Audio capture comparison from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.
Lately I've taken to capturing my audio for video on a separate device, and syncing it in Final Cut using Pluraleyes. Here is a great demonstration of the difference this makes.
This is from a video that is going to go on Robin's new website, of her speaking about trauma therapy. In this case, I used a Zoom H4N to capture the sound. The unit has a pair of stereo microphones in it that are good, but you can also set it up in 4 channel mode and include two more inputs. I hooked in a wireless lav mic into that channel. A lav mic by itself can sound unnatural and remote, and it's useful to have another input to get room tone, which is what the stereo mikes gave me. The mix on the video is unaltered. It's exactly what the Zoom recorded. This is the same technique I used to record John and Paul's wedding, but there I used my wireless to transmit a signal from the soundboard.
In this case, the Sennheiser MKE-400 on the camera sounds dreadful. It's echoey, and there's a nasty light fixture buzz that I didn't notice until I started filming. One thing video will teach you is to pay attention to ambient sound, a skill I'm still developing. The Zoom just ignored that buzz.
Now for quick, on-the-run video I've had good results from just the Sennheiser on the camera. You need to be close to your subject (5 feet or less), and really alert to room tone. In many situations juggling another device (if you work alone, like I generally do), is just too much. But when the situation is stable and you're planted in one spot, there's no substitute for the quality that a dedicated audio capture rig will give you.
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