Topic: stereo mics for camcorder mount?

[sunjan]

Hi all,

A friend of mine films concerts (open, handheld at stagelip) with a Panasonic HPX170. It has a built-in stereo mic and 2 x XLR with P48.
Now she bought a Rode NTG-1 shotgun, which is mono.
AFAIK, when connecting the mic to one XLR jack, the camera splits the signal to both channels, to emulate some kind of stereo.

I told her that she the sound will still just be mono, and that it was a bad idea to go for the NTG-1. But she is pretty clueless about the difference.

To rectify the mistake, is it a good idea to pick up another NTG-1 and run two mono shotguns on one camera to achieve stereo?
In that case, how should they be mounted? ORTF on a bar, or just pointed straight forward?

Or is it a dumb idea to use shotguns for concert recordings in the first place?
If I lend her my AT853's, would they give a better stereo image and overall sound, bar mounted on the camera?

[Roving Sign]

there are several models of stereo shotguns made by AT and Sony...

[sunjan]

there are several models of stereo shotguns made by AT and Sony...

That's true... But I read somewhere that shotguns for video actually are more meant for speech, and they won't capture venue ambience as well, especially if you use it at stagelip. Or is this exaggerated?

I'm supposed to advise her what to do in the current situation. Ditch the NTG-1, and buy smth else? In that case, which mic configuration would be most suitable? A stereo shotgun, or two separate mics mounted on a bar? Omnis or cards?

[Red Boink]

Shotguns aren't a good choice for recording a musical source imho, and stereo isn't a good idea for a moving camera.  The shift in the audio stage caused by a stereo mic moving through the sound field is very disorientating.  Better to capture the audio separately using the methods you may read about here on tapersection.  On camera mics are usually relegated to picking up Background, that's about it.

Yep,

John

[attheshow]

While I'm no expert on shooting video, I would expect that unless the camera is stationary, there's no point to having a stereo mic. The audio field will be all over the place. This can be very distracting as I've found with recordings I made while wearing cardioid mics. I've gotten some acceptable pulls from the built in mics  on my Digital8 camcorder, but those were all from far away with little movement. Shotgun doesn't make much sense either as most of the sound isn't going to be coming from where you are aiming the camera. Omnis would make more sense to me on a camera handheld at stage lip. But really, for the best sound, you'll want separate audio and video sources.