Question about Live recorded Audio at a Gig

Trip Hazard

Right guys I have a quick question and I hope this is the place it may be answered.

I film gigs at live venues for bands and I just wondering can anyone advise me on what I can do to the audio to make it the best possible quality, I record the audio with a Rode Videomic attached to the camera, for the most part the sound is fine, I bring the level down accordingly so it's not peaking.

The Audio isn't bad by any means, considering I just used the condenser mic, I use Final Cut Pro to edit but I also have Logic Pro, is there any audio filters or anything I can do to make the audio perfect before I turn it over to the bands. I only know the very basics about Audio Post Production,

Any help would be appreciated,

Cheers

Trip Hazard

Sham Squire

The most obvious way to improve the audio on your videos would be to get a recording of the gig from the desk and sync it to your video. Most venues should be able to facilitate you with this. As far as polishing the recordings you're getting on the camera mic, I'll leave that to someone else to answer. It's not something I've ever tried.

madtheory

A very neat solution is the Zoom H4N. Records to an SD card. Onboard stereo mikes are very good. Position it at FOH for room/ audience sound. You can take a stereo feed from the desk at the same time using the balanced inputs. So your mix in Final cut would mainly be stereo mikes low during songs for ambience, and raising them between songs for audience. Use a clap at the start for sync.

The Zoom is also very useful for general audio for video work.

You will need to make sure the recording level is set low, say -18dBFS to avoid clipping. Then bring it up to whatever you need for the DVD. The Apple AU limiter is actually really good for that.

Crimson125

Depending on what toys you have in logic, you could in theory use some EQ to balance the sound, some compression to level it - and I doubt you woudl need any funny bits for noise removal as it should be quite clean form that mic.

How exactly to use those 2 completely depends on the source and on taste of course.

In the future, even a desk mix may not be satisfactory for what you want - it depends on the gig engineer and how it's set up. Again, some eq and some compression may be required - depending on what it's like of course.

PaulBrewer

Trip Hazard wrote: »

Right guys I have a quick question and I hope this is the place it may be answered.

I film gigs at live venues for bands and I just wondering can anyone advise me on what I can do to the audio to make it the best possible quality, I record the audio with a Rode Videomic attached to the camera, for the most part the sound is fine, I bring the level down accordingly so it's not peaking.

The Audio isn't bad by any means, considering I just used the condenser mic, I use Final Cut Pro to edit but I also have Logic Pro, is there any audio filters or anything I can do to make the audio perfect before I turn it over to the bands. I only know the very basics about Audio Post Production,

Any help would be appreciated,

Cheers

Trip Hazard

Best Post in the Main body of Forum.

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studiorat

Trip Hazard wrote: »

The Audio isn't bad by any means, considering I just used the condenser mic, I use Final Cut Pro to edit but I also have Logic Pro, is there any audio filters or anything I can do to make the audio perfect before I turn it over to the bands. I only know the very basics about Audio Post Production,

How does that work when you move around with the camera? Does the sound not change?

The desk output will vary depending on the size of the gig etc. A lot of smaller gigs will be very vocal heavy on playback.

Multi-tracking is the best way imo. Even if you just take a few groups from the desk.