Hey,

Im filming a small short this weekend and as money is very short i bought a £20 camcorder condenser mic from Maplins thinking anything has got to be better than the on-board piece of turd on my camera.

In short, the sound is much better but instead of a whiny motor noise from the camera i am now faced with a low hum which i assume is interference as the cable is not balanced.

I am using the mic to record dialogue which is all indoors and the only thing i can think of to reduce this hum to a minimal is to place the mic as close to the actor(s) as possible without it being in shot.

Can anyone offer any further advice as to how i can minimise this annoying hum noise??

Thank you.

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http://www.youtube.com/chameleonmedia

I'm not an expert in audio but in 'professional' mic's, they have XLR connectors and if I understand this correctly, the X is for earth, the L is for left channel and the R is for right channel? What you seem to be picking up is a sound at 50hz, now correct me if I'm wrong anyone, and that is called mains hum. Maybe if you could 'earth' your mic some way it might reduce it or get rid of it, it can also be gotten rid of in post production as it is a recognised sound with a recognised frequency. Most (good) audio and video editing app's have filters to get rid of that sound.

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

Thanks, XLR is always best as its balanced but i dont have the money for a better cam or solid state audio recorder at the moment.

You are right about the noise, i forgot the cam was connected with a mains adapter at the time and that was causing the noise. It just means ill have to shoot without the mains and have plenty of batteries handy.

Problem solved!

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http://www.youtube.com/chameleonmedia

My suggestion is to record a piece of "room sound" as often as possible. Without moving the camera, mic or anything else, record a couple of minutes of "nothing". If you just have the "hum" and it's a steady hum, you can sometimes phase-invert it and use this to "subtract" the hum from the voice track.

It does sound like mains hum though.

"You hum it, and I'll find the ground loop" as they say in the music business.