I'm trying to put the intro video for my Elise together and as part of that I shot some in-car driving videos with me doing my best Dollar Store James May impression. The footage itself turned out OK-ish, but the sound is horrid. I was using my DJI action cam as it can shoot pretty decent HDR video, but that one doesn't have a connector for an external mic so the "audio" is me trying to shout at the camera over the din in the car.
My regular video camera (older Sony Camcorder) strikes me as being too heavy to suction cup to the windshield or side window.
For those that shoot in-car footage facing you as the host, how do you go about it and get both decent sound and video quality? I have a few external mics and don't mind buying a decent, smaller camera that's easier to mount, as long as I can hook up an external mic. Plus, I probably need a decent but unobtrusive camera mount for something that's a bit heavier than an action cam.
I guess one potential option might be to get a better phone mount and a phone with more storage capacity so I can use that for B-roll and "presenter yakking while driving" type shots.
Any suggestions? I'm pretty new to this whole video thing, but I do prefer to get better than "holding up my phone on a selfie stick while driving" quality.
GoPro (literally the OG, a GoPro 1) in the hard case with the sound holes with some cotton balls shoved in. It's mediocre.
Yi! 4K (GoPro knockoff) mounted on the back of the windshield has been pretty good.
If you can get a camera that takes an external mic that should be simple and do the trick for you. The other option is to pick up a dedicated audio recorder and then put the audio and video together when you edit things. This also allows you to get more creative with mic placement for getting car sounds as it can be in a completely different spot to the camera (think mic taped to bumper picking up exhaust note while camera records in car). I've bought the audio recorder but haven't actually gotten around to trying it out.
I'm sure others will chime in with better advise.
Some of my videos have skipped trying to do sync-sound at all, and just used a voiceover that I record separately.
Too bad about the lack of external mic port, because step 1 is "get an external mic"
Javelin (Forum Supporter) said:
GoPro (literally the OG, a GoPro 1) in the hard case with the sound holes with some cotton balls shoved in. It's mediocre.
I've done basically the same thing using mic muffler foam, if you mount your camera outside it reduces wind noise from "overwhelming" to "prominent but you can hear other things"
I'm using Gen2 but they're pretty similar to Gen1
Thanks for all the feedback.
I'm generally very happy with my DJI Osmo Action camera and am actually plan to buy a second one if they're ever back in stock. For use outside the car I have a foam cover that works very well to reduce wind noise - used that on a couple of my motorcycle vidoes.
The specific issue I was running into was trying to use the camera in the car and basically record my impressions as I was driving. The Elise is not a quiet car inside, and that showed the limitations of the built in microphones.
Doing a little more "research" on Youtube last night and it turns out that there is a microphone adapter available for these cameras, plus you can get a case that has a couple of cold shoes on it. Hopefully that should allow me to outfit the camera with a microphone - the microphone adapter actually has dual 3.5mm connectors, so I might be able to record of a lavalier microphone and use the other microphone to capture some background noise.
We get more complaints about sound quality than any thing else. People get really snotty about it even if it's just a chalk and talk session. We've had our most consistent luck with Rode wireless mics. It's still challenging at times to deal wtih narration when driving with the top down, I think Travis depends on multiple mics (cameras plus the Rodes) to get something that's clean.
I did the "one channel for ambient noise, one channel for the intercom" technique for the Targa Newfoundland. The ambient was just a lavalier stashed inside. It turned out pretty well with some mixing. I'm pretty sure that's how this was done. In this case, the "narration" was recorded on a Peltor rally intercom, the same way that Top Gear/Grand Tour does it when they're wearing helmets.
Totally gratuitous example:
Here's an example of standup narration and in-car done with a combination of faux-pro cameras and the Rode mics. I'll ask Travis later today which ones end up being more useful.
I use a gopro hero 3 /4 with an external microphone that is a knock brand of accessories for the gopro.
It's lapel sized and after the first one lost its foam, I purchased a second one and ziptied the foam over the the microphone.
This is basically just a walk around video using said microphone that also showcases its ability to pick up other noises as well. Works decently for being a cheap set up.
Depending on how much you want to spend, a good Shotgun mic (sometimes called Line mics) offer a very directional pattern. They're used frequently in filming TV and movie productions. They're the long skinny fuzzy mics on booms that they hang just out of the frame. They're good for only getting the sound immediately in front of itself.
Inexpensive versions are available for exactly what you're doing like this one for $40
There are two types; condenser and dynamic. Condensers are highly sensitive capacitance-driven units and will be better at picking up sound from all directions. Their sound rejection comes from the shape of the shotgun itself. A Dynamic mic works basically like a reverse speaker where sound moves a diaphragm over a magnet and coil and it's therefore more sensitive to sounds directly in front of it, but overall less sensitive in general. Think of a typical Dynamic mic like you might use for Karaoke. You kinda have to keep it really close to your mouth for it to pick up sound. The further away you are, you get exponentially less sound sensitivity.
Either one will work for your application, but I would lean toward a condenser style. It will pick up a bit more noise from the sides than a dynamic, but the trade off is that it will be more sensitive to your voice when sitting on a dashboard or on the camera while still rejecting most of the sound from the sides.
The mic on your camera is a condenser mounted on the face of the camera. It is picking up everything it can from all directions, including vibes that are transmitted into the camera from the mount. You might experiment with sticking a toilet paper tube or piece of PVC tubing over the mic and pointing it toward your mouth to make your own condenser shotgun.
Here ya go. The mic on your camera acts like an omnidirectional. The shotgun focuses nearly all of its polar pattern where it's pointed.
