- This is your complete beginner's guide to the RODE Wireless GO II. These are super tiny, small, wireless audio transmission systems, and they're really easy to use. However, there is a lot of
little features built into these that make them even better than some of the other
microphones out on the market. So let's just go through a quick outline of what you're gonna find in this video. First, we're gonna go over
the actual units themselves. Section two, we'll go
through how you use them and how you set them up properly. Section three is gonna
go through RODE Central, which is a piece of software that RODE includes
that's on your computer. And it unlocks a bunch
of extra functionality out of these little Wireless GOs. And then section four, we're gonna go through
the backup recording and my workflow when I use this feature. So whenever I get asked a recommendation for wireless audio, I always recommend the RODE Wireless GO II for a few reasons. Number one is that they're easy to use. They're super simple. You basically plug them in. And once you have your
settings set up the first time, they're pretty much set
to go for most situations. Now, the other reason is that you get two wireless
transmitters for one receiver, which means that you could
have two people mic'd up at any time, and that audio is gonna be split in a way where you can control them
independently in the edit. And I'll explain how all
of that works later on, but you don't have to use it
with this dual functionality, but it is good to have it just in case you do need to
mic up two people at once, and it's gonna work with
your mirrorless camera. So my Sony A7S Mark III,
works great with these. It's gonna work with your iPhone, and you can even plug these
directly into your computer. And the last reason is
you get a backup recording on the transmitter. There's very few
transmitters on the market that have this backup
recording functionality. And there's nothing this small. And the reason that the
backup recording is so special is that if there's any sort of dropout, if there's any time
where the audio cuts out, you don't lose that audio. On other wireless systems, if say there's a transmission issue between the transmitter and the receiver, you've lost that audio. However, with the RODE Wireless GO II, you could set this to have
a backup recording going the entire time of your shoot. And then if there is issues, you just use the backup recording, and then you saved your audio. And this is super important, especially when you're a solo creator. If you're shooting, doing audio, in front of camera, all at the same time, you can't be monitoring
audio while you're recording. So having this backup is just a safety net in case anything happens. (soft electronic music) So first, let's dig into
what comes in the box. You're gonna get a receiver. This is what you're gonna
plug into your camera, your phone, your computer. And this is what is taking the
audio from the transmitters. Now you're gonna receive two
transmitters in this box, and these are what you're
gonna put on yourself or on the person that you're recording. And it's what's sending
the signal to the receiver. Now you're also gonna get
three fuzzy windscreens, and on these transmitters, there's actually a microphone built in. So you don't have to use a lavalier mic. You could just use this. And this microphone is very sensitive. So if you have it hooked on your shirt, your jacket or whatever, and there's some wind blowing on you, you're gonna hear that in the form of (imitates static buzzing). So the fuzzy windscreen
is gonna go on top of this and cut out all of those wind sounds. Now you're gonna get three
USB-C to USB-A cables. You're gonna get one 3.5 TRS cable, and then you're gonna get
a small carrying pouch. Now what's so cool about
the setup is everything fits in this pouch. And this pouch alone is smaller than most wireless systems on the market. So you could throw this in your bag. You could throw this in your pocket, and you always have a
two-transmitter setup for any situation. And for documentary
shooters, for YouTubers, it just unlocks a lot of
potential to not carry a lot of extra audio gear and
have this functionality to have this dual audio setup for any situation that you're in. So next let's go over the buttons that you're gonna find on the receiver. So starting on the front where
it says RODE Wireless GO II, you'll see a screen. And this is gonna tell
you all the information that you need to know
when you're out recording, we're gonna go over what all
of this means in a little bit. On the top, you're gonna
have your power button. It has the RODE O on it. On the left side, you'll have a USB-C, and you'll have your 3.5
millimeter TRS connection. On the bottom you have on the left your gain control and mute button, and then your pair button
and channel selection button. And in terms of buttons, that's it. It's a very simple system. And the last thing that
you're gonna find is the clip on the back. Now what's really cool about this clip is that it doubles as a cold shoe mount. So you don't need to have
any additional accessories to put this on top of your camera. Now let's go over the transmitter. There's even less buttons on this one. So on the front, you're only gonna see two lights in the upper left-hand corner. The left one is your
connectivity indicator, and the right one is your battery. Now moving right, you'll see that the
microphone is dead center. And then next to that
is your TRS connection. It's 3.5 millimeters. So if you're using a lavalier mic, you just plug it in there and
it overtakes the microphone that's in the RODE
Wireless GO transmitter. So you could use this either
as a microphone built-in, no cables, no nothing. You just pop this on and start recording. Or you could plug in a lavalier mic into the TRS connection right here. Now RODE makes an additional lavalier mic. This is smaller than
the actual transmitter. So if you want a smaller profile, just use the RODE lav, and you can put that on
the edge of your shirt. And then on the other end, you'll find your 3.5
millimeter TRS connection. And you plug that into the top of your RODE Wireless GO transmitter, and it takes over the microphone that's built in to the actual transfer. Now RODE also has a headset
mic with a 3.5 millimeter input and it works the same way. You stick it into the TRS connection. It takes over the transmitter, and the audio is coming
exclusively from the lavalier mic that goes over your ear. Now on the side, you're
gonna find your USB-C port for charging and connecting
to your computer. And then on the bottom, you're gonna find your power indicator. That's the RODE O that
you'll see on the bottom. Now the clip is the exact
same on the transmitter as the receiver. So if you, I did want to put
this into a cold shoe mount, you easily can. You could also use it to clip
on anywhere on your clothing. It just makes it super simple
that it's all integrated in such a small little package. All right, so next, let's
talk about these windscreens, and I've touched on them briefly. You get three of them in the package, which are these little fuzzy things. And my daughter loves playing with these, but I love that RODE included three, because you have one for each
transmitter and then a backup if you lose one, which
sometimes will happen. So the RODE Wireless GO II
transmitter is omnidirectional. And what that means is
that it's picking up audio in a spherical pattern versus
a very directional pattern. So if you're using a shotgun microphone, it's gonna pick up audio
in front of that microphone and not behind it and
not off to the sides. The idea of a directional
microphone is you put it on top of your camera and you get
what's in front of you, but not what's behind you. With an omnidirectional, you're basically capturing
audio in kind of a 360. Just think of it like a sphere. So when you put your RODE
Wireless GO right here on your chest, it's gonna
pick up kind of the audio all around here. And this microphone is sensitive. So if there is any wind that
hits the actual microphone on the transmitter, you're gonna hear a
(imitates static buzzing). So with the RODE Wireless GO
II, you get the windscreen. And these are really easy to put on. You'll see two little white
dots on the bottom of it. And you'll want to line
that up with the two dots that you see on the
transmitter themselves. And then you do a half turn clockwise, and it's locked on there. Now the original RODE
Wireless GO didn't have this half turn built into it. It was just a clip. And this fuzzy would always fall off. With the version II,
you have this half turn. The fuzzy doesn't really come off, and it makes it a lot easier to use, because you don't have to worry about these popping off all the time. And then to take off your windscreen, you do a half turn counter-clockwise, pop it off and then, you know, put this somewhere so you don't lose it. You don't need to keep the
wind fuzzy on at all times. You only really need to use it if there's any chance of
something hitting the mic, some sort of wind or air. So if you're outside, it probably is a good idea to use it. But if you're in an
indoor controlled setting and there's not like a fan or
AC blowing on the microphone, then just use this as is. So let me just briefly
touch on how these work. RODE Wireless GO II's use
a digital transmission that's 2.4 gigahertz, and you get up to 200 meters in range from the transmitter to the receiver. So most situations you're
gonna have a clean signal. It's not gonna have any issues. And even if you're in
a crowded environment, you should still get a clean
signal with the system. Different systems use RF signal, which when you're in a crowded environment and there's lots of RF bouncing around, it would cause a lot of issues. So for example, I work with a lot of
audio guys on my shoots for my production company, and we'll use different styles of systems that are on the RF signal. And if there's a lot of police activity, if there's a lot of chatter on radios, it ends up causing issues with the signal. Now RODE Wireless GO II
uses a digital signal. So you're not gonna have that
same type of interference. However, it doesn't mean
that they're perfect, because you still want to
maintain a line of sight. As soon as you get in a busy environment, you go behind walls, you get behind a car, you might lose the signal. So that is why the backup recording is so important on these. Ideally, you want to keep a line of sight between your transmitter, say it's on your camera over
there, and the receiver. And you want to make sure that you have a clean line of sight. Now where this becomes a
problem is if you're using this say on your back, you put
the transmitter on your back. Your body might block some of the signal. And especially if you
are doing say fitness and you go to the ground to do something like a crunch or a floor exercise, and your body covers this, it's most likely gonna cut out completely. And so ideally you want
to put this in a place where you're not gonna cover
it completely with your body, or it's gonna go behind something. So if you're talking straight to camera, putting it on your hip,
putting it in a front pocket, putting it slightly behind
on the back of your pant line is gonna be much better than
if it's directly behind you. Now, one last thing in this section, when you get the Wireless
GO II out of the box, they're automatically gonna be paired. So channel one and channel
two is gonna be paired to transmitter one and transmitter two. And as soon as your system is paired, it's always gonna be paired
every time you turn it on. So if this is transmitter one, and it's paired to channel one, every time I turn on this
transmitter and the receiver, it's always gonna pop up as channel one. So what's one thing that's great about the Wireless GO system
is you can use multiple of them at the same time. Say you have multiple cameras, you have a bigger shoot going on, and you're never gonna have
issues with the pairing. Now, if your Wireless
GO does come unpaired, I'm gonna show you in the next section how you actually go about repairing. But out of box, these are already paired. You don't have to do anything. You just turn them on and
they're basically ready to go. But let's get into section two, which is gonna go over all of the buttons and how you actually use these
devices to get good audio. (soft electronic music) Let's start at the very beginning. How do you turn these on? So on the bottom where this O is, you're just gonna press and hold until you see the device light up. There's no double tap, nothing like that. You just hold it until it turns on. And the same is for the
transmitter as the receiver. And as soon as you turn
both the transmitter and receiver on, you'll see the lights
indicated on the transmitter, and on the receiver your
screen will light up. And if there's any sounds
or if you're talking, you're gonna start seeing
the bars dance around, which means that the
transmitter is hearing audio. Now to turn these off, it's just repeating how you turn them on. You just press and hold the
power button for a few seconds until you see the lights
go completely dark. Now to disconnect your
transmitter from your receiver, you're gonna click the button
on the right-hand side, which is your channel selection. And you'll see a box pop up around one. You click it again. It'll pop up around two. This is just basically selecting
one microphone at a time. And then when the box is
around that transmitter, you press and hold for three seconds. And it's gonna disconnect the transmitter from the receiver. Now, for most of you, there's
gonna be no reason for you to ever disconnect the
transmitter from the receiver. But if your transmitter
does get disconnected for any reason, you basically,
you do the same thing. You select the microphone, you press and hold for three seconds. It's gonna put the
receiver into pairing mode. And then with your transmitter turned on, you press once on the power button, and then it will automatically reconnect. Now let's talk about
connections for your receiver to the device that you're recording on. So for cameras, you're gonna
use the 3.5 TRS connection. This will plug directly
into your camera's input. So a lot of times on
cameras they'll be marked with a red ring around that connection. Make sure that you're
plugging into the audio input and not the headphone input. Even filmmakers, who've been doing this for a super long time, accidentally plug it in
the wrong port sometimes. So just make sure you're
plugging into the audio input and that you're checking
that you're getting signal on your camera from the receiver. Now you could also connect this to your phone or your computer. Now what's really cool about the RODE Wireless GO II is that when you plug into your
computer, you use the USB-C. And when you're using the USB-C to transmit audio to your computer, you can use the TRS connection
to plug in headphones and actually monitor your
audio using headphones. So if you're plugging
directly into a camera, you're gonna have to plug into
your camera's headphone port, which some cameras don't
have a headphone port. They just have an audio input. So in those situations, you're not gonna be able
to monitor your audio. However, when you're
plugging into your computer, you can use this TRS connection as your headphone monitoring. And the same thing goes for your phone. You use the USB-C and you
have to get a special cable that's not included that goes from USB-C to
your phone's connection. And then you'll be able to
plug this into your phone. And this turns into a
digital audio transmitter versus an analog. So when you're plugging into
your computer or your phone, you're gonna use that device to control how loud you want the
audio to be recording. But then when you're
plugging it into your camera, you're gonna use a mix
of your camera settings and the gain settings on the receiver to get the best sounding audio. So whether you're a creator
that uses a camera or a phone or you want to just plug
everything into your computer and use this for Zoom meetings, you could use the RODE Wireless GO for a lot of different applications. Let's talk about the battery life on the RODE Wireless GO II. So these will last for around seven hours. And you have a USB-C on the side, and you charge these using a USB-C cable. Now you can continue to
use your RODE Wireless GO while it's charging. So if you could plug in
an external power source and you can continue to use
them while it's charging and the same thing for the transmitters. However, it's not gonna
make that much sense to use a transmitter while it's charging, because you have to have
that on you somewhere. So the only time that seven
hours is gonna be an issue is if you're trying to record all day. So you'll either have
to have a backup set, or what you could do is
have a backup battery for the receiver, plug it
in when it's getting low, and then just swap out the transmitter if you're just recording on one at a time. That is one downside with the system. There's no battery that you can swap out. However, they do charge fairly fast, and you just need to make sure to keep them charged all the time. All right, next, let's
go over what you find on the screen for the receiver. So right now I have both
transmitters turned on, and I'm using split recording. And I'll explain what split recording versus merged recording
is in a little bit. So at the top, you're
gonna see your microphones in order, one and two, and the lines that are bouncing around, that's your audio signal. So on the left side is low volume, and on the right side is high volume. So you can see as I'm talking it bounces up towards that right side. And in the yellow is where you're hitting kind of the top range of the microphone. Now, underneath that, you're gonna see basically three squares. Now one is transmitter one and the information for that transmitter. The middle is kind of
some global settings. And then on the right is two. And that is for transmitter two. Now, if you press the pair
button or the channel selector, the 1/2 on the bottom, you'll see a box pop up
around one, click it again. It'll pop up around two. So in each transmitter, you're gonna find the battery level. That's the battery indicator. You're gonna find your audio level, which is the bouncing line at the bottom. And then you're gonna have
your receiver strength, which is right next to the battery. So that's how good the signal
is between your transmitter and your receiver. Now in the middle, let's talk
about the global settings. The little wedge shape at the top, that is your name gain control. So that's how much volume is
coming out of the receiver. And when you click the gain
button on the left side on the bottom, you'll see that it changes. And right now I have it in
the three selector mode. So there's three different gain outputs, which is zero, negative
12 and negative 24. But you just use the button on the bottom to change how much you're outputting. And out of the box, it will come with setting zero,
negative 12 and negative 24. Zero is when it's completely filled. Negative 12 is when it's half filled, and negative 24 is when it's
the least amount filled. And when you're doing audio,
you just want to think that zero is like the top of your audio. That is the loudest that you
can ever be with your audio. You can never go above zero. So decibels work in negative. So they go down. So if you're recording at negative 24, that's gonna be a lot quieter than recording at negative
12 or negative zero. So just think of zero at the top, and you're working your way down. Now underneath your gain indicator is gonna be the receiver battery. So you'll see three batteries
on this at all times, if you have all three turned on, and then next to that
is a little sun icon, and this is for your backlit display. So on the screen, you can have this dim and it
goes into power saver mode. So to activate that, right now it's not in power saver mode, but you just click once
on the power button. And then the edges of that
sunburst will go away. It'll just be a dot in the center. And now you're in power saver mode. So after 10 seconds,
you'll see the screen dim. So you're not using as much battery power to have the screen displayed. Now, if you just click the
power button once again, the backlit display
will always be turned on and it will be much brighter. Now on the transmitter,
you have your two lights, you're gonna have your battery indicator, and then you're gonna have
your connection indicator. So when they're both blue, that means it's charged and
you have a strong connection between the transmitter and the receiver. When your battery is
low on your transmitter, your battery indicator
will start flashing. And if it's flashing faster, that means you're almost
completely out of battery. Now on the receiver, the little battery icon will
change from amber to red to show you that the battery
levels are getting low. So green and a solid blue light means that you have plenty of power. But if you're flashing on the transmitters or you're seeing an amber or
red indicator on the receiver, that means you're running out of battery and you need to charge them soon. All right, so let's talk
about how you would use this as a single transmitter or
a dual transmitter setup. And what we're gonna talk about is merged versus split recording. And then I also want to
discuss the safety channel. So out of the box, this comes
in the split recording mode, which basically means that one channel is
recording transmitter one. And the other channel is
recording transmitter two. So how audio works is there
is a left and a right channel. If you put on your headphones, there's a channel independently for both the left and the right. And when you're recording in camera, you're recording a stereo pair. That's a left and a right. Now, if you're using the
original RODE Wireless GO or say, just a shotgun microphone, and you plug into the
audio port on your camera, it's gonna be recording on both the left and the right channel. Now with the RODE Wireless
GO II, you can split that. So you can have your left
channel recording microphone one and your right channel
recording microphone two. And the reason that you would
want to do this is so that in your editing software, you can split up the stereo
pair and make two mono pairs. So stereo means a left
and a right channel. And mono means basically the same thing is being recorded on both
the left and the right. And having the ability
to split your stereo pair into two mono tracks allows you to control each one of
those independently. So if you're recording two people with two different transmitters, you can go in your editing software and do things like mute one transmitter when that person's not talking, or you could go through
and change the audio levels independently of each other. And you're basically giving
yourself more options to be able to do audio editing in post. So if you're gonna be using
this as a solo creator or an individual, and you're only using one
transmitter to the one receiver, then you're gonna want
to use the merged mode. And on the bottom of your receiver, the two buttons when
clicked simultaneously and held for three seconds will change the signal
from the split signal to the merged signal. And how you'll know that you're
in the merged versus split is how the top bar is displayed. When you're in split mode,
you'll see a one and a two, and you'll see two different
bars bouncing left to right, basically giving your audio levels. When you put it into merged mode, it basically means that instead
of being a stereo track, you're doing a dual mono track, which means that both
the left and the right are recorded the same on both tracks. So if you're just using one
transmitter and the receiver, you don't want it to only
be coming out of one ear. So you want to make sure that you put it into the merged mode so that you're recording on both tracks and you get good audio from
your left and your right. If you have it in the split recording mode and you're using one transmitter and then you use that recording
in your editing software, you're gonna have to switch it from a stereo to a dual mono in editing. And if you forget to do that, well, when you output your video, you're only gonna hear
audio out of one side. So if you're on speakers, you'll only hear it out
of the left channel. Or if you're listening to headphones, you'll only hear it out of the left ear. So you either have to
make sure that it's merged on the receiver, or you're gonna be merging
it in your editing software. Now with split recording, you're recording each
channel independently, and that's basically all you can do. But with the merged recording, you can split that into two channels and bring one channel 20 decibels lower than the other channel,
basically a lower volume. This is called a safety channel. So if you're in a situation where the audio is gonna
be fluctuating a lot, there's really highs and really lows, and you don't know if
it's gonna be super quiet or super crazy loud, you might want to turn
on the safety channel. And basically in the merged mode, you're recording two
channels independently, but it's the same exact recording, just one is quieter than the other. Now, when you're using
the RODE Wireless GO II, you don't to use the split recording when you're using two transmitters. You can also use the merged recording, but just keep in mind, you're not gonna be able to independently control each transmitter if you're in the merged recording, because what's happening
is that both transmitters are being recorded the same on
both channels on your audio. So if there is any
situation where you want to change one transmitter from the other, you can't do that in the merged mode. But when you're in this merged mode, you have access to that safety channel. So if you're in an
environment where you want to use two transmitters and
the audio is all over the place and you want to have that safety channel, you're gonna have to put
it into the merged mode and then use that safety channel. So if you're a solo creator and you're only using one
transmitter and the receiver, I suggest just putting
it into the merged mode and just don't use that safety channel unless you absolutely need it. Now, if you're someone who's
using both the transmitter and the receiver and you have
two people talking on camera, I suggest using the split mode. And then in your editing software, you're gonna have to
split your stereo track into two dual mono tracks. And then that allows you
to edit them independently. And you don't have to worry
about the audio being mixed, and you can do all of
your editing in post. It takes a little bit longer to do that, but you do have more flexibility. Now let's talk about
muting the transmitter. So when you're out filming, you can mute the transmitter so that it's not sending
the signal to the receiver, but everything is still turned on. Now you might want to use this feature if you're in between shots and you don't need to
actually record anything from the transmitter, say
someone's gonna the bathroom, or, you know, you just don't want to have that audio being recorded, especially when you have the
backup recording turned on. So to mute the transmitter,
there's two ways to do it. You could either do it on
the transmitter itself, or you can do it on the receiver. So on the receiver, you'll use your channel selection. You'll go to which transmitter
that you want to mute. And then you're gonna
click the left button on the bottom, which is the mute button. And you'll see a little microphone with a slash through it pop up. You'll also see the bar that's underneath won't be showing up audio anymore. There's no audio coming
to the transmitter, because it's muted. And if you're in split mode, you'll be able to see that there is no audio coming
through that channel anymore. Now, to turn it back on, you just do the same thing in reverse. Use the channel selection tool, click the mute button on the left side, and you'll see the audio channels pop up in both the spots that they were before. Now to mute yourself on the transmitter, it's actually fairly easy. You just single press on the power button, and now it's muted. Now there's no indication
on the actual transmitter that you've been muted. You have to look at the receiver, and you'll see that the little microphone with the slash pops up and you won't be receiving audio anymore. So just something to keep in mind, it is fairly easy to press
this button and mute yourself. So make sure that you don't press this. And before you start recording, make sure that you have
audio coming to the receiver. Because the last thing that you want to do is accidentally mute yourself
with the transmitter, do an entire recording, and
then come to find out later that you muted the entire
thing and you have no audio. So let's talk about gain control. On the receiver, you can output
how loud the audio is going to your camera, and you have gain settings, which basically I explained earlier. In the basic mode, you
have three settings, zero, negative 12, and negative 24. And this is how loud
you're sending the signal to your camera. Because you could be getting clean audio on the Wireless GO transmitter, but it could be super loud in your camera and you're getting like
really awful sound. So you're gonna use a combination
of your camera settings and your Wireless GO II settings to be able to get the best
sound out of the system. So there's two ways that
you can use gain control. The basic one comes out
of box set up already, and that's the three
steps we talked about. Now there's also a 10 step. So if you're someone who
wants to dial in your settings a little bit more, you
can use up to 10 steps on the Wireless GO receiver. You have to go in your RODE Central, and I'll show you where that is, but you can turn on the advanced mode, which is 10 steps of gain. And it goes from zero to negative 30, and basically giving
you a lot more options when it comes to your control. Now, keep in mind, this
gain control is only going to affect you if you're
using the 3.5 TRS connection. So how you want to use
this with your camera is basically you want
your camera recording as low as possible in camera, and you want to boost your signal using the RODE Wireless GO II. So on a camera there's
what's called a noise floor. And if you boost your audio
signal in your camera, you're gonna hear more
noise in the background. (static buzzing)
You'll hear like static in the background. So if you have your camera recording as high as it possibly can, outputting at the lowest it possibly can, it's not gonna sound very good. Ideally, what you want to
do is turn your camera down to its lowest setting
and then boost your gain on the RODE Wireless GO II. And also you'll want to
use the manual settings in your camera. So on your camera, you
could do auto audio, or you could do manual audio. The issue is when it's in auto, it's gonna be fluctuating up and down. So you want to put it into manual audio. You want to bring it
down as low as possible without turning it off. And then you want to boost
your gain as high as possible to where you're getting a clean
signal on the camera itself. Now, what is a clean signal? What I talked about earlier
is that audio goes from zero, which is like peeking at the very top, and then it goes down. And you want to record
between negative 12 and zero. So ideally you want your audio hitting around that negative six mark. A lot of cameras will
have a yellow indicator when it's in that range
where it's starting to get up towards peaking,
but it's not fully peaking. And then red is where it's fully peaking and you're losing audio. So you'll just want to do a test. You'll want to turn on
your RODE Wireless GO. You'll want to have your subject
or you talking at the level that you're going to be talking at and then adjust your
audio to get your signal to where it needs to be. So step-by-step, this is what you'll do. Turn on your camera, plug everything in, turn your camera down to
the lowest setting possible for audio without turning it off, then put your gain at zero
on the RODE Wireless GO. Now, do a sample, start talking and see how it's
affecting the audio levels on your camera. If the audio levels are
just hitting that red, well, we can bring down the
gain in the RODE Wireless GO II to a point where the
audio is not fully hitting in that red anymore. And it's somewhere in
the green and yellow. You want to be recording
around that negative six mark and a little bit lower if there is a lot of
fluctuation in the way that you're talking. Now, if your audio recording's too low, it's at the very bottom of
what we're talking about here, and you're like getting very little audio, well, once you bring that
into your editing software and you boost that to
where it needs to be, you're gonna hear a ton of noise, (static buzzing)
and it's also just, it's not gonna sound good. So the solution for that
is you're gonna have to put your RODE Wireless GO II at zero, and then boost your camera
gain until you get to a point where you're getting that
audio in that negative six to negative 12 range. And again, when you're doing this, you want to be talking at the levels that you're actually
going to be talking at. So if you're someone
who's gonna be yelling or getting really excited
in your conversation, well, you want to make sure that you're checking those levels when you're doing the setup. Because if you're just
talking normal and you know, this is what you're doing your test at, but then you start going really loud and you're doing this, and ah, well, you're not gonna
get a clean recording. And I work with a lot of
fitness professionals. And this is one thing that I have to worry about all the time is that their voice gets much
louder when they get excited. So I have to make sure that I'm recording at the proper levels for
when that excitement happens. And I might use the safety
channel in that situation, if there's a lot of fluctuation, and this is where you're
gonna have to decide if you need that safety channel and you're gonna have
to weigh the benefits of using the split
versus merged recording. But for a solo creator, it's gonna be a lot easier, because you don't have to worry
about that split recording. One last note about setup is
that if you're using something like a lavalier mic or a headset mic, you want to make sure that you
plug it into the transmitter and that you're doing
these audio adjustments with the microphone that
you're gonna be using. Because plugging these
microphones into the transmitter is gonna change the signal a little bit, and also where you position
it is gonna change the signal. So if you have a microphone over the ear, right on your mouth, it's gonna sound much louder than if you have a lavalier
mic down towards your chest. So you want to make sure
that everything is set up how you're gonna use it and then do your audio
setup after that point. All right, so let's talk about
the low sensitivity mode. So if you're in a situation
where the microphone that you've plugged into the transmitter is recording too hot or if you're using something like the interview handheld adapter, you might want to access
the low sensitivity mode. And that basically makes the
microphone less sensitive. So your recording is not so loud. Now there's two ways to access this mode. One is on the receiver and
the other is in RODE Central. And I'll show you when
we get to that section. But to access it on the receiver, you're gonna use your
channel selection icon. Click on the channel and then press and hold the mute button. And you're gonna want to
hold it for three seconds until you see this little blue
upside down triangle turn on. And to turn off low sensitivity mode, you just do the same thing in reverse. Now, if your mic is muted and
you see that little mute icon, you could still turn on
your low sensitivity mode, but you're not gonna see
the little blue triangle. As soon as you turn off the mute button, you'll see that the triangle does pop up. So that's just one thing to keep in mind. The low sensitivity mode
is the same position as the mute mode. So if you put it into
low sensitivity mode, make sure that you turn off the mute so you could see that it's there. So now we've gone over everything when it comes to the
receivers and the transmitters and how you use these with
all the physical buttons on the devices themselves. Now let's dig into the RODE Central, and I'm gonna show you
how you use RODE Central to change some of these
settings, update your devices, and also how you access
some of these features that aren't available from the buttons that are on the actual RODE
Wireless GO themselves. (soft electronic music) To download the RODE Central, you're gonna go to RODE's website and download it onto your computer, whether you have a Mac or a PC. And when you open it for the first time, this is the screen that you're gonna get. It just says, "Please connect the RODE
device to get started." So you're gonna need a connector cable. I have a MacBook Pro that uses USB-C. So I have a USB-C to USB-C
to plug into my computer. Now you don't have to
turn on the transmitter or the receiver to plug it in. You just need to plug it straight in, and it will automatically
turn on from the bus power on your computer. So let's start with the receiver. So I'm gonna plug this into my USB-C, and automatically it will connect to your RODE Wireless GO receiver. And you'll see right here, everything pops up for the receiver. Now I'm gonna grab another cable. And I'm also gonna plug in the
transmitter at the same time. And now what you'll see is that in the upper left-hand
corner of RODE Central, it's showing both the
transmitter and the receiver. Transmitter is TX and receiver is RX. So if you want to, you can plug all three
of these in at once. And they all pop up here in
that upper left-hand corner. You don't have to do it one at a time. So let's open up the receiver first. So with multiple plugged in, I'll just click on the
receiver, the one that says RX. And you'll see that at the bottom, there's now an indication that says one other device is connected. So in the upper left-hand corner, you're just gonna see which
device I'm looking at, the firmware version and the battery level with a little battery icon. Now let's go into the settings. So first setting is your backlit display. This is that power saver mode
that we talked about earlier. You can turn it on and off here. You have your gain mode. So earlier I was saying
with the gain mode, you have the three steps
or you have the 10 steps. Well, this is where you change it between the three and the 10. So right now, coarse, that
is the three-step mode. I'll change it to fine. And that's where you could
go through the 10 steps. Now in the next box, you'll see the gain, and I could change it. So negative 30, negative 27, negative 24, 21, 18, 15, 12, 9, 6, 3, and zero. Now you can also change these settings on the receiver themselves. And instead of being
that little wedge icon, you'll actually see the decibels pop up when you have it in fine mode. So as you can see right here, I'm clicking through and I'm changing it using the gain control
button on the receiver, and it's going through
the different numbers. Now the next button over is
your split and your merged mode. And you'll see that
when it's in split mode, there's no safety channel option. However, when you click
over to merged mode, your safety channel now is available, and you can turn that on or off. So if you want to turn
on your safety channel, you have to plug in your
RODE Wireless GO receiver, make sure it's in merged mode. So either turn it on using RODE Central or both buttons on the receiver. And then you can turn
on that safety channel. And when that safety channel is turned on, you'll see the blue indicator
on the receiver itself. Now, the last thing that you can change on the receiver is the
functionality of your power button. So as we've been talking
about in this video, when you click this, it's
your backlit display. It's the power saver mode. However, the last button
in RODE Central allows you to change this to marker. And so if you don't need to
access that backlit setting when you're recording, you could use this as a marker. And markers come into play when you're doing a backup recording. So this is where you switch
it from a backlit button to a marker button. And while you're recording, if you click this power button once, it's gonna set a marker
on that backup recording, and this is important, if you want to find a specific
point in say an interview, and you just want to make sure that you know where that's at,
you click the marker button. Or if there's audio dropouts, you'll see the markers come into play. Now underneath that's gonna
show your battery level. When it's plugged into your computer, it is also charging the battery. It's gonna show your clock. So it's gonna show what time
it is and what date it is. And if you're traveling, you'll want to reset this
so that it's accurate for the place that you're at. It's gonna set it to
your computer's clock. So if your computer switches, you wanna make sure to switch your RODES, so that they're not on
a different time zone if you're recording
halfway across the world. Underneath that is your firmware version. And if your firmware needs an upgrade, there'll be a button to update it. You'll just update it from RODE Central. It just takes a couple minutes, and then it will be completely updated. And then underneath that,
it's gonna have a hardware ID. So that's it for the receiver. Now let's go into the transmitter, and the transmitter is
a little bit different. So you have both your backup recordings, if you've done backup
recordings and your settings. So in the upper left-hand
corner, you'll hit the gear icon, and that's gonna pull
up all of your settings. Whereas if you need to
access your backup recording, you'll click on one of those underneath the transmitter icon. And it's gonna pull up
your backup recording. So let's go into the settings first. Now these settings are
a little bit different than what you find on the receiver. First is your backup recording,
and you have three options. You have always, you have
backup, and you have off. These are gonna come in the off setting. So the two settings for your
backup recording is either whenever you turn on the transmitter, it starts recording a backup, or whenever it connects to the receiver, it starts recording. So always means that whenever
you turn on your transmitter, it's getting a backup recording. And backup means that when
you connect your receiver to your transmitter
and both are turned on, then it's gonna start
the backup recording. All right, so next is the pad feature that we talked about earlier. So you can turn this on or off
in the RODE Central as well. Now, next is your LEDs. So if your LEDs are too
bright, you can dim these. They don't have to be at full brightness. You have the option to either
make them dim or bright. And last is the settings
for your power button. So on the transmitter, you can change this from the mute button. So instead of being the mute button, if you're worried about hitting it, then you could change this to none where it doesn't do anything, or you could change this to marker. So if you need to use this
to mark different things that come up in your recording, you could do it on the transmitter and not necessarily the receiver. So if you're someone who's a solo creator and you want to make sure
to mark your recording for different things
as you're going along, you could turn on your marker button and then wherever your transmitter
is, just click it once. And you set a marker for yourself. So you have three options
with that power button. And if you don't want to
use the mute or the marker, just put it on none. So there's no chance of you
accidentally muting something. Now, underneath that, you'll
see your recording mode. And this is in regards
to your backup recording. So when you're in always mode, the only recording that you have access to is broadcast quality or uncompressed, and you'll get seven hours
worth of backup recording on your transmitter. Now, if you're in backup mode, you can switch this between
standard and broadcast. Standard is compressed, which allows you to get about
40 hours worth of audio. And then the broadcast
quality is uncompressed, which is about seven hours. Now underneath the recording mode, you'll see how much data has been recorded on your transmitter. Right now, it's showing that I have about four hours
remaining in uncompressed. If I switch this to standard, you'll see that 28 hours remain. And if I want to format
the internal hard drive, I just click the button
on the right-hand side, the little trashcan, and it will completely
clear out all my audio. Now, underneath that,
you'll see your clock. And again, you want to change this depending on where you're at in the world, and you'll see your firmware and there'll be a button to update this if you need to update your transmitter. Now, when you have backup
recordings on your transmitter, you could just click on each recording and you can listen to them. So you'll just click on the recording that you want to listen to, and you can start playing
it and you could skip around to the different markers. So for example, this one
has a lot of markers, and you can skip through them using this button next to the play button. Now it's displaying the
time in the recording, and then time of day underneath that. And if you have markers
they are going to pop up. And one thing that's great
about the RODE Wireless GO II when you have the backup
recording turned on, if there is a dropout, say the receiver signal drops down to zero and you're not getting that transmission, it automatically sets a marker. So you could see in this
recording, I had a lot of dropouts. There must have been
some connectivity issue between the transmitter and receiver. And that's indicating to
me that I need to make sure that I download this backup recording and use the backup recording. And I can see the specific
times at where I had this issue. Now there's no way to pull
all the backup recordings off the transmitter at once. Once you have to go file by file and then click the Export button in the upper right-hand corner. So I'm on Record 00010, and
I click the Export button, and a little dialogue
box is gonna come up. I can rename the file. I could change my settings to
what I need for the export. And then I could click Export. And when you're using a backup recording, you have to do each one
of these independently. There's no way to do them all at once. And that's it for the RODE Central. That's all the functionality
that you have access to. And it is something that you're gonna have to use once in a while, especially when you're
doing backup recordings. So the last section of this video, let's talk about workflow
and using backup recordings. (soft electronic music) So my workflow when working
with the RODE Wireless GO II is that I always keep my backup recording on. And that's just because
if there's any issues, I always know I can go
to my backup recording and salvage it. So I use the backup mode and
the backup mode is the one that allows you to use
the standard quality or broadcast quality. I typically keep it in broadcast quality, just so I know I'm always
getting the best audio. Now, how the backup
function works is basically as soon as you turn on the
transmitter and the receiver, it's gonna start the backup recording and you'll see the REC on the screen. So to make sure that I'm
not just rolling the backup at all times, in between takes, I'll just turn off my receiver. And that basically stops
the backup recording. And if I'm filming someone else and they have the transmitter on, I don't need to ask them to
keep turning it on and off. I know I have seven hours
worth of recording time. So if I'm shooting and I
know these aren't gonna be on for more than seven hours, then I don't really have to
worry about the transmitter going on and off at all times. If I'm behind camera, I'll just make sure that I
turn the receiver on and off and that cuts the backup recording. Now, if I'm filming myself, I would put it in the always mode. And that basically means as soon as I turn on the transmitter, it starts recording a backup recording. And this is better because if
the camera is away from me, say I'm doing a talking scene, and I put the camera over there somewhere, well, I could just flip on my transmitter, look at it and make sure it's turned on. I know it's doing a backup recording, and I know that I'm
always safe with my audio. Now, if I'm shooting solo and I'm just using one transmitter, I'll put it into the merged mode. And if I'm shooting with two transmitters, I'll put it into the split mode. And if I'm using two transmitters, I like to keep it into the backup mode so that when I turn off my receiver, both transmitters stop backup
recordings at the same time. Now, when I'm done with my
shoot, I'll pull up RODE Central. And if it's a client job, then I'll just pull all
the backup recordings. And I just go one by one. I click on the backup recording. I hit Export and I put it into the folder that it needs to go. And unfortunately you have to
do that with every recording. That's one thing that's
kind of frustrating about using the software and
using these backup recordings. There's no way to actually go through and download them all at once. And another frustrating point is there's no way to
activate the backup recording while both the transmitter
and receiver are turned on. You have to use one of those two modes where either you turn off the transmitter or you turn off the receiver. And it would be nice
if there was a function where when both are turned on, I can start a backup
recording at a certain point and then stop it at a certain point. However, that function doesn't exist. So you have to turn them on and off to be able to turn on and
off that backup recording. Now, one other thing
that you just want to do with your workflow is we'll make sure that you erase your transmitter before you go out and shoot again, because there's no way
to erase the transmitter when you're out working on a project. You have to do it on RODE Central. So just make sure that
before you go out and shoot that your devices are fully charged and plug them in and check on RODE Central to make sure that your backup
recording is set up properly. And then also to make sure
there's no backup recordings on the transmitter themselves. And once you're set up, once all the settings save
on the RODE Wireless GO II, so if you're someone who's doing the same
settings over and over, you're really not gonna have
to set these up that often. But if you're someone who's
changing different situations, you'll just want to make sure
to go into your RODE Central and make sure all your
settings are set up properly before you go out and shoot. So next I highly suggest you
check out this video here. It goes through how to
capture better audio and get the best recording
from any situation. I'll see you over there.
