Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here with some options?

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Ixnay
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Joined: May 13 2015

Video shoot is an instructional video with one woman to be miked. We plan to shoot with two cameras - not sure what yet, probably GH3s.
Last time I did this I came very close to cocking it up for reasons I'll talk about below if you are interested, so this time I want to get it right. Client is my wife so I potentially stand to lose more than my job here if it goes tits up.

Gear owned/available to us:

Microphones:
Rode NTG-2 plus boom pole
Sennheiser G3 lavalier radio mic

Recording devices:
Olympus LS-10
Tascam DR-70-D
Sony full size minidisc deck

Mixer:
Tapco (by Mackie) 6306

Plan A:
Both mics into mixer, panned hard left and right > tape output into Olympus recorder, and main outputs into cameras.
We have stereo signal to both cameras and a backup.
Disadvantages? None really except the introduction of a cheap mixer into the proceedings.

Plan B:
Both mics into Tascam - which is in itself a recording device - set to 48k/16 bit. Then use the single camera out socket to feed both cameras with a passive splitter.

Then Plan C:
Both mics into mixer - Lav mic only sent out to both cameras and Rode and Lav sent only the Olympus recorder as stereo for backup.
Advantages of this: cameras just have the one audio channel to deal with in the edit.

What you reckon? Last time I did this I used a mixer and fed a mixed combination of shotgun and lav mic to both cameras. At some point in the shoot the preamps of one of the cameras went rogue leaving us with only one sound source, and we did not use both cameras in all takes = pain. So theres that.
Any thoughts from the experts appreciated.
Some of you may be saying - you are an idiot - its a commercial project - get a pro in. And you may be right, but it was very close to being righlast time and I have learned a lot since then. And we are on a budget (of course)
So while I would not call myself an audio pro - I figure I can do it properly this time.
Thanks
J

RayL
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Joined: Mar 31 1999
Re: Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here ...

Why bother feeding the cameras with your external mics? As long as the cameras have got internal mics to act as sync sources, record your main mics on whichever sound recorder you fancy and sync everything together at the edit. It saves a lot of faffing about and running cables to cameras, etc.

Barry Hunter
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Joined: Nov 30 2001
Re: Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here ...

Depending on what you are doing, see if you can leave everything running, this will save re-synching lots of times, if you have a decent NLE this shouldn`t be a problem!

Barry Hunter videos4all.org

Ixnay
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Joined: May 13 2015
Re: Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here ...

I'll speak to Kathy, our editor about this. Last time we shot with two cameras over two days and had lots of takes. It made sense to have all audio in camera. This time it should be easier so maybe put it together in post would be better. The main thing is that its recorded in at least two places.

John Willett
John Willett's picture
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Joined: Jun 1 2001
Re: Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here ...

Personally I would master at 24-bit as it will give you more flexibility in post - only go to 16-bit for the final edited copy.

John
 
A picture tells a thousand words, but sound tells a thousand pictures.

Ixnay
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Joined: May 13 2015
Re: Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here ...

Good call John, thanks. I had been thinking about that - this means that I have to use the audio from Tascam as cameras only capture at 16 bit I think. We have quite a noisy room so will have to do a fair bit of noise removal and ever some deverb afterwards so all the extra bits should help there.
On that subject, any advantage really in going 96k instead of 48 do you think?

DAVE M
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Joined: May 17 1999
Re: Recording audio for a video shoot - help me out here ...

take time to shoot t properly to avoid fixing stuff in post.

if you plan to use post to fix issues, it generally means that you aren't making a good enough recording.