How to get good sound on a movie, livestream or webinar.

With COVID our church has moved to putting the talks online.  The most important thing when recording talks is good audio quality.  Your eyes can put up with poor video,  but poor audio gets irritating very quickly.  Thankfully it’s very easy to get clear sound.

The key is to use an external microphone so that the mic can be close to the person who’s talking. Don’t use the mic that’s built into your laptop or phone.  This is especially important if you are in an online meeting where you are listening as well as speaking.

Here’s our church video from last Sunday. Have a listen to the start. Someone commented on the ‘good audio quality’ and asked how we did it. It was recorded on a reasonably low end Canon EOS200D. (It’s the cheapest SLR Canon that has an external mic input).

 What did you think of the sound quality?

Here was our setup:

This gets the microphone close to the speaker.

Here’s a video showing the setup.

 

Some Microphones

This is the mic I talked about in the video (Rode mini video mic).

Australian made and avaiable on Amazon or JB Hifi for around $70.

Rode mic.png

 

Here’s another good option. 

Rode Lavellier mic

lav2.png

Even the mic that comes with an iPhone is pretty good.

This week I noticed Glen Scrivener, a UK podcaster, using standard Apple Earpods. Sounded good.

Two kinds of plugs

I explained this in the video above. Be careful about the plug.

Here’s a TRS plug – you can plug this into a camera (e.g. Canon EOS2000D) but not into a computer.
Here’s a TRRS plug. You can plug this into a computer (e.g. a laptop) or a phone, but not into a Camera.

If you have the wrong plug you can get an adapter from JB hifi to go either way.

Summary

Use an external microphone.

Make sure it has the right adapter.

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3 responses to “How to get good sound on a movie, livestream or webinar.”

  1. Bryson

    Clear. Simple. Elegant. Thanks!

    Reply
  2. Paul

    Thanks! Really clear as always.

    Any advice on simple lighting set up?

    Reply
    1. Wayne

      Simple lighting setup (that we used here) was to turn off all Fluro lights (they were causing flickering in the video) and we had 2x 500W halogen work light lights (not LED) that we bought from Bunnings ($30) and pointed at the ceiling/wall so that the light was reflected off the ceiling, no direct light from the lamp to the face.

      https://www.bunnings.com.au/arlec-1000w-halogen-worklight-with-tripod_p7070522

      Reply

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