i am using adobe elements 3.0 and am getting to the stage i will add some sound

can anyone advise on a good quality microphone with a lead rather than the little plug in ones

i do see a lot on ebay fairly cheap but want decent results

yours
mrcrow_uk (mrcrow)
manchester

All depends on what sort of sound you want to record and the quality, which costs money.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

i will just put some simple voice narrative on the video with background music from my home hi fi playing at the same time.
thats all i did in the past with a video editing deck set up and it was satisfactory

its just a home video with some personal narrative and music added

thanks

any other advice please if possible

yours

You are best off getting the music into your PC from the CD, either rip it as mp3 or wav. Put on the soundtrack track

For spoken input the audio in on most soundcards isn't sensitive enough for a decent mic, and you will need in addition to the mic, a microphone preamp, or small audio mixer. However, that all might seem overkill for a bit of voiceover.

So can I suggest you look at one of the new USB semi-pro mics (Something like this: Samson Q1U at DV247.COM ) which you can plug directly into a spare USB slot and away you go.

Record your voiceover to a separate audio track and then you can set the levels independently between VO and music. I also think you can keyframe animate audio levels in elements so you can duck the music when you are speaking and bring it back up again when you aren't.

Hope this helps

Premiere Elements has problems with most USB microphones. You will need to record to a separate application in most cases when using a USB Mic.

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Hi Chuck

I agree that with your average off the shelf USB mic which uses windows WDM audio to communicate with apps, you are going to struggle.

However because PE uses ASIO for its audio routing (the same system developed by Steinberg for their Nuendo and Cubase digital audio recording systems, and pretty widely adopted now by many audio and video apps) providing your audio device comes with a decent ASIO driver there isn't a problem. I've just tried my Alesis multimix firewire mixer with PE, and selected the Alesis ASIO driver in the audio hardware preferences, and selected channel 1 of the mixer which I've got a mic plugged into, and all is well.

The samson mic I'm suggesting is designed to interface with DAW software like Cubase, so should be fine with PE. But I'm sure that most decent dealers would allow you to try it on sale or return.

Bestest.

Mark

this is interesting stuff mark and chuck

what i didnt know is that a mic plugs into a usb...instead of the mic socket at the front...

the quality i need wont be high as my old method with a VHS edit deck was to just put a mic into a little mixer and feed it into the audio sockets..
i put the mic next to the CD player for music then took it away now and again to speak some narrative...that was sufficient

if i use this mic what do i do next to get the sound onto a track i can load into PE

sorry for any silly questions but i have never recorded onto a computer any music or voice..

i could play the CD as suggested and 'rip?' it as an mp3 or wav..some hint on how to do this would be helpful

i am using XP pro

i WILL!! learn this stuff eventually

many thanks

geof

thanks a lot and look forward to some extra advice on getting the sound onto tracks that PE can use.

Best to learn a little about iTunes or Windows Media Player. They can both get music off of Cds and convert the files to various formats, WMA, WAV and MP3. There are specific settings in preferences (in both programs) that you can set up to 'Rip' (copy) songs from your CD to the computer in these formats.

Here is a good tutorial on ripping CDs with Media Player 10
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...ip_how_to.aspx

Here are a couple of iTunes tutorials (I prefer iTunes personally)
"How do I have iTunes rip CDs into MP3 format?": Tech Support from Ask Dave Taylor!
Convert iTunes to MP3 Format

You may only need to have a very simple computer microphone that plugs (1/8") into the MIC jack on your computer. That is all I use for doing much of the work I do that requires narration.

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Dell Precision 490; 2 x Xeon 3.0 Dual Core Processors, 4gb RAM, ATI Stealth 512mb Video, X-Fi ExtremeMusic Sound Card, 2 x 250gb SATA II , 1 x 750gb SATA II; Premiere Elements 1-4, Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects 7-CS3, Soundbooth, Photoshop http://muvipix.com

thanks...i am gettting a clearer view of what is involved
i have discussed this with my partner and she favours the simple mic technique with a cable
so we can put the mic to the music source and then to our mouths to do any voice over

when the mic is plugged in and the PE3 is running along in its final edited form...

what would be the method to record that combined microphone input...do i use the media player for that..

this is damn hard for me to understand so please make some allowances..i am an accountant!!

cheers