silly...i'm new to filmmaking and fcp, and well...everything is perplexing!

i have fcp4 and am working on a g4 powerbook. so far i've learned how to log and capture and that is about it.

what i need help with is audio. i want to record some voice interviews with my subjects and am not sure how. i don't have a camera so that is not an option, but i am willing to buy an audio recorder...i just don't know what i need. oh...and i don't even know what format that audio should be.

i want something small that i can take on-site, and then input the audio right into fcp. or do i just need to go into itunes? hmmmm.

any help offered is greatly appreciated. thanks!
candy

Red Hot Mamas: The Movie!

go to target, frys, best buy or circuit city and buy a portable audio recorder. these are small you can keep in your pocket like a cellphone. will cost you about 50 dollars. buy the one that has USB connection. record your interview onto it, and then use the USB connection to transfer the audio files to your powerbook. usually those recorders use .wav or .aiff format which is totally compatible with FCP. after transferring the audio file onto your powerbook, import it in your project (control+click in the browser window) and then drag it in the timeline as a new audio track.

cheers
-taslimur

wow...that took all of five minutes. i think i love this forum!
cheers,
candy

first you need to answer two questions:

1. what degree of audio quality are you hoping for
2. what is your budget?

decent quality??? is that a good answer? clear, clean...but realistically with my budget...about 150....i'm not expecting miracles.

well, i seriously doubt that the device mentioned earlier is going to give you very good quality (though i could be wrong).

and for that budget there isnt anything that youre going to BUY that is going to produce ANY kind of quality.

what id recomend is to go to your local professional video rental house and rent a camera like a cannon xl1 and just video tape the interview. place the camer between the two of you with the camera on a tripod about 2 feet off to a side.

the you can capture the video (with audio) then unlink the clips and discard the video - OR do and audio only capture.

most places rent a package with that camera for $120/day give or take

I think renting the camera is a brilliant idea.

I agree with Wayne, Candela -- but don't forget the very first link in any good-quality recording: The microphone.

The camera option is great, but only if you have proper equipment -- sound mixer, well-positioned mikes, good quiet sound environment to shoot in. And then there's the matter of: Do you need visuals on your subjects? It sounds like you're actually trying to get voice-only.

That said, of course in the long run shooting with a camera and recording with good field-recording gear is going to net you more footage to work with -- ie. now you can have onscreen interviews as a choice. But you're talking about a much larger crew. Given your budget, it sounds to me you should just get some good audio-only gear.

On my first major film, I took a portable Korg digital 12-track with a $20 dynamic microphone around and got some voice work from my actors in rooms with closed doors. Got pretty decent results. The 12-track cost $900 initially, but renting one will be far, far less. Also, if you rent/buy a cheaper one like the Boss BR-864 (which records on Flash cards and therefore doesn't even have fan noise), you'll still get 44.1kHz 16-bit sound. I actually have one lying around that I don't use -- won it in a contest, never had a chance to use it because I have a superior Korg recorder for the job.

The above pieces of gear aren't intended for field sound -- they're all designed for musicians -- but work well, have oodles of great built-in effects (far better than Final Cut Pro's, in my opinion), and are very portable.

So as you can see, it's easy to get into the hundreds and thousands of dollars very easily.

My idea is to start relatively small and cheap so you can get going and get some experience. If you've never shot sound before, blowing a huge budget on pro equipment is a complete waste of time. You will be too busy Doing Everything Wrong for the first couple of interviews and top flight equipment isn't necesarily going to help.

I'm not throwing rocks at you. We all went through this. My first couple of recordings sucked greatly and it wouldn't have made the slightest different now many dollars American I spent on the microphone.

Do as well as you can with less expensive equipment. Then after the battle scars start to heal, you are in a position to ask the quality questions and get specific answers as to how to solve the problems you ran into in the field.

Nobody listens to their environment until the first time they pick up a microphone. Getting good sound is far harder than making pretty pictures.

There's radio and there's television. Both very entertaining mediums. Silent moving pictures (Mime) is a good deal less so.

Koz

> I'm not throwing rocks at you. We all went through this. My first couple of
> recordings sucked greatly and it wouldn't have made the slightest different
> now many dollars American I spent on the microphone.
> Do as well as you can with less expensive equipment.

I don't disagree with Koz, but at the same time I'd like to offer an alternate viewpoint: I did music recording for years, and for years I thought my vocal pitch was off. It was confusing to me because when I sing live, I can hear my own voice and it sounds fine.

First, a sound-engineer friend suggested that I leave one side of my headphones open so I can hear my own voice. That didn't help. But just this year, I finally found the culprit: My el cheapo $20 dynamic microphones. They were so insensitive and transferred my voice through my headphones so poorly that I couldn't hear my own voice as I was recording. Ever since I went to a $200 Audio-Technica AT3035, my singing pitch improved 200 per cent. Along the same lines, I was unable to play lead guitar for years -- until I bought my first Gibson electric, and suddenly it freed me up to play, because the guitar was so much more comfortable and sounded so much better.

So, I think Koz' general advice is sound -- don't get too much equipment before you've got your feet wet. At the same time, if you *do* get equipment, don't get the absolute rock-bottom stuff. The limitations of the gear can hinder your learning curve and lead you down the wrong path in technique, often giving you the impression that you're doing something wrong even when you're not.

Buried in all these ideas is the concept of always trying something new. If Mok had tried his buddy's Gibson earlier on, he wouldn't have spent so many years playing second fiddle...er...guitar.

I resisted getting a larger, better keyboard for years and finally cracked when I tried a friend's instrument with good touch, tone, and almost perfect attack. Where's my checkbook (I said to myself).

Watch other people shooting sound. Pull in some favors and show up on a live TV show shoot. Find out when somebody in City Hall is going to speak and watch what the Newsies do.

It's harder to follow a movie production around, but if you can do that, by all means go. The sound people will talk you to death. nobody ever talks to them (us).

Ever see pictures of people talking on their radio show? What kind of microphone is that? Why are they talking through a round, black soup strainer?

Ask questions. Take notes. Listen!!

Koz

Hi all
I work for a community TV station in Austin
We have about 500 active producers

We teach these people to use equpiment
and make show that are aired on 4 channels.
They get to use good equipment
pd170- dsr 300 - pd 100-dsr 20 decks
2 studios with 3 new studio cams and switcher
Every thing is digital--
Good Sennheiser and Sony mikes- many types
Good Sony Wireless --Many Light kits--
They have it made--Cost them $100 a year
Many walk out with a $25000 kit--

I tell the producers I talk to how Important
sound is--That it goes Straight to your brain--

That people will watch bad video
but will not listen to bad audio--
It dose not regester with them.

Sound and Lighting is the last thing on
there mind --

For most it takes about a year
before they take there production
up a notch--But this makes for
some pertty Painful TV---

Some produers do Very Good work
Many are happy with just there
Face on TV--

With the cameras getting more light sencitive
poor lighting is not as big a problem
as it used to be---

I would have to say Bad Audio is the
number one problem -- by far

There is hour after hour of muddy
low audio-- or its clipped--Ouch

Many of the shows would be ok
if you could hear what they said.

Threw the 32 years the station
has been in bussiness there has
been some Really Good shows made
and Many Hours of real crap--
Most are some where in between--

So I think its not so much the equipment
you have-
Its knowing how to use
what you have---

Im just glad the Star Wipe is not
popular any more---Jay--

One more thing: "Good" is a relative term. For example, a dynamic mike doesn't sound nearly as good as a condenser, but for stage purposes, or if you have a person with a very loud voice who doesn't know how to distance himself from the mike, you may actually pick a dynamic over a condenser. And then there are side effects: When I switched from a $20 dynamic to a $200 condenser, I suddenly heard new problems: Heard the clock on my wall ticking, heard my own breathing on an acoustic guitar track. Since my music workspace isn't soundproofed, I had to deal with new problems stemming from a more sensitive mike.

yeah, i know that problem! when i bought my first neumann mic (the cheapo $800 one). i kept hearing this extremely subtle and somewhat erratic - vrrrruuuumm, vrrrrrruuuuum.

turns out that the closet i had "half-assed" into a vocal booth wasnt very well insulated to the outside wall of the building and i was hearing cars on the street 2 blocks away! - hey you get what you pay for!

this is a good example of when better gear isnt always the best decision...

> this is a good example of when better gear isnt always the best decision...

Well, Wayne, you could also argue that in both our cases, it's because we still haven't gotten the "best" gear -- a fully insulated studio in Woodstock, NY rather than an apartment, for example!

But it's true. If your recording conditions aren't optimal, sensitive mikes will create problems. By and large, though, they're fixable. In my case, I took my clock off the wall, and when playing acoustic guitar, I turned my head so I wasn't breathing in the microphone's direction. The sound-quality and performance improvements were well worth the troubleshooting.

A quick note:

When using DV cameras as your recording medium beware (and aware of) the built in compressors, also known as AGC (automatic gain control).

In the right situation it's a lifesaver- in others, it is a curse- usually the latter.

I'd suggest getting a book or two, Modern Recording Techniques, or Sound And Recording. Both music-centric, but will help give a grounding in the subject. Amazon has them.

If they make your eyes glaze over, then resort to trial-and-error, and go out and make as many mistakes as possible.

tc