I found that installing these panels made a lot more difference in the quality of my recordings than upgrading a preamp or a/d converter, or even buying a new microphone. By improving the sound in the room, the acoustic treatment made the whole recording process much easier and more enjoyable. So when people ask me how to improve their recordings, one of the first things I suggest is room treatment.

Minimum Impact, Maximum Result

Unfortunately many people don’t have a dedicated recording space. They can’t stuff a dozen panels into corners or lean them against walls, and they often ask how few panels they can use and gain any benefit. My standard answer is two, just two panels can reduce reflection in one small area, an area just right for recording acoustic guitar or vocal or many other acoustic sources.

There are a number of commercial products born out of this idea of a zone of controlled reflections. Some of these are rather small and thin, so I’m doubtful that they’re strongly effective. Some are fitted with frames and/or attachment hardware. This adds flexibility and a pro look, but also adds weight and cost. My preference is a pair of simple unframed panels, 2 feet by 4 feet by 4 inches of OC703 compressed fiberglass. I made mine with burlap and hot glue, but premade panels are available as well. Here’s the blog entry on building these panels: Building a broadband absorber (on the cheap)

I deploy the panels in a V surrounding the microphone(s), often by simply leaning them against the mic stand if it’s sturdy enough. If needed I lock the panels in place using a bent coathanger poked into the fiberglass to add a little stability. I’ve experimented with different positions for the panels and this arrangement has seemed the most effective to me. The sound leaving the guitar, or at least a lot of it, passes through the panels as it leaves, so it hits the microphone full strength, then gets attenuated by the panel. Then after the sound hits the wall it returns through the panels for further reduction before hitting the back and sides of the mics.

Let’s Listen

In order to evaluate this two panel approach I set up in our guest bedroom, a 12 x 14 x 8 foot space with no room treatment and only a futon for furniture. This is a fairly reflective room and seemed like a good place to test the two panel solution. I used the Zoom Q3HD as the “mic” and placed it about 24″ from the guitar, with the stick-on wide angle lens attached Zoom Q3HD with a Stick-on Wide Angle Lens then I setup the Xacti HD2000 for a wider shot.

Here’s the resulting video:

Conclusion

I hope you’ll listen and make your own judgment, but my opinion is that the two panels do a remarkable job of cleaning up the early reflections and reducing the “small room” sound. The direct to reflected ratio is improved with a couple of benefits. Since the reflected sound includes a lot of high mids, the sound with the panels is “warmer” with those reflections reduced. The other effect is to make the recording sound like it was made with a closer mic position or in a much larger room.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of this two panel approach. They’re small enough to be stored under a bed or behind a door, they’re light enough that they can be moved into position quickly and easily, and even purchased commercially the cost is under $200. It’s possible that one or two more panels might improve things further, but in my preliminary comparisons it seemed that the big improvement came from two panels, and one or two more panels did not provide much additional benefit. Your situation could certainly be different, of course.

Keeping Up with REAPER Video

The REAPER forum is a regular stop for me. That’s where I learned about video in REAPER and where I look for the latest info. The video implementation is actually still in Alpha form, so it’s not fully supported and documented. Here’s the thread that announced the use of FFmpeg libraries.

Forum member airon has created a thread where he tracks the current state of video in REAPER, “Video Playback and Exporting” that I check often. He keeps it updated with the current FFmpeg libraries of choice, along with other news and tips.

Here’s the Cockos Wiki page describing video support. It includes details on installing the library files.

With all my enthusiasm, please remember that there are no video effects in REAPER currently. No fades, no transitions, no flipping or stretching. All we can do is move clips (and stills) around, trim them, and sync with separate audio tracks. So our style will be defined by those limitations.

Titles and Tricks

A static title is pretty easy to add to your project in REAPER. Just create a jpeg or png image in your favorite tool, heck, Windows Paint will do the job. Be sure to set the size to match your video, for instance 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels high is a common HD video size. Start with an image or create a gradient, then add text, maybe in a couple of stages or pages. Then drag these into REAPER, drop them on the project timeline, and stretch them to match the tempo of your clip. You can see this technique in action in the tutorial video below.

You might have stills that contribute to your video, or a second or third camera shooting. Or you can extract stills from your video and use those for effects. REAPER 4 can handle multiple tracks of video along with multiple tracks of audio. The audio from all the video tracks will be part of the mix, but only the lowest (highest track number) video will be displayed. Once again, watch the video below to see these operations.

If you mute a video track it stops displaying the video as well as turning off the audio. To eliminate the audio but keep the video, just turn down the volume slider on the track, or use the Item Properties to turn down the audio.

Syncing and Slicing

The audio waveforms displayed in REAPER make syncing multiple video and audio clips a snap, especially if you create a sharp noise at some point when all the devices can capture it. The is exactly like the old “clapper board” you see in movies about making movies. You can simply clap your hands to get a spike in the audio that makes syncing easy.

Once you have tracks synced, take care to keep them that way. Use Item / Group to join items, or be careful to select all the items that belong together when you move, stretch, or trim items. In the video below observe how easy it is to select multiple items to keep them in sync. Also, I’m using ripple editing most of the time to maintain the correct relationship between items.

Cutting video items is just the same and just as easy as cutting audio. Select the item, position the edit cursor, press the S key, and your item is split at that point. As above, make sure all the items that you’re keeping in sync are selected and get split appropriately. I use ripple editing a lot when I’m trimming out parts of my videos.

Tweak the Audio

Even though there are no video effects available, the full range of audio processing definitely is present when working on video in REAPER. For instance, the clip I’m working on in the tutorial video below was shot with a Zoom Q3HD for the main video and audio. I raised the level, added some compression, applied a touch of reverb, and then put a limiter on the output to make sure I didn’t clip. The Q3HD delivers pretty clean audio but it tends to be a bit low in level and punch, so the ability to tweak the sound really adds to the usefulness of this little camcorder.

Rendering

Currently the h.264 video codec seems to deliver the goods for internet video. With the FFMPEG codec library installed in REAPER this is my preferred output. So I select the following options:

Output format: Video (FFmpeg encoder)
Format: QT/MOV/MP4
Size: 1280 x 720
Framerate: 29.970
Video codec: H.264
Bitrate: 9000
Audio codec: 16 bit PCM

Watch the Action

I used the Q3HD and a Creative Vado 3rd Gen to shoot an old Hawaiian slack key standard, My Yellow Ginger Lei in the style of Uncle Leonard Kwan. I decided to turn the video into a little tribute to my Kathy Wingert Model E guitar, so I used the guitar for the title still and shot a video of the guitar on a stand. Then I used REAPER 4 to combine those elements into a final clip for YouTube.

While I did the editing job, I shot with a couple of Sanyo Xacti HD2000s and recorded audio on a Zoom H2n. I edited those together to create a tutorial video:

and by the way, I put that tutorial together in REAPER 4 as well.

If you’re interested here’s the finished version of My Yellow Ginger Lei on my slack key channel:

I don’t think anyone is going to cut a major motion picture in REAPER, but as a way to tweak YouTube performance clips quickly and easily with an emphasis on audio, it’s a pretty decent tool.

Here’s the package:

Lens along with some magnetic circles and the covers

The lens mounts by glueing one of the magnetic circles to the lens cover of the Q3HD, then sticking the lens to the magnet. Here’s the magnetic circle in place:

The little metallic circle is a magnet with a stick-on backing

Once the magnetic circle is in place the lens snaps on and off:

Here's the lens mounted by sticking to the circle magnet.

Using the lens reduces the light and causes vignetting, a shadow effect in the corners. Here are a couple of shots with and without the stick-on wide angle lens in place:

With the lens in place note the vignetting

No wide angle, no vignetting, better picture quality

Here’s a video showing the Q3HD in action with the stick-on wide angle lens.

As I said in the video, I’m not sure how much I’ll use this trick, but it was interesting to evaluate how much we can improve the audio of our Q3HD with this fairly simple trick.

Rode NT4 Into Everyone

So I turned to the wonderfully flexible Rode NT4 stereo mic as a source, installing the 9 volt battery that allows it to work without phantom power. Then I put together a chain of adapters to connect the mic to a Coleman Audio LS3. I bought this gadget years ago as a monitor switcher, but it also works as a passive distribution box for comparison tests like these. The LS3 gave me three outputs and another chain of adapters turned those into stereo mini plugs for the three recorders.

The mic, three field recorders, and the switcher

LS3 to 1/4" TS to RCA to Stereo Mini

Capturing the Tracks

As usual I “printed” or recorded a 1 khz test tone at the start of each recorder track. This is a snap with the single mic feeding all the recorders. I planned to create a set of tracks you can download in raw form as well as a set of level matched tracks, so I kept the recorders running while I moved the speaker and fired up my Martin OM-18GE, tuned to taropatch open G. I played a few hard strummed chords, some harmonics, then the first verse of “Sanoe” by Queen Liliu`okalani.

Here are those raw tracks. Please be very careful with your levels when playing these tracks, they contain loud piercing test tones than can hurt your ears and your equipment if played too loud!!

D50

H2n

H2

Level Matching Tutorial

I did some level matching on the clips and used the Licecap screen capture program from Cockos, the REAPER folks, to make a video of the process. I’m using the Sonalksis Free G Stereo meter on each track. This not only tells us the level on a fine scale, it allows precise level adjustment separate from the track fader and master fader. I find it indispensible for this kind of work. I also keep my monitor and headphone volumes down. Test tones can hurt your ears and your gear (second warning!) And I turn off snapping since we’re not dealing with beats and bars.

Here are the resulting clips. Remember, our brains love labels and they will affect what we hear based on those labels, so if you really want a clean comparison you need to use a double-blind testing tool like foobar2000 on the PC or abxer for the Mac.

D50

H2n

H2

What the Tails Tell Us

I’m usually not too concerned about slight variations in frequency response when I evaluate mics or recorders. I don’t want the recording to sound like it came through a megaphone, but minor colorations don’t seem to me to affect the emotional impact of the recording. I do listen for self-noise, though, because noise is a distraction, a mask over fine detail, and it breaks the illusion of “being there” that I look for in a track. So I often find myself listening to the “tails” of tracks when comparing recordings. For this comparison I went to the end of each track and selected an area after the last note had begun to decay, raised the level a lot, 12 dB, and rendered those for you.

D50

H2n

H2

Conclusions

There’s a look at our three recorders when used with an external mic. I’d say it’s pretty clear that the Sony tops the field here in low noise performance, and the H2 is bringing up the rear. In an earlier post I compared the H2n to the Echo Audiofire and was not too impressed, but now that I hear it in the context of other portable recorders, I’m much happier with the new Zoom. At least for the limited purpose of capturing solo acoustic guitar in a small room, the Zoom H2n is in the ballpark with the Sony. If your needs are more demanding, something like nature or sound effects recording, you may find that the Sony provides more clean gain, something I haven’t tested.

As usual when I do these comparisons I take a little trouble to get the clip levels matched. The more I’ve investigated audio the more I realize the importance of matching volumes. So for this comparison I used REAPER to generate a 1000 hz test tone and recorded it into all the systems. Then I used that recorded tone to adjust the volumes of the recorded tracks. This is more reliable than trying to match peak or average levels in the constantly changing energy of the music track.

Here’s a video that takes you through the process of generating these clips.

And here are the trimmed and volume matched clips for you to download and compare:

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/audio/20110907/NT4.wav

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/audio/20110907/D50.wav

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/audio/20110907/H2n.wav

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/audio/20110907/H2.wav

So how do those clips sound to you? When you go to the fadeout and turn up the volume, you should be able to hear a car go by out on the street, even though the window was closed. Listen to that section for the differences in the background noise.

The build quality, at least the “feel” of quality, certainly goes to the Sony in this comparison. It’s constructed of finely detailed metal, with firm precise switches and a solid hefty feel in the hand. Many of its features are are controlled by dedicated switches instead of relying on a menu.

The Zoom H2n instead feels light, even a bit cheap. Definitely constructed of plastic and with a minimum of dedicated external controls. The Zoom offers variable stereo patterns, but so does the Sony, using different technology. The Zoom has the advantage of a surround sound mode, and I also much prefer the “electric shaver” form factor of the H2 because it doesn’t require a stand and the metering is visible when the unit is in recording position. And of course there’s a substantial price difference between the units.

They both offer external mic and line in recording features, which I’ll look at in a future post.

External mics with the H2n

I rarely used external mics with my H2, but others at the Zoom forum tested and indicated that it is quite noisy. I’m open to the possibility that the external mic pre of the H2n could be a gem, with plenty of clean gain and headroom, but the only way to know is give it a try.

My first use of the external preamp was a test to see if the external mic could be used as part of the four channel recording capability of the H2n. In the four channel mode using internal mics, the front XY pair and rear MS pair each contribute a stereo file. I read an internet post indicating that an external mic could be used and it would replace the XY pair. This would allow 4 channel recording for other than surround purposes.

I was disappointed when I plugged in the Rode NT4 because it delivered a much lower signal level than the internal MS mics and there was no way to adjust the gain independently. I could record four channels, but two of them were much lower in volume than the others. I assumed (and you know what that means) that the NT4 was just low in sensitivity.

H2n Internal MS

Rode NT4 External XY

Today I tried again, comparing the H2n with the NT4 to a pair of Shure KSM141s into the Echo Audiofire Pre8.

Two Recording Tools

Here’s the mic setup I used.

Two XY arrays in tandem

Once again the level available from the H2n->NT4 was unimpressive. I don’t record hot, but these levels were down around -27 dBFS. By the time I added 9 dB of digital gain to get this track to match the ones from the Echo, the noise level was pretty severe. Here are the clips with matched levels:

H2n with Rode NT4 External

Echo Audiofire with Shure KSM141

Hey, looking in the docs actually turned up something. Input gain is listed as 0 to 39 dB, which is definitely on the low side. So unless there’s a firmware update that adds some gain without raising the self-noise, this external mic input is better suited to amplified concert tapers and drummers rather than acoustic guitarists. And it’s even worse news for folks interested in recording nature sounds and sound effects using external mics.

Line In on the H2n

I’ve used my H2 to record several shows by connecting to the PA mixing board. I find this is usually a cleaner sound than simply miking the room. I almost always have camera sound as well, so I can mix the board track with a room track. But the H2 has a serious weakness for my purpose – its Line Input is too sensitive for the outputs of a common PA mixer. The result is a horrible clipped mess. There’s no adjustment to reduce the sensitivity on the H2 and the tape outs on most mixing boards do not have a level control, so I’ve resorted to a passive attenuator, a simple ganged variable resistor which I use to cut the signal from the board to the H2.

I had hoped that the H2n would offer a solution. A built-in pad (fixed attenuator) would be ideal, or a wide gain range on the line input, with a low minimum sensitivity. Looking at the specs in the announcement, and then at the documentation, I found no mention of a more useful Line In connection. But a test was in order to see if things were improved.

I set up a comparison between the Line In on the H2 and the same on the H2n by connecting two hardware outputs of my Echo Audiofire Pre8 to the Line In on the two Zooms. I used an adapter to split the mono output to two channels. I adjusted the gain on the H2n to 0, there’s no gain adjustment for the Line In on the H2. To generate the test signal I used REAPER and created a 1 khz sine tone with a level of -18 dBFS – this is about 0 dBVU and should be a good starting point for evaluating a line level connection. When I checked the two Zoom recorders they were both clipped. I reduced the level and both recorders showed the same levels as they dropped below clipping.

My test tells me that the Line In on the H2n performs the same as it does on the H2, so I’ll still be bringing my passive attenuator with me when I record from the mixing board.

The first thing that jumped out at me – the new box is a lot smaller.

How'd they make the H2n box so much smaller?

Not the result of a breakthrough in packaging efficiency, I’m afraid. The reason is the lack of accessories. The AC adapter is missing, as is the mic clip adapter stick. These useful bits are now part of an extra cost accessory pack which adds $40 to the price of the H2n and includes stuff that I already have or wouldn’t use. Bummer, as we used to say in the 60s.

Not much in there, is there?

On the other hand, the AC adapter is a USB connector type, so maybe I have something around here that will work, and the long battery life makes the AC adapter less necessary. And I’ve collected a couple of mic sticks already, so for now I’ll skip the accessory pack. And I’m happy to see Wavelab LE7 in the package. Maybe I can get rid of my Adobe Audition and use this instead.

Look and Feel

The look of the H2n is cool black, the new screen is bigger and brighter. This is my number one reason for wanting the new unit – I can operate the menu without glasses. This screen is still pretty lame compared to the beauty they put on the Q3HD, though. The H2n screen is monochrome and pretty low in resolution.

Cool black vs classic silver

The menu is similar to the H2, but a bit simplified. The menu interface is simple and direct – a menu button takes you in and out of the menu, the playback paddle serves to select options. The buttons all operate much more easily and positively than those on the H2, but many of the H2 buttons are covered by a plastic skin which should add longevity even though it reduces tactile feedback.

SDHC card access is not quite as easy as the H2, it’s one of those uninspiring “flexi-hinge” covers and it’s pretty stiff right now. When I see one of these I figure there’s going to be duct tape on there someday. To be fair, plenty of people complain about the H2 hard plastic cover, and I’ve read reports of failure (and replacement with duct tape).

The battery compartment is a big surprise – the batteries both go the same way!! First time I can remember this configuration, usually two AA batteries would go opposite each other.

Operation

There’s no “Standby” mode as in the H2. The unit is listening and giving meter readings as soon as it’s turned on. Press the big red button all by itself on the front and you’re recording. Press it again and you’re not. Standby is a feature that has been part of recorders for a long time, but I know I am not the only one who missed many recordings because I only pressed the H2 record button once. I’m not sure which bit of technology made this new design possible, but I see it as a step forward, as soon as I can get out of the habit of pressing record twice – oh no!

Headphone monitoring can be turned off or turned on constantly, but the default is to have monitoring on at the home screen or while recording.

Files can be named with a date time stamp!!! No more hassles with duplicate file names when combining different recording sessions!!

The two obvious changes on the recording side are the level setting and the mic options. Instead of a three position analog “Mic Gain” along with a digital “Rec Level” control in the H2, the new recording has a continuous thumbwheel controller that is advertised as analog. My first impression is that the H2n offers much higher overall sensitivity than the H2, which will be a big benefit to nature recorders if the noise floor is adequately low.

The mic arrangement is interesting. There are still two mic arrays inside the H2n, but now there are five mics instead of four. A classic XY array (two cardioid mics at a 90 degree angle to each other, 45 degree angle to the source) points to the front of the H2n, as it does in the H2. The back array on the H2 is a pair of cardioids at 120 degrees, giving an option for a wider stereo field. In the H2n there are three mics in the rear facing array and they are combined into an MS (mid-side) configuration. This consists of cardioid mics facing opposite sides and in opposite polarity, so the two mics together emulate a single figure 8 mic at right angles to the source, while a single cardioid mic faces directly at the source and serves as the mid mic. The mid and side mics are then combined mathematically to yield a stereo field. The H2n can save either the decoded (stereo) or raw (mid and side separately) files, and it can be monitored in either mode as well. This is a nice bit of flexibility. In addition, you can adjust the amount of the side mic mixed into the decoded stereo file, changing the width of the stereo image. Visit the Zoom H2n site for a detailed explanation of the mic arrays and how they can be combined and adjusted.

I have this strong feeling that the real benefit of the mid-side (MS) mic arrangement is the marketing buzz it generates, but there are probably many users who will find a benefit in the ability to adjust the stereo width at record time. I’m guilty at times of seeing the whole recording world in terms of solo acoustic guitar, I’m afraid. I would add that the mic selector can be a bit difficult to adjust. It’s a small circular nob with a somewhat slick surface, so a slight case of sweaty palms can make it impossible to change mic patterns.

The playback speaker is a very nice addition. We no longer have to carry headphones just to confirm that we got something. Playback is controlled by the same jog-and-press wheel that navigates the menu. These things always feel a little uncertain to me, but it gets the job done. The headphone out is clean and clear, I’m thinking this unit will work very well as a powered mic to feed into a video recorder like the Q3HD.

Recording Samples

I was satisfied with most aspects of the H2 recording quality, except for the low level noise. My big hope for the H2n is an improvement in that area. I set up a comparison by putting the H2n, the H2, and a Rode NT4 stereo mic next to each other.

Rode NT4 between two Zooms

The Rode was connected to my Echo Audiofire Pre8 interface. I played a 1 khz test tone into all three recording chains, adjusted levels to avoid clipping, and recorded the tone. With the recorders still running I played a bit of slack key guitar, and left a nice long “tail” at the end of the recording complete with tummy gurgles. This ending section where the last note dies off is a classic place to hear self-noise generated by mics and preamps, along with the room noise (and the belly noise).

After recording these clips I pulled them into REAPER, put the Sonalksis FreeG stereo meter on each track, selected the reference tone in a loop, and adjusted the level of each track so they were within 1 dB or so. This is barely adequate level matching, but hopefully it will be revealing of the differences in noise level. I trimmed off the test tone when I rendered the sample files – no one should be subjected to a 1 khz tone if they don’t have to be. I also made a second set of clips with just the tails, and here I raised the gain significantly.

Zoom H2

Zoom H2n

Rode NT4

Zoom H2 Tail

Zoom H2n Tail

Rode NT4 Tail

Conclusions

Knowing what I do now, I’m glad I got the H2n. The improved battery life will make my recording projects easier, and the more readable screen will help as well. But aside from those issues, I’d say the H2 holds its own very well in this comparison. For many projects the difference in audio quality is probably not enough to justify a switch. For someone on a tight budget the H2 might still be a good purchase, especially if their eyesight is good.

*** Update ***

Down in the comments, Boston Dave asks about how the H2n deals with loud sources. I banged away pretty vigorously on my Martin and from looking at the wave form and listening to the result I think turning down the mic gain wheel successfully eliminated clipping. You can download the test clip, it’s straight from the recorder so it’s a little ungainly, but perhaps it will be useful to someone.

H2n High Volume Test

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.

The choice of guitar was pretty easy. The Epiphones have scattered, so the sacrificial guitar around the house these days is stage guitar #1, the Composite Acoustics OX. It’s really ideal for this project because my main tool is double stick tape, and the “raw” finish of the makes it unlikely to suffer damage.

Past Experiments

I’ve already tried out various mounting techniques for a peghead cam. I’ve used my smallest Gorillapod, but that proved too shakey. A mount that vibrates makes for a sea-sick viewing experience. One of my favorite engineering materials is packing foam of various kinds, but once again these efforts were lacking in stability, especially when I mounted the largish Zoom Q3HD on the peghead. I wound up with a stick of wood, a 1/4-20 bolt, some plastic, and lots of double stick tape, and came up with this.

Double stick tape, a 1/4-20 bolt, and a piece of wood

Success At Last

This mount was stable and gave a good view of the guitar neck. Here it is mounted.

Double stick tape attaches the device to the guitar

Adjustability could be better, but it works. Heavy duty (gray) 3M double stick tape holds a stack of plastic chunks together, guiding the 1/4-20 bolt at an angle to the stick. Then lighter duty (clear) 3M double stick tape holds the stick to the back of the guitar peghead.

But We Have More Cameras

Once I had a couple of decent test shots from the peghead mounted Q3HD, I started thinking about mounting additional cameras. First, one looking straight up from the bottom of the guitar, to get the fingers plucking, and my beautiful face!! Well, that didn’t work so well. The plucking was out of focus and at he wrong angle, and my face just isn’t that lovely, or interesting.

OK, let’s put one on the front, looking at the picking hand alone. Hey, and the Kodak Zi8 has a macro setting that I almost never use. Now all we need is one looking at the fretting hand from my view. The small and light Creative Vado 2nd Gen (or third, or however many) looks like a good candidate. Sure enough these cams were easy to mount with just a bit of clear double stick tape.

Kodak Zi8 mounted in the cutaway of the CA OX Raw

3M double stick tape holds the Vado easily

Three video cams mounted on CA OX

Lights, Cameras, Action

With the cameras mounted I scouted a location. With my sweetie out of town for a few days I had the whole house for my stage, and I found just the spot. Ordinarily I would never try to record in the close in space of a bathroom or shower, due to the strong early reflections. But for a guitar cam shoot I needed simple uncluttered monotone on both sides and this little hallway was perfect.

This little hallway provides two simple backgrounds

The back light would make it tough to get good video shooting down this hall, but the guitar cam(s) will be viewing side to side so they won’t get splashed. The Zoom H2 was nicely positioned by putting it on top of the hamper, and we were ready to shoot.

I barely had room for the guitar in this narrow space, but I was pretty happy with the shots I got. I spent a while shooting in another location, but when I looked at clips these were the winners.

Out of Rotation

When I pulled the clips into Edius Neo 2.5, my video editing software, I was dismayed to find that I didn’t have a way to rotate the clips. With the cameras mounted the easy way the resulting image has the guitar laying on its back, parallel to the floor.

The guitar is laying down on the job

Guitar still laying down on the job

I had expected to pull these into my Edius software, rotate them, crop and resize them, and build my composition with these images showing the guitar in a normal orientation. But it turns out that my Neo 2.5 version, the previous version entry level package, doesn’t have this capability. I would have to upgrade to the full commercial package to be able to rotate these clips. Time to rethink.

My first effort was a new layout for the clip, using the odd orientation for its impact. I cut a rough version but wasn’t too impressed. Next, do it the right way, change the camera orientation with a new mounting system. That took a day and wound up too awkward and shaky. Without re-engineering the whole project I needed to work with the clips I had.

Avidemux to the Rescue

I’ve done tutorials on Avidemux in the past, it’s a powerful bit of free software that continues to grow in its ability to manipulate video. The latest versions handle these H.264 based file formats easily and with a bit of tweaking and fiddling I was able to create rotated versions of my clips with minimal loss of quality.

Clip from Q3HD rotated in Avidemux

In order to create a standard 720P HD video file (1280×720) that Edius would accept I first rotated the image, giving a 720×1280 layout. I resized that to 405×720 in order to create the proper vertical dimension. Then I filled out the frame to 1280 pixels wide with black as you see in the still (this image is reduced to 680×360, half size).

And Here’s the Result

The song I chose is a sprightly version of an old Hawaiian royalty piece, Moani Ke `Ala, written by Prince William Pitt Leleiohoku in the late 1800s. Gabby Pahinui recorded this piece, as did his son Cyril, and both were a great source of inspiration.

As I’m listening to the clip just after it was uploaded, I’m appalled at the sound quality. There’s a background noise that is far greater than any on the original clip. I’ve been disappointed in the past but this one is really annoying. I wonder if I’ll see any improvement from a later, more leisurely transcode by Google.

I’m afraid that in some cases, simple physics is the culprit, helped along by our experience listening to modern recordings. We’re used to bigger than life sounds and close mic positions because that’s how most pop music is recorded. When we put our Q3HD in a location that gives us a conventional picture of a seated guitarist the camera is usually about four feet from the guitar. That four feet make the sound of the guitar weaker, and allow more of the room sound to intrude. This is called the direct to reflected ratio, and while we need some reflections to make a natural sound, the quick reflections of a small room generally don’t make for a pleasing recording. There’s another important ratio that suffers from a distant placement – the signal to noise ratio. Less guitar signal means we notice the surrounding noise more.

Several people have complained about the low level of the recorded audio and suggested that the Q should provide more preamp gain. But when you consider things for a moment you realize that more gain means more room reflections and more noise along with more guitar, because these ratios are established before the recording begins. So more preamp gain gives the same result as simply turning up the volume on playback in terms of room reflections and background noise.

The real solution is to move the microphones closer to the source. But that’s going to mean our conventional picture loses its head, and its hands. Since the conventional picture won’t work, we just have to get a little more creative, and find a new way of looking at the guitarist. Let’s start by positioning the mics in a good location for the audio, then see if we can find an interesting picture.

I usually use mic stands to position the camera – I have several boom stands, and they give me more flexibility than a typical tripod. I use the Zoom MA2 Mic Stand Adaptor or the Edirol OP-MSA1 to attach the camera to the mic stand. Interestingly, the Edirol adapter costs more and looks much more sophisticated, but the simple stick from Zoom does a great job and is handier in many ways.

I put together a video showing some different locations for the Q3HD using this concept of positioning for audio first. The first is the classic “off the 12th fret” location nearly universally recommended as a starting point for recording acoustic guitar. Actually, I used two variations of this, one below the guitar pointing up, one above and pointing down. From there I moved to the “off the bridge” lower bout position, and finally I tried the “over the shoulder” position that places the mic near the player’s ear.

In the video you can see the locations and quick samples of the audio and video that result from each position. All of these could be improved for both sound and picture by some extensive tweaking, and of course it’s a lot easier with two people than one.

In the process of creating the tutorial I realized I had enough material to put together a music video, a somewhat quirky one but perhaps an interesting project. I decided to try to edit the clips in REAPER, and with a bit of patience I was able to pull it off. I used Cockos LICEcap and the GIMP image editor to create a title, and rendered the results as a 1280×720 29.970 fps .MOV using the FFmpeg libraries. Here’s Waialua Slack Key as seen through the Zoom Q3HD at various angles:

I wouldn’t call the video an artistic masterpiece, but it serves to demonstrate the different angles and differing timbres of the audio captured from different locations. Hopefully it will serve as a bit of inspiration for other folks trying to get great audio and video from their Zoom Q3HD.

I also made a big step in my video camera arsenal with a shiny new Panasonic Lumix GH2. This little beauty is packed with a high performance sensor, lots of onboard image processing, a full range of manual controls, interchangeable lenses, and enough options and settings to keep this novice busy for a long long time.

I’m a long way from figuring out how to get the best from this wonderful camera, but I took advantage of one of the lovely “convertible weather in February” days we get here in Northern California to shoot a bit of outdoors playing. The wonderful old sentimental ballad, Silver Threads Among the Gold has become part of the slack key repertoire thanks to Leonard Kwan and Ledward Kaapana, and this song about the inevitable process of aging seemed to fit the austere scene.

By the way, I have a pretty fair collection of videos featuring Hawaiian slack key, mostly by me but with a couple of guest artists as well. You can see them at my YouTube channel.

The audio for this clip was captured using the Zoom Q3HD, it was placed about 24″ from the guitar, you can see the black blob of the windscreen in the lower right corner of the main performance shot. I also used the video from the Q3HD for the closeup of the picking hand.

I edited the clip in Edius Neo 2.5 and used a new reverb plugin from Jason Breebart’s Toneboosters line. The crows came with the house.