Improving Audio Quality for Video Clip Production

In addition to stills photography, we are increasingly working with our clients to produce short video clips for their websites.  This includes product videos,  how to use and how to install videos,  as well as customer testimonials.

If you have ever tried to make a video with a DSLR, I’m sure you will agree that the built-in microphones are next to useless and tend to pick up a lot of camera noise mainly due to their location.

The sound quality improves considerably with an external boom microphone located on the cameras hot shoe.  I picked the Rotolight Pro Broadcast ShotGun Mic,  which works well and plugs straight into the cameras mic socket.  However, I still felt that there was room for improvement and started looking at sound recorders.

Having read lots of reviews, I selected the Tascam DR60D MKII because it was specifically designed for filmmakers and videographers using digital SLR’s.  It’s a four track solid state recorder which fits neatly under the camera and comes with both XLR and 3.5mm stereo inputs.   It has a slate tone generator which speeds up post production by allowing you to align the video and sound quickly.  It also has a dual recording function allowing you to record two audio files simultaneously at different levels.

The Tascam sound recorder is not only a good looking piece of equipment, see my image below, but has already proved itself to be a great asset in helping us to achieve excellent sound quality.