I’m continually learning about the importance of volume/loudness/level in recording and video. Our listeners expect a “normal” level similar to commercial recordings, but through the vagaries of technological and commercial development, normal recording levels are just not as loud as normal delivery levels. Our recordings will sound wimpy and unimpressive if we deliver them at the level we used to capture them. (more…)
In a previous entry discussing YouTube audio I mentioned that Google/YouTube changes the details of their upload formats, transcoding, and streams without much fanfare. Happily all the changes I’ve seen so far have been toward higher quality, and lately they’ve upgraded the audio streams again. (more…)
In the guitar world we often talk about a phenomenon we call GAS – it stands for Guitar Acquisition Syndrome and it’s obviously an addiction that afflicts a lot of us. It’s common to see forum signatures with more than a half-dozen instruments listed, sometimes all very similar. I’ve certainly suffered from the ailment myself, but it’s been a few years since I bought a guitar. These days I have CAS – Camera Acquisition Syndrome, and it’s no less of a disease. (more…)
Those of us who post “look at me play guitar” videos on YouTube are quite interested in the audio quality of the resulting clips. I have some ideas about how to optimize uploads and downloads, and also some recordings that you can use to judge the current audio quality, at least as it pertains to solo acoustic guitar. (more…)
REAPER 4 has brought quite a lot of improvement to REAPER video handling. With a little creativity it’s possible to add titles, cut between multiple clips, and insert stills, all with reasonable stability, excellent performance, and great audio processing. I’ve done a blog post and a video about using REAPER to sync audio and video, but I thought I’d do another one that looks at making a complete simple music video, with titling and overlays. (more…)
I’ve posted before about positioning the Q3HD for better audio when recording acoustic guitar. The other day I remembered the dinky little wide angle lenses available for pocket video camcorders and started doing a little research. I wound up ordering one from Photojojo.com. (more…)
Please don’t tell my wife how many little HD cameras I have. She wouldn’t be mad, but she would certainly tease me without mercy. These things have gotten so inexpensive that each one seemed like a reasonable purchase, it’s only when I look at all of them spread out on a table that I realize what I’ve done.
Now that I’ve done it, though, I’m pondering uses for all these gadgets. One that I’ve been playing with for a while is a “guitar cam” – a camera mounted directly on the guitar and giving an unusual view of the performance. With all these cams hanging around and Lynnie out of town I went to work. (more…)
The mics and preamp on the Q3HD deliver a new level of audio quality to lower cost video cams, simply by being as good as today’s average pocket recorder. But I read posts by folks who have the Q but are still frustrated in their efforts to get the sound they hope for in their videos. (more…)