Shooting live music footage with the HVX200-- bass distortion on recording

[Benjamin Cameron]

Please don't rip me apart, I am far from a newbie to the camera. I don't know a whole lot about audio recording, is all. My situation:

 

I shoot live music footage for YouTube, music videos, and general documentation. Recently, I have been shooting many doom/ death metal bands, and the heavy bass distorts on the recording. I use the built-in mic on the camera, not an external mic. I have set the "mic ATT" option to "on", which supposedly addresses the issue, to little avail. While shooting, i ride the audio levels to maintain even input with no peaking. I can't get rid of this problem, and am not sure I can fix it in FCP. Below is a link to my YouTube channel as demonstration. The latest videos are a good example of the problem, the live footage of Anhedonist and Ealdath.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/bennybro...ature=mhee#p/u

 

Any advice would be helpful. I don't need or expect "perfect" sound on this type of video work, but would like to not have this bass distortion in general. I'd also prefer to continue using the on-board mic, if possible.

[ben goldberg]

My Only advice would be to use two cameras. I recently shot a documentary about rock bands in Shanghai and when we shot live performances we would have one camera plugged into the mixer. This is usually near the back . This way you get clean audio. so that camera would get wide shots of the band. Then we had another camera grabbing b-roll of the band playing.

 

Before shooting we would use a slate or clap to sync the two cameras later in post.

 

By doing this you don't sacrifice audio quality, because most of the time, the onboard mic sucks.

[Benjamin Cameron]

youtube link seems to be bad- here is a good one, i hope:

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/bennybrownell?feature=mhee

[Benjamin Cameron]

My Only advice would be to use two cameras. I recently shot a documentary about rock bands in Shanghai and when we shot live performances we would have one camera plugged into the mixer. This is usually near the back . This way you get clean audio. so that camera would get wide shots of the band. Then we had another camera grabbing b-roll of the band playing.

 

Before shooting we would use a slate or clap to sync the two cameras later in post.

 

By doing this you don't sacrifice audio quality, because most of the time, the onboard mic sucks.

ben, thanks for the reply. unfortunately, that's all stuff i would like to be able to do, but cannot. i often shoot in places with no mixing board, or at least no option to record from one. i am also usually the only person responsible for lighting and shooting everything, so 2 cameras just isn't an option. i've done that in the past, though, and what you described is a great way to shoot live music.

[Dino Giammattei]

Any external microphone you can get your hands on and this:

http://www.fullcompass.com/product/305003.html?utm_source=googleps&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=googleps&gclid=COGk3oLJoLgCFYuk4Aodw08Arw