What do you all recommend for sync sound recording on locations? DAT? How is the sound on the cameras themselves? I will be shooting in DV then editing and then x-fering to film. This brings me to the next question, what sort of software and hardware will I need to edit on my computer? How do I get the video captured? Once edited how do I get it to the company that I would like to have x-fer to film? Lots of questions and few answers on my end. I am new to the DV realm.

-- Scott Farnsworth (scottf@metro.net), February 10, 1999

Answers

I recently got my XL-1 and I have to say that the sound quality is better than anything I have ever seen (or should I say heard) before! Especialy with the added manual control over audio inputs.

-- Chris Penney (penney@fnol.net), February 14, 1999.

I recommend buying a shotgun mic if you want professional sound. The microphone that comes with the camera is an omni-directional and just kinda records everything around. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has recorded a dv project with a DAT. I belive DAT is higher quality than dv cameras, as my sony vx-1000 samples audio at 32khz. I'm not sure if a DAT will keep perfect sync with the camera and I don't know if there's a way to hook them up together. And then theres the issue of downloading the audio files from a DAT to your computer. Anybody out there know if this is feasible?

-- win edson (win7@earthlink.net), September 07, 1999.

If you have A DV camera with a Firewire conection, just plug it to a Mac G4 and transfer you video to the computer, if not you will need a vidieo capture card in your computer.A dat will sound good but you'll have to sync it with your camera.You will need a dat need with a built in sync SMPTE reader and a camera that generates that kind of sync signal.Another way is to capture the audio with the camera and the Dat separatedely, then in the sound editing replace the audio from the camera with the audio from the dat( better quality ).It will be easy to be done with a Protools or anyother Digital audio editing tool.

-- Iuri Cunha (icunha@prodigy.net), February 08, 2001.

Look at your camera specs and compare them with Dat to know if it is worth the extra trouble to work with Dat. The new cameras have great specs in some cases.

Dats record at either 44.1 or 48 KHz, and at 16- or 18- or 20-bit (higher is better). Remember that 16-bit digital audio at 44.1 is far and away better than any type of analog recording used by filmmakers for decades in the past. 32 KHZ sampling is definitely a significant step down.

You do want to avoid using cheap Dats in the field - dats unable to use a video reference timing signal - for these Dats may run at slower motor speeds if the available power is weak or if they are battery driven. If you have a pro Dat w/timecode you will never have a sync problem. If you plan to edit in 29.97 ndf 48KHz, use those same settings on your Dat recorder in the field.

-- Mark (marks@bmands.com), February 15, 2002.