Good Audio for Digital Video

Great looking video is bad video if it sounds terrible. People often forget about audio when shooting video. The good news is that digital video cameras can record CD-quality sound. So just start shooting and the audio is taken care of, right? Not quite.

A few tips to ensure you capture good audio:

Use the zoom sparingly. Get close enough to your subjects so that the video camera's microphone can pick them up loud and clear.

Have your subjects speak up and face the camcorder.

Avoid noisy environments, if possible.

Turn off or silence all unnecessary noise — televisions, radios, air conditioning, etc.

Point the camcorder away from noise. Try to keep noisy traffic, machinery, kids and other rowdiness behind the video camera.

Be careful of white noise. The DV camera's microphones will pick up things you might not notice. If you are shooting someone cooking in a kitchen and are standing next to the refrigerator you might find that the low hum from the refrigerator is a loud roar in the final video.

Avoid shooting outside on windy days. Wind on the mics is very loud and it's tough to minimize on consumer digital video cameras.

Keep yourself quiet! Sometimes the camera person forgets that they're the closest thing to the camcorder. Everything you do is likely to be heard in your video.