Why YOU Should (& Shouldn't) Record Your Audio Externally (& How)

so are you team record externally or are you team record in camera let us all know what you prefer and why down in the comments below so while i have been vacillating between the two for a little while now this video is all about recording externally so first we'll talk about three benefits of recording externally and three cons of recording externally i'll show you three different setups that i use to record audio and then we'll talk about all of the post-production workflows to make sure that your audio syncs up with your video seamlessly so first off what are the benefits of recording externally the most obvious one is you have a wider range of available equipment specifically microphones so recording externally can take a whole bunch of different forms but you are not constrained by your camera's input if your camera only has a 3.5 millimeter input jack but you want to use something like a large diaphragm condenser which has an xlr output instead of going through all the rigmarole of having to get all these adapters and everything to output that into your camera just recording externally and then syncing it in post can be a significantly easier task and it opens you up to a variety of different kinds of microphones in a variety of different use cases you're not just limited to large diaphragm condensers or shotguns or lavalier microphones and in fact we'll get into my setups in just a little bit but that leads to the second benefit and that is potentially better audio quality so regardless of the mic that you choose to use your audio quality is really constrained by your weakest piece of equipment and in many of our cases the worst sounding piece of equipment in our audio chain is our camera's preamp meaning we could have all the most expensive high quality equipment in the world but the second that we output it into our camera that's where the degradation of audio occurs so for a quick example we can use my cad e100sx so this is a large diaphragm condenser microphone and right now it is running into my zoom f3 which is providing phantom power to it then the zoom f3 is outputting its signal into my sony zve10 and so the audio that you're hearing right now is the cad e100sx being recorded by the zoom f3 and the audio that you are hearing now is the cad e100s going into the zoom f3 and then being output into my sony xv e10 so yeah clearly there is some kind of difference going on here and while that might not be the most important thing for you when it comes to audio quality it definitely makes a difference and the third benefit in my opinion to recording externally is reliability now on camera microphone options have come like a long way in the last even five years we have better sounding smaller mics that fit on top of our cold shoes and we have a plethora of wireless solutions and while the technology is really great sometimes those solutions aren't as reliable as a dedicated recorder especially if you are in a situation where you absolutely need to capture the audio so say for example you are shooting a wedding and you have your audio running into your main camera and your secondary camera is just shooting some b-roll on a wide shot if for any reason your main camera overheats turns off battery runs out you're missing recording critical audio but if you are recording externally you have that extra redundancy to always fall back on that audio track now while all of these things in my opinion are compelling reasons to record your audio externally there are a bunch of reasons why you might not want to do so the first is it can get expensive when we're talking about buying an on-camera microphone which you can get a decent one somewhere within the 100 to 200 range and then we talk about some of the external recording setups that i happen to use which can get you upwards of five or six or seven hundred dollars these might not be feasible options depending on your production budget the second con is its usability there is something to be said about being able to plug in a microphone directly to your camera throw it on a selfie stick and go out and shoot a really awesome vlog it's another thing to first mic yourself up remember to hit record and then go out and shoot your vlog and even so that particular external recording setup might not be the optimal setup for another environment that you could be shooting in i mean i am not going to take my large diaphragm condenser out of any place except the studio and the third reason why you might not want to record externally is it increases your post-production workflow so when you record externally obviously you have a separate audio file of which you then need to import into your editing software maybe add some post-production effects to it and make sure it's all synced correctly before you export your video if you are recording directly in camera yeah you don't have to worry about that right because your audio file is already baked in so it's a much more streamlined editing process just to have that audio file and video file combined and i'll be honest it is one of the reasons why i had and sometimes still do record in camera especially if i know that i will be shooting somewhere outside or in an environment with some inherent background noise where you might not be able to differentiate between audio quality okay so now that we've talked about why you might want to record externally and why you might not want to record externally let me run you through some of my external recording setups the first one you are listening to right now and you have been listening to for the entire duration of this video and that is a large diaphragm condenser running into a usb interface being recorded directly in my digital audio workstation on my computer specifically i am using the lui ltc 440 pure which is running into my yamaha ag03 interface and i am recording this in adobe audition this particular mic runs about 270 the interface is about like 160 and when you factor in things like cable and mic stand and things like that you're looking at about maybe a 500 investment that being said there are a bunch of more affordable mics out there that could sound just as good or you could be using a usb mic yourself this setup is my go-to combination for recording my professional voiceovers and it works in the space and environment because i never take it out and i never move it so in my workflow i am able to keep all of my levels and settings exactly where they are i'm able to keep my mic placement exactly where i like it i conveniently have my audio recording saved as a wav file directly on my computer and if i need to record any pickup lines or extra audio i can do that pretty much immediately so this kind of setup might be ideal if you produce talking head videos if you shoot in the same location if you are a streamer or a gamer and or if you want to use your audio recording setup for other purposes okay set up number two and what if i'm recording some place that is less than ideal with a lot of hard surfaces like my dining room which opens up into my living room well then i will probably record on one of my newer setups which is the cinco mic d2 going into my zoom f3 uh recorder the cinco mic d2 is about 250 and the zoom f3 which was just released a couple weeks ago is about 350. so again you're looking at something upwards of six to seven hundred dollars but what's kind of nice is that this setup is super portable i have the whole thing on a manfrotto pixie and both units are mounted on a yulonzi ball head tripod so this is something that i can easily take around and the directionality of the shotgun microphone helps reject a lot of the extra noise that happens to be down here in my living space okay so now we're outside and the benefit of recording externally is that you can get a fire distance away from your camera and not worry about picking up your audio with something that is i think right now we're about 25 feet away and so i'm not recording on anything special this is the rode smartlav plus plugged directly into my smartphone um and i'm recording an app called rec forge2 and so this is just an example to show you that you don't necessarily need to have a super expensive rig to capture high quality audio which you can then sink and post all right i gotta go back inside find my boy cooper who has yeah run up somewhere let's jump back in my studio so now that we've talked about three different setups that you could be using to record your audio externally let's talk about what happens next once you're done and you have to edit it in post so one of the great things is that if you are recording your audio digitally in a daw da or digital audio workstation that's like a software program like adobe audition or reaper or pro tools or if you want something free that's audacity you are able to record your audio on your computer clean it up add a little bit of post processing and then be ready to go right into your video editing software and then once you get it into your video editing software of your choice now you have to sync your audio and in the professional world there is something called time code that you can embed in certain audio recorders and certain cameras where each device records a specific time information that they then use to sync both of those files up in post but if you're like me and you're using uh consumer or prosumer equipment that's not really a viable option for a lot of us but one of the exciting things is that in a lot of modern video editing software you can have your program sync your audio and video for you in my case i use davinci resolve and before i drop my media into my timeline i go to this drop down menu and i select auto sync based on waveform and then your software takes your two files and lines them up based on their waveforms so in order to do this you do need a couple things you do need to record a clean audio track for your audio recording but you also need to record some kind of audio track in your camera because the software will rely on your camera's baked in audio as the reference audio to sync your external recording to but if your editing software doesn't have this feature you can always go the old school route of dropping your audio into your timeline and then manually sliding it to find where it syncs up a couple tips when doing this i always clap at the beginning of my videos and that is like a carryover of the clapper boards that you might see in an old movie right where you have some kind of on-screen image that coincides to a distinctive sound in your waveform but also you can just take your audio track and drag it back and forth until you hear your track and the baked in track kind of cancel each other out okay so are you team okay so are you team record externally or then you know those tracks are pretty much in sync one other tip that might help you in this process is to not drag your video file along the timeline but drag your audio file along the timeline to get it to line up and that's because in some video editing software when you drag your video file it steps incrementally based on frames whereas an audio only file doesn't have those same kind of frame constraints and so it's able to slide a little bit more accurately than having to conform to a 24 frames per second or a 30 frames per second timeline so that is my entire process for recording audio externally and then utilizing it in my video content hopefully this has helped you if you're on the fence or if you're looking to up your audio game by recording externally as always if you have any questions leave them down in the comments below or if you have your own tip for recording externally feel free to drop it down in the comments thanks for watching and we'll talk again real soon

Channel: Wayne RECs

Views: 15,771

Keywords: Vlog, Content Creation, Connection, Sony ZVE-10, Better Audio, Good Audio, Best Microphone, Audio Tips For YouTube, How to record separate audio, Zoom F3, External Audio, External Recording, How to Sync Audio

Id: enwG5iqk8SU

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2022