Topic: Audio for Video - Recorder confusion

[alan278]

I'm a relative newbie to audio and am confused by the options. I've done some research and cannot find the perfect one solution.  Any comments/suggestions welcome.  Thank you in advance...

WHAT I WANT:  very portable recorder to attach (lav) microphone to and "strap on" to subject who can walk around with it. Will use it to sync to video, so needs to be accurate in timing at least.  Would like to use as portable music player as well. May also use sometimes to take feed in from soundboard or with other microphones not attached to persons.  Most options seem to have 60-80 minute record length limitation which I can live with.

OPTIONS:
a) wireless into cam - OK but 1) wireless is sometimes faulty 2) expensive ($450+) 3) I don't get the advantage of using it as a portable music player 4) mini-dv consumer cam audio quality, even with direct feed external mic, is not excellent
b) iriver ihp120/140 - recording glitch problems via mic (what's the real audio quality and timing impact?)
c) archos gmini  - same recording glitches as iriver, plus no mic-input (need preamp - is there one very small & light?)
d) njb3  - too big, plus no mic input?
e) minidisc - the new Hi-MD's are promising, but there is no software yet to take the recorded files and transfer them digitally to the pc and create wav's, i think.  also delayed release to may (in US) i have heard.  also I prefer hard drive models over removable media

[BobW]

sounds like you need an hhb portadat w/ timecode put through a shrink-ray

Both are very hard to find.

good luck !

[Cooker]

how about a portable sony DAT recorder?

[Sean Gallemore]

jb3 too big?  If you get lav mics powered by a battery box, get a preamp built into the battery box, that way you can run line-in on the jb3 and get good levels.

[Terps]

What's "timecode"?

[caymanreview]

What's "timecode"?

something that is writen to a signal, and you use this align different sources, used in the movie biz to align audio and video easily and accuratly

[Kelso]

he doesn't want time code, consumer cam doesn't have tc. The solution you're looking for would be either d) or e), with a separated preamp (and maybe ADC).
IF the cam has a line-in, you could consider a little wireless lavalier system and an external preamp attached to the cam.  I think yo can find cheap ones.

For the sync you haven't much choice: use the good old clap, you can be helped by the sound recorded by the mic on the cam. But you can't lose sync, during the shooting: digital clocks are pretty accurate and that shouldn't be a problem for short periods.

[alan278]

Thank you for the replies.  I may eventually go with a wireless lav system - most of the others (JB3, DAT) are just too big to strap onto a subject of a video.  For now, I am playing with the H120:

I did purchase the iRiver ihp-120 (or H120) to test with.  I found that over 1 hour the .wav file created on the H120 went out-of-sync from the mini-dv recording by 9 frames (1/3 of a second).  The sound quality even with the very cheap lav that came with the H120 was pretty good for voice.  The sound quality for voice was very good with a powered AKG mic plugged into the thing.  I can probably do some work-arounds to deal with the sync issue.
(Note that Minidisc recordings stay in-sync to-the-frame over one hour with mini-dv.)
It was very cool to copy the 1 hour .wav file from the H120 to my hard drive in about 1 minute.

I did not notice any "glitches" in the recording and have not tested music so I don't know how good that would be.

I'd be interested in that shrink-ray thing though...

[nic]

"For the sync you haven't much choice: use the good old clap, you can be helped by the sound recorded by the mic on the cam. But you can't lose sync, during the shooting: digital clocks are pretty accurate and that shouldn't be a problem for short periods."

we ran this setup(because we didnt have acces to a timecode generator) at a DVD test shoot about 1.5 years ago. even for the 5 minute demo, there was significant clock drift between the audio DAT and the DV cams making it impossible to mix...ymmv