Tips on recording decent video clips?

Vibetronic

afternoon all. I'm trying to record some decent video clips for my site/FB page etc, and was wondering how I could improve them. At the moment I've got a Zoom Q3 HD recorder, which can get decent results, but I can't see what I'm recording on it (i.e. no self-view), and the camera on my iPhone 7, which is really good quality and easy to record on. My main issue is that I have to crank everything up very loud to capture the audio decently, and even then it still picks up the pick/string noises, which I don't like much. I did think about recording the audio in Logic and syncing this with the video, but this seems really fiddly...any ideas?

Danny1969

iPhone 7 is fine for the video as long as the lighting is decent but you need to forget capturing the audio from the built in mic, that will always sound shite as it's in line with a cheap compressor and optimised for speech

I would capture the audio using a close mic on the guitar or a line out if it's a Helix or something and record the audio on a laptop.

Then you line up the good audio and video in a program like MovieMaker or iMovie .... i used to do a few, video quality on this is crap cos it was a cheap phone but the audio is fine as recorded on the computer then lined up




 

Vibetronic

Danny1969 said:

iPhone 7 is fine for the video as long as the lighting is decent but you need to forget capturing the audio from the built in mic, that will always sound shite as it's in line with a cheap compressor and optimised for speech

I would capture the audio using a close mic on the guitar or a line out if it's a Helix or something and record the audio on a laptop.

Then you line up the good audio and video in a program like MovieMaker or iMovie .... i used to do a few, video quality on this is crap cos it was a cheap phone but the audio is fine as recorded on the computer then lined up




 

thanks Danny. Yep, that's the sort of sound quality I want. I've got no idea how to do it in iMovie, but I've got it on my Mac so will give that a go; is it relatively straightforward? 

Didn't know that about the iPhone mic. I've tried before (see  ), but had to turn everything up super-loud and it sounded really clunky.

Danny1969

Ha ha , that's a mental technique !! impressive !

Yeah you could get the audio much better than that, there's a shed load of room noise which distracts from the playing. 

To help you line up the audio with the video afterwards always clap you hand before you start. Then you load the video track and audio track onto your editing timeline with both the good audio and shit audio being heard. Slide one left or right in relation to the other until the handclap aligns bang on, slightly out will sound like slapback delay, move it until it's back on. Once it is mute the audio on the video track and process the file

Vibetronic

Danny1969 said:

Ha ha , that's a mental technique !! impressive !

Yeah you could get the audio much better than that, there's a shed load of room noise which distracts from the playing. 

To help you line up the audio with the video afterwards always clap you hand before you start. Then you load the video track and audio track onto your editing timeline with both the good audio and shit audio being heard. Slide one left or right in relation to the other until the handclap aligns bang on, slightly out will sound like slapback delay, move it until it's back on. Once it is mute the audio on the video track and process the file

that's a great idea, thanks! I am now slightly wondering why I hadn't thought of doing something like that, but that's precisely why I posted  

I did try recording something again earlier, just louder, and it came out the same (plus with a cat running around...!), so will give this a go with separate audio in the next few days. It'll be an AX8 directly in so should hopefully sound a lot cleaner. 

thanks again