How to Record DJ Audio for Wedding Filmmakers

Craig Adams here from wedding film school and today I'm going to teach you how to record board audio from a DJ or band at a wedding so I've got all these cables on my gear page and the one email that I keep getting is people being like how do you use them what do we actually do with these cables so I hope this video explains what you actually do to get perfect audio from the board at every wedding so the audio that we're getting is you know during the ceremony they'll have a microphone that the couple speaking into and then it projects it out to the guests so that they can hear and an audio tech will set this up but they'll have a mixer you can record that and then you'll also have like the house audio person doing reception speeches once again like probably a wireless audio mic wireless audio mic and they'll be speaking into that for the speeches and that'll be projected to the guests so they can hear and trust me I understand how confusing this can be and intimidating when you're starting out because when I was starting out I had no idea what I was doing with audio regardless putting microphones on people and then slowly I learned that I could be recording from the mixers from the DJs and bands and I did it incorrectly I messed up a lot and then I finally got into of the rhythm and figured out you know the perfect way to get great audio every single time so that's what I'm here to help you with today yeh so first you're talking with a human being you know this audio tech really isn't there to help you but they also are so it's a delicate balance regardless please treat them with respect that's how you're going to get and make this work I recommend contacting them beforehand you know you can actually ask the couple who they are get an email a phone call make it happen and then tell them hello my name is this I'm doing this I would love for this to happen if possible and then on the day of just be nice like always ask don't demand that is where most people mess this up walk up and be like hello my name is Craig Adams how are you doing my part and then be like well I'm shooting video for Han and Leia and I would love it if possible that I could get a a line out from your mixer so I could record whatever they're all the dialogue for the ceremony or all the speeches during you know the speeches here and they'll be like yeah cool and I'll be like hey I got all the cables we might possibly need let's make this happen and he's like yeah let's do it and then we're golden you know there are only a couple of options XLR quarter and RCA so I'm going to show you everything in my little bag so this is like literally it other than the actual recorder which is larger and go somewhere else in my bag I love this little clear vinyl you can find it on the gear page so microphones they can be cheap Apple headphones because literally I'm just testing like that I can hear it like just the most basic of tests like I don't have to have really quality high fidelity headphones because there's really not much I can do if the quality is not there so I'm just testing the levels and making sure that it is it sounds like how it looks on the monitors so this is XLR male-to-female it's not that long it's shorter so if so this is the last case scenario if they can't give me something from their mixer pretty much ten out of ten times you're going to be able to ten at ten I love my ratios today be able to plug this into their actual speaker to get a master out on the speaker it's not the best quality but it's a good backup in case you can't do anything else so this is RCA 2/4 this goes into the mixer this goes into my recorder I'm set help help me this is quarter to quarter so this would go into their mixer and then this would go into my recorder this is probably what I use nine out of ten times this is my go-to cable for my Taz cam I can power it via the USB so I plug this into my test cam and then this goes into like an apple USB to wall outlet charger or plug or I can actually plug this into a portable battery so this powers reporter and then very simple if I'm plugging into where the DJ's are and they don't have an outlet I'm like well guess what I solve problems I don't create problems I solve them so that's all the stuff that I bring and use with my tez cam dr6 T it works great so if you look at my gear page for the starter kit you'll see the rolling and it has two 3.5 millimeter jacks on the top one is mic one is line there's a big difference between the two it took me a good month or two to figure it out myself and I was starting out it caused some problems so I'm going to help you out now the line input is very low signal you're going to get that from microphones from labs from stuff like that you're really not going to use that unless you're plugging you know a lapel microphone into the top of the recorder to like put it on someone but as far as board audio you're going to use the line port instead because it accepts a much stronger signal so some people use recorders like the zoom and they'll try to plug like a mixer into it to record and you'll find like even if you put the level all the way down to like one or even like 0.5 the levels coming in are still like almost peaking that's because you're getting a much stronger signal then your you know your input can take so with a roland has two ports so mic in line so you want to accept the line if you're doing a DJ board so on the top of the gear page you'll notice two cables one is quarter two art 3.5 so the quarter goes into the board and then the 3.5 goes into the line connection and you'll also find the other cord which is RCA once again goes into the board and then the 3.5 goes into the line input of the recorder so I you know I suggest having these two cables because you're not sure what the mixer is going to give you sometimes it's RCA sometimes it's line so have both just in case with those two and the Rowland you should be able to record pretty much every single board audio you know situation you run into so with the professional kit on my gear page it's more similar to mine where you have quarter to quarter and then RCA to quarter and then XLR to XLR so those three options are pretty much all you need with this kind of portable recorder which I suggest is the zoom h6 so the zoom h6 actually has all three connections XLR is four XLR connections four quarter connections on the sides two on each side and then also has a 3.5 connection but I recommend always trying to go for the quarter it works you know so always go for that so with those three cables technically you should be able to record any situation that a deejay or band aka a mixer will throw at you so here's a couple of tips to wrap up when you start rolling on your audio just roll way before you need to because you usually have a ton of audio space on your card so just why not it's one last thing you have to worry about pressing that record button and then once you do push hold on so that if anyone touches it it's probably not going to stop rolling make sure that your power is on you by USB so that you know you're not going to lose power half way through the speeches or something people ask me about attenuators all the time so they're little adapters that you put in between connections for audio and it it reduces your level by negative 10 DB negative 20 etc and they can be good to transform a line level into a mic level but you usually need a ton to bring it down they're good as backups but honestly if you can record line input into your recorder you should be set it's only when you have like a zoom h1 and you're trying to record a mixer into that is when you're going to need to reduce that level because you're trying to record but it's like always peaking even though you have it low and that should be it hopefully after watching this you are prepared to record audio you're not as intimidated you kind of have and so if you have any questions please leave a comment below I'll try to answer it if you want to check out the cables I have a link below for the gear page you'll find everything you need to shoot a wedding if you're beginner or advanced and thank you for watching until next time thanks

Channel: Wedding Film School

Views: 104,480

Keywords: how to record board audio, record audio from mixer, how to record audio from a mixer, kraig adams audio, how to record audio from mixer, how to record audio at weddings, audio for wedding, record audio wedding, how to record wedding audio, audio wedding, wedding videography audio, tascam wedding film school, how to record live audio, recording audio from mixer, how to record audio at a wedding, recording audio at weddings, wedding film school tascam, wedding film school audio

Id: yw7Sq_mPrUY

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2016