November 22, 2024
About three years ago I put out a video that discussed making videos on a cell phone. In this post, I am aiming it square at the targets of other digital accordion users, why to do it, and more importantly, why NOT to do it! These things are just my opinions, I’m not saying anyone has to do it my way, if all you have is a cellphone and nothing else, go for it, but my take is that if you are making a video for public consumption and care about how you sound (and if you don’t care, you should!), then do the EASY things to make it sound better!
Since that last video, I’ve made a couple of small improvements and want to take another look at this concept… what are the down sides and what are the advantages?
Let’s look at the BASIC setup that most people are using:
Most people slap their cellphones on top of a cheap tripod and go for it.
The Good:
– its fast and easy
– minimal setup
– minimal editing (maybe in camera trimming and done?)
– no need to sync audio
The Bad:
– The video quality is OK but not great (cellphone video has improved a lot over the last 5 years)
– cellphone mics or on camera mics are the WORST… the audio quality is tinny, low dynamic range and captures in a omni pattern (meaning gets things you do not want!)
– external noise is captured, things like people walking by, the TV turned on in the next room, the neighbor cutting his grass, and the biggest offender IMHO when using a digital accordion like an FR-8X or EVO, your senses are assaulted with the HORRIBLE clacking of the keys. When I see this, I immediately move on to the next video… yes it is that bad for me, I don’t care who is playing, even if it’s me!
Now, if all you are doing is recording yourself to capture and evaluate with, this is the PERFECT tool. If this is a MUSIC VIDEO that you are going to share with the public, don’t… just don’t do it that way.
If you are going to release a video to the public, unless you specifically WANT to show how bad the sound can be, never, ever, EVER use a camera mic to record your digital accordion. Digital accordions have an AMAZING ability to send PERFECT audio out their analog audio outputs, instantly removing any offending external noises, so let’s take advantage of it, I’ll discuss how to do that in a few seconds.
There are 2 ways to do that… wired and wireless. I prefer wireless for 3 reasons:
1- No one can trip over the cables if you are in public.
2 – I am not limited to the distance of that cable, I can walk around.
3 – Even if you are not in public, not having wires dangling from you permits you to walk around without concerns that you’d pull down the tripod, smashing your camera and audio interface if you are not careful, but if it’s just you and the camera in a room at home… go wired and enjoy your amazing sound quality. Pro tip, if you do decide to go wired, tape down the cable to the ground near your tripod to avoid pulling down your setup.
So, what’s the trick? Use an audio interface, and connect your digital accordion’s analog audio output to it. There are tons of audio interfaces out there and what you are looking for are either bus powered (so that the battery from your cellphone powers it), or ones with an external power supply capability. This way you don’t need to look around for a wall plug, just walk up to the best location, plop down the tripod, and you are ready to record some decent audio with your video.
People will counter with “but I don’t want to bother with syncing external audio, I don’t event want to do any external editing because I don’t want to carry a laptop around, then spend hours editing, syncing and then uploading. If anything, I can trim the clip in the phone and send it to YouTube from the phone…”
Using an audio interface, you can do that too… and have QUALITY audio for your music video with near ZERO extra effort!!
Let’s start with a look at my current setup.
For my more advanced setup, there are 3 things that are different, but in reality, all one needs is the audio interface and a stereo cable, and you can have audio quality 100% equal to this setup.
That said, let’s explore my setup, following the path that the sound travels.
Above is my wireless stereo transmitter. I connect this to my FR-8X and the transmitter is held on to my straps using industrial velcro.
If I intend to have any talking on the video, I will add a wireless LAVALIER transmitter. One side is clipped to my neck and the controller clips to my belt. This setup has a mute button on it so I can kill all external audio for a 100% digital signal only from the 8X when I play. This part is not often used and NOT mandatory, but cool to have if you have something you want to say during the recording and still not let it be a source of external (ie: BAD), external audio, just mute it!
Let’s look at the individual components on the cheap little $10 tripod:
– music exits my transmitter and is captured by the receiver
– any vocals exit my lav mic transmitter and are captured by it’s receiver
– one or both go in to the audio interface
– once in the audio interface, they go straight to the cellphone that sees the signals as a 2-channel stereo signal and captured on the same file that becomes your video (your voice is a single mono channel… perfect!).
There is NO audio syncing, the full quality of the digitally captured sound goes in to the audio interface and out to the camera via a (in my case), a $5 mini-USB to USB-C cable.
Let’s look at some audio interface specs. A couple of desirable traits are:
– it’s USB 2.0 bus powered, so it can pull power from your phone
– if not bus powered, has the ability to be powered by an external power source
– it has at least 2 channels, more if you plan on using a more complex multi-channel setup like I do (mine has a capacity of 6 inputs).
– has at least a 48k 24-bit output sound signal
Not very demanding! Did you know that as of the time of this posting, that you can pick up a Behringer U-Phoria 2 channel bus powered audio interface for $35??
This one would be pretty much perfect for most people’s needs. In my case, I am taking advantage of something that I purchased to make recordings in my home studio a few years ago, and as it turns out, it has all the ingredients of being an amazing audio interface for my portable setup.
I am using a Zoom F4 field recorder (they’re sadly not even made anymore!), and while its not primarily designed to be an audio interface, it is one and has a couple of other features that I can take advantage of:
– it can be powered by batteries or an external power source
– it has up to 6 inputs, giving me the ability to have a more complex setup
– it has a 1/4″-20 socket on the bottom to connect to the top of the tripod AND a bracket with a 1/4″-20 screw on top to connect the cellphone stand to.
The Zoom F4 is not primarily designed to work in these kinds of scenarios, but it just works so well and since I already have it, didn’t need to purchase anything else… but that doesn’t mean that this is the only choice… nope! There are options out there for any budget from $35 and up… choose the one that fits your budget and needs… but do your research and just get one!
The below video does demo a point… how much better it SOUNDS to have an audio interface, but now, I made one mistake on it… I was not using the cell phone “pro mode” and so it recorded the video in mono instead of in stereo!
Now, the bad thing was that I didn’t have he above video in stereo, but the good thing is that I made another fast but “tongue in cheek” version that showed a better version, even though the vide was not as good… in this one, you can clearly hear my sister’s chihuahua bark twice (… and it’s marked in the video! I left the door open by mistake but it shows how small things can get on a video and ruin it for you!)… and it shows how much nicer a true stereo sound can make a video.
So… the end of another fine post… enjoy!