While we craft professional videos for clients, BizVid Communications knows there are times when you want to star in your own self-produced, simple video, using your own consumer-grade equipment. As such, here are a few tips on improving your video’s audio. Sound is one of the main aspects that separates a professional video from an amateur production.

How many times have you watched a home video or YouTube video where the sound is poor and words are barely discernible? That’s often because the camera microphone is being used at a distance further than intended.

At best, most camera microphones will properly record a voice from about 3 or 4 feet. Any further away and the sound will come across tinny or echoey. And, if you’re mixing further away shots of your subject, with close ups… the sound may be inconsistent when editing from one shot to the other.

It will serve you better to go ahead and invest in a lapel or hand held microphone, either a cordless remote or one with a cord. Make sure you have the adapters to plug it directly into the camera.

If you keep the camera mounted microphone a foot or so in front of the subject, you’ll like the sound consistency much better.

If you are having more than one person speak at a time, it’s okay to mount a microphone between them and keep them from moving around. better. Otherwise, some cameras may allow for two audio ports so you can feed two audio sources at once and mix the sound separately in post production, but more likely, you may have to invest in or rent a little sound mixer to blend the microphones, before sending them into your camera. I was in GuitarCenter recently and found some small Behringer mixers well under $100.

By the way, when adjusting the microphone setting, shy away from over cranking the sound. It’s easier to increase and balance the audio a little in post production than it is to fix an over-driven distorted sound track. Here’s one more thing. If your production works just as well using a voice over, you can circumvent most of these problems by bringing in the separate voice over into your edit.

BizVid is producing a series of “Do it yourself” instructional articles and videos. Keep a lookout in our blogs for more in this series.