I need to record a video of me presenting in front of a group of people. I already have multiple ways to get the video at good enough quality, but I need good-quality audio as well.
What I’m pretty sure I need is a good lavalier microphone to pick up the sound, and some way to record it.
The room is small enough that I don’t need to route the audio into a sound board or audio system, but that’s a useful consideration for the future.
I’ve been doing some looking into things, and it looks like there are a couple of basic options.
(a) I get a portable mini digital recorder and a lav that plugs into it, and have all the gear physically on my person during recording. This would be easy, and possibly cheaper, but if I need to plug into a sound board at any point all the gear would be pretty much useless.
(b) I get a wireless lav setup, and figure out a way to get the XLR output that would typically go into a sound board to hook into my MacBook Air so I can record. This would be a little more complicated and error-prone, but it seems more future-proof.
Anybody have any advice to give me some direction here? Specific equipment recommendations would be super-helpful if you have a setup that works well for you.
For our church services I just bought a lavalier mic specific for the phone and use ferrite to capture the audio (but I suppose you could use voice memos or something). It works well. The pros use a wireless lavalier with the receiver plugged directly into the camera. Wireless is the most expensive and it gets so quick. I think zoom just came out with a belt pack size recorder this year.
Depending on the size of the room, I’ve had success with the Shure MV88. However, if you’re looking for more inputs or something with XLR, I’ve used both the Behringer U-Phoria UM2 and the iConnectivity Audio4+. The benefit of the iConnectivity is that it has a USB B to Lightning cable.
I’m pretty sure I don’t want something like the MV88. I’m hoping for a mic that I can actually speak into (or in the case of a lav, that’s at least mounted to my body).
If you use those interfaces, what lav would you use?
That Samson looks interesting. It looks like I’d have to scrap it if I needed to plug into a board, but it’s cheap enough that it might be workable for the short term.
I’d say do this route and use a handheld mic (preferably wireless) for the sound system. The lav mic is relatively invisible and the recorder can easily be placed in a jacket pocket or on a belt non-obstructively.
Then you would use the camera audio to line up the audio track you recorded and eliminate the camera track.
You’ll get a much better signal from an earset microphone like a countryman compared to a lav microphone. But those are pricey.
We’ve got a wireless rode setup that transmits and feeds audio into a video camera. That could possibly help.
But going low tech and just recording to your iPhone in your pocket using the EarPods as a microphone might just work as well too. You could sync video and audio in final cut.
Once you have the interface, the wireless system you pick is entirely up to you. As it relates to microphones, I personally prefer a double ear head worn microphone to a lav. I picked up this cheap Samson, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s pretty noisy, even at low gain.
For a good balance of cost and ease of use, I’d vote for your first option (a), a small recorder and wired lav.
I don’t have experience with the new Zoom field recorder that @Jeremy mentioned but I have used their original H2 with a Giant Squid Audio Lab lav mic and have achieved good results syncing w/ video. That new Zoom rig looks like a good option to try.
Of course, audio equipment at this price point tends to have a bit higher noise floor than more expensive gear, but I have found that it is all relative and most people won’t notice in the context of a video.
A couple tips I have learned the hard way:
lav mics are really sensitive to their environment and you’ll want to make sure their placement will minimize any rustling of your clothing.
It never hurts to slide your iPhone in your pocket (or put on a nearby table) and hit record on an audio app, just in case…
