Microphone Recommendation for Video

[infopreneur]

Hi,

I am shooting videos and using a little tieclip Sony external mic (cheap - I think it was $30 or something.)

I've had a few comments that the audio sounds a little "lispy" and I think this might be due to the mic.

Can someone give me a recommendation for a decent quality external mic that I can plug into my digital videocamera?

I don't really want to spend $900 on a lavalier, then a bunch more on condensers, etc. I just need a decent mid-range solution that is pretty much "plug and play."

Thanks!

Mike

[lakshaybehl]

Try a bluetooth solution from Plantronics. Works well for me.

[John M Kane]

If your might doesn't have a wind screen foam piece on the mic you have now to cut down on noise from your breathing, try wrapping some foam or a layer or two of tissue.

Simply moving the mic against your shirt could be causing issues.

Getting any kind of mic onto a stand isolated from your movements should help some but, you still may need a better one.

If you have a radio shack store near you why not see if they would allow you to bring you camera in to do some quick test shots to see which works best.

Frank Bruno or Josh Anderson might speak up or PM them.

[TimGross]

I'd think the $30 Sony Tieclip whould work all right, but if not, I've tried the basic Radio Shack model (which was under $30) and it worked well for me, you might want to start there.

The other thing to test would be positioning of where you clip the mic to see if that makes a difference. I don't think the person talking about wind screens understood you're talking about a clip-on mic... A windscreen is for when you're talking directly into a mic a few inches from your face, a clip-on has nothing to do with that.

Start with the Radio Shack one (easily returnable if there's no improvement) and take it from there, good luck.

One more thing: Any "lispy" quality is increased when you compress audio, so if you're taking an audio track and reducing the file size or trying to level the highs and lows using compression, the lispiness (I don't know if that's a word) increases.

[infopreneur]

So would the process of converting from a big avi to flv be potentially causing this issue?

Thanks,

Mike

[TimGross]

Originally Posted by infopreneur

So would the process of converting from a big avi to flv be potentially causing this issue?

Yes, depending on how much compression you're using on the audio... Try converting the audio to mono 16-bit 44Khz (instead of something with lower quality) and see if you're getting the lispiness with that setting.

If not, you may want to just go with a larger file size as a tradeoff for better sounding audio. Hope that helps! :-)

[Lance K]

Edit...

Never mind. Sorry, Just saw your comment about your budget.