Does anybody know of a portable audio recording device ?? Reason I ask is that my camcorder does not have an AV IN socket so I cannot use a bullet cam as I wanted. As I am going to record just using the camcorder mounted on my car I know I am going to suffer horrendous wind noise. I was advised that I could use a seperate recording device to record purely audio and then merge it all later.

I know it sounds like a lot of trouble but otherwise I'll have to buy a new camcorder & bullet cam and then still purchase a seperate mic to record decent sound !!

Any advice appreciated !!

I'm interested in knowing what sort of audio it is you are expecting to record? I mean camcorder on car, car doing some speed, wind noise is what you'd hear with the human ear - let alone through a mic. What sound are you trying to capture?

As for portable recording, you could always consider something like a minidisc recorder

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Lloyd

That's my opinion. If you don't like it I have others

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I just know that the wind noise is going to drown out most of the engine noise as the camcorder will be mounted on a roll bar above the car. If I had a mic I could hide it out of the air, say at the rear of the car and then record the engine note of the exhausts.

Mind you looking at the price of those recorders I might give this idea a miss !! I might as well buy a new camcorder with a AV IN socket !!

There's no where you can hide that mic where it won't pick up a significant amount of wind noise (think what it's like when you're sat in the car with the windows open while driving). You could try reducing it in the post-editing stage but given the signal to noise ratio will be quite small I'd be surprised if you could clean it up much.

Still...never any harm in trying.

Good luck.

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Lloyd

That's my opinion. If you don't like it I have others

System: Apple Macbook Pro 17, and an external Freecom 500GB eSATA drive.
Software: Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 6, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Color, DVD Studio Pro 4, Compressor 3), Sonicfire Pro 4.5
Favourite Resources: Findsounds.com, Free DVD menus, Ken Stone's FCP Page, Wikivid

So you just want to record the sound of the car engine? You can find either car sound effects on the net or from audio effects cd's. Something else you could try is recording the car sound separately in a quiet location and then dub it onto your video in post production. You don't need an expensive audio recorder or more microphones, just use the camcorder to record the scenes on or from the car, and then use it to record your audio. You will be using the camcorder to record the car sounds and someone else will be pulling doughnuts and doing the hand brake turns.

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

I've been looking into this too. I've only just bought a new camcorder, but only now do I realise how important mics are. It doesn't have the plug in slot, so I would need to find a mic that records externally to some form of tape or disc so I can merge it later during editing.

I would mainly be using mics to record voice. Does anyone know any good choices here for this? Preferabal, I'd go for the best quality end I could while I'm forking out.

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In your position I would have a look at the new mics from Audio Technica. In particular the 8035 & 8075 which are both very good value for money. Personally I'm not impressed with Rode mics but, if you've got a bit more to spend, the Sennheiser K6 system is also very good.

As for recorders the Marantz PMD660 and the Edirol R-9 (both of which I own and use regualrly) are very good. The Zoom H4 has some problems with high frequencies apparently and the Fostex is very expensive. I personally wouldn't go down the mini-disc route, only because of the difficulty in transferring the recording to the computer, compared to the ease of CF and SD cards.

In the long run it might be better forking out for a camcorder with a mic-in socket.

If you want a reporters mic I have been very pleased with my shure sm58, well cheap and tough if a teeny bit lacking in treble and detail to my ears.

In set up interviews I use that in combination with a camera mounted short shotgun (sen 416) to get a more live sounding track. I record one on the left channel, the other on the right an then adjust the levels of close and live in the edit to get the right feel.

Dont know if this is the 'proper' thing to do but it works for me.

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Ok, thanks for that, I'll have a look into those.

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My experience with similar recording uses an external mike. I mounted a small dv camcorder on my motorcycle helmet and run the external mike to directly behind the ferring. The sound is about like the rider usually hears, wind and motor sounds, quite realistic. Without the external mike the 80MPH wind noise masks out everything else. Be sure to cover the mike with a foam rubber shield. You are probably looking at a mike right there on your computer that does a fair job, and certainly within anyone's budget.