I bought a monopod for a camera, mounted the microphone on it and used it as my boom mike. After some teething troubles (I unwrapped the cable from arround the metal tube because I'm sure it was causing interference) it worked quite well.
Despite the suspension the mic still picks up the scrapes and squeaks as I shift the boom, and clinks as the cable waves into things, so I'm learning the art of holding it perfectly still for a whole take.
1 comment:
Looks good. Hope it's light enough to hold for a length of time.
Rather than wrapping the cable round, you could use re-usable cable ties, either the nylon type or the fabric and velcro. I'd probably go with the fabric and velcro type, so making it easier to set-up and take-down.
As for it causing interference, maybe. Were the results better when the cable wasn't wrapped around the boom?
Also, did you have the 100Hz HPF on when you were recording?
Now here's something odd about the microphone. It's a mono mic (there's also a stereo version which looks different). Yet the signal is transmitted via a stereo jack.
Rather than the output being balanced (which would be nice and could make use of the "stereo" connections), it seems that the same mono signal is output on two of the tip-ring-sleeve signals, ground being the other signal.
A balanced transmission would have the audio signal + the same signal but inverted + ground, making it more resistant to interference.
Looks like the videomic uses the stereo plug solely to make it easier to plug into the consumer video cameras.
That leaves a few ideas:
1) Convert to balanced near the microphone (i.e. at the mic end of the boom), use a balanced cable, then convert back to unbalanced for input for the video camera. Seems a pain to do that and it'd make the boom head heavier.
2) You could take advantage of the fact that it's mono and have another mic being recorded on the other channel. Means that you'd have the Rode Videomic with the same cables, but convert to a mono jack near the video camera input. Use an additional mic with a mono jack (or convert to a mono jack). Then combine both (preferably using a small mixer, but if you're lucky with the sound levels, maybe just a two-mono-into-one-stereo adapter would do. Means that you'd have a mono left and a mono right being recorded. But face it, using the video mic on it's own, you only get a mono signal, just doubled up to left and right channels.
This assumes I'm right about the Videomic's output being unbalanced. Personally I'd prefer balanced connections but that'd take some more planning to get right.
Post a Comment