The YouTube clip below begins with two clips from Carlos Del Junco's Friday night performance on Beale Street at the IBC. I was standing quite close to where the person with the camera was. The sound on the two clips bears no resemblance to what I heard. If you judged Carlos from these two clips, he had a thin, tinny, pinched sound. In fact, he had just the reverse. So the lesson here is clear: anytime we judge players on the basis of YouTube videos posted here, we're judging on the basis of problematic evidence. There's no good replacement for seeing players live, and the best players potentially suffer the most for the failure of the technologies we use to present their performances to those who weren't at the gig:
I have been saying this day one Adam. The mics on the basic hand held video consumer grade cameras are terrible. You can now get a great image but the mic is still super bad. This is why I rarely comment on peoples videos. On my videos I record with my studio gear and then match them up and mute the video mic. This is a big pain thus I don't do much video posting. I much prefer to hear a good sound and not see the performance vs. see and hear the performance and the sound is terrible. It was the same back when local public access tv was popular. Bands sounded so bad. I would say before we started to go out and see the bands live because the sound you are going to hear is not what it really is sounding like. Walter
here is a great example of a bad representation via the cheap video mic and a pretty decent example with high quality gear with my mentor Louisiana Red
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
mediocre recording devices being used in less than ideal conditions going to be played back thru mediocre computer speakers.... you cant expect an accurate representation.
There are many variables to consider when recording and watching/listening to videos on YouTube-if you are using a Flip slide HD,then you have a built in,wide range,stereo,omni directional microphone. All the Flip HD's use built in,wide range,stereo mics. What audio source are you listening on? I use my PC,with stereo speakers,and most of the videos sound pretty good to me. It's a live performance with an audience most people are recording-again-many variables-venue size,audience noise-where is the performance being recorded from? You can't stand directly in front of a PA speaker or and amplifier and expect great results. In the end,you need some sort of knowledge as far as where to set up the camera for the ultimate sound.
What you see is often not what you get with Youtube ie the sight is often let down by the sound. I agree with Walter ie the dinky mic in a video camera is not going to give the best sound. Some situations ie live recording in a large venue with most consumer gear is not going to change easily.
However we do see Youtubes that are really professional in both sight & sound & I presume they use separate recording of sound and then remove the video sound and synch the recorded sound to the video using some editing suite?
I have a Sony Bloggie ie a HD flip cammera with a built in mic. Plus I have a H2 Zoom Recorder. I have not utilised the both together as I am unfamiliar with what editing software to get that will enable this to happen? The H2 Zoom produces great MP3s which via Audacity can have me uploading something in minutes.
Incidentally my PCs speakers are pretty good & produce more than enough volume and perfect clarity to faithfully reproduce quality sound or indeed the average thin tinny sound that is heard on most home made or audience made youtubes. My Laptop speakers are yuk!
My youtubes are well and truly in the category of being thin & tinny and very amateurish. I plan on taking it a step further but am somewhat perplexed as to what editing software to get that will give me this. Any suggestions? If the software is available as a free download even better?
Last Edited by on Feb 20, 2011 12:41 PM
Very pleasing, to my ear, to hear Carey Bells phrasing...wow!
And is that a Spherodyne w/vc? very cool dynamic sound.
btw ...is there a reasonably cheap wireless mic(for the PA board)unit? I'm not an expert, just heard this the other day. I was asking a pro friend of mine how he does it. The wireless to the board is a great asset for capturing the full spectrum. Audio simultaneously being sent to the audio/video camera from the board....a much better balance can be achieved. But not cheap, boo hoo). It boils down to how much jingle you have in your pocket. (all I have is a nickel and a nail) And how badly you want to capture the event...accurately. I haven't googled wireless mics for the..board-to-camera, and have practically givin up on doing it with my Flip. It's terribly frustrating. I'm just plain cheap. But....now that I have my latest amp, I'm wondering the value, of being that someone who goes out and records, in order to catalog historical events. Where's the satisfaction? I imagine the 'buy in' is out of the ballpark. Maybe someone on this forum can elaborate on the cost....? tanks.
---------- Why is it that we all just can't get along?<
Last Edited by on Feb 20, 2011 1:30 PM
I tend to cringe at virtually every youtube video I see of my band because the sound is often tiny or unbalanced. it often depends on as has been said so many things. quality of the mic. position of the mic... we are a 6 person vocal band so often if the person filming is not in the middle you can mostly only hear whoever they are standing right in front of heh ---------- http://www.musicalblades.com
Aussiesucker: Yes all good youtube videos have a different mic set up than what you see with the basic hand held video camera of today. When I do videos I record the audio on my studio gear and then match it up with the video. I mute the camera audio using the windows movie maker that came on my computer. the sound is good IMO but a real pain to sync up thus I don't do many videos. Here are a couple examples. Walter
this one was done in my old studio (12'x12')
this one was done in my new studio. that is the IBC band winner sean carney on guitar. the sound quality here is a bit worse IMO because I had a PA speaker going, both guitars in the same amp, and just hit record and let things go.
one live in a club with hand held. the vocals/harp and basically the whole sound really suffers with those video camera mics. I actually kind of like the funky quality of this one. The sound reminds of how it sounded out in the back alleys of clubs that I frequented before I was old enough to legally get in. Often times the performers would come out to them on their breaks to smoke and piss and would often take me in with them.
here is one with just a hand held camera
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
Thanks Walter big differences in sound but all good vids of good songs well played. I guess the sync of sound to vid can be a real pain especially when lip syncing of songs. Harp/ mic in cupped hand wouldn't be as critical? Will check out the Windows Movie Maker but I'm just a bit stone age with lots of this technology.
Cameras don't typically do a great job of capturing a player's tone. That sounds like a really weird sounding room. The bass is booming. I wonder what the sound guy was doing. The other harp players didn't sound bad in comparison. How did they sound in comparison at the event?
The biggest variable to consider like camera placement. Last year, I picked up a cheap Flip Mino HD. It does a passable job of capturing audio, but it isn't a good audio recorder like a Zoom H2.
I recorded a bunch of performances at a jam to hear the differences in some amps and to see if I was making any progress on stage.
I found that placing the camera about 15 to 20 feet away from the stage worked well. Unfortunately, with some cameras, that really limits the video that can be captured. The volume of the band makes a difference, too.
I've pretty much stopped shooting video, because some performers really don't dig it when some crappy video is stuck up on youtube.
I see a lot of live music and quite often the sound is not great. It sometimes happens in the best sounding rooms.
When I went to Hummel's most recent harp blowouts at Yoshi's (normally a great sounding room), the bass was booming, the vocals were't high enough in the mix and some of the harp players couldn't be heard through the house. The sound person wasn't paying attention.
@Aussiesucker: i also have a zoom h2, and have made a number of videos by combining the h2 audio with the separate video source. it can be a pain in the neck to get things to line up just right, but you get *much* better results. i can't advise you on software to use, because i'm on linux, and you probably are not. if you're going to do this, you probably want to record in wav format (which you probably ought to do anyway), to avoid multiple transcoding steps and their attendant audio degradation.
incidentally, zoom recently came out with the q3hd, which offers hd resolution video with the same audio internals/mics as their audio recorders. got one for xmas. very nice.
