recording equipment

[Guest]

Off chance that I get an answer to this as it's fairly tecnical...

How do I get decent audio and video recording inside a nightclub? I have a MD90 mini DV, and the footage I got inside clubs tonight is a complete waste to put it nicely. Any engineers or knowledgeable folks out there??? Totally baffled.


Grimm.

[Guest]

Focus on decibel ranges.

Higher decibels you'll want to get cut out. The audio will either 1) have to be cleaned up on the spot (but this requires a wireless uplink to an equalizer) 2) clean it up later, which is a little worse in quality.

Sound is energy, the higher energy the shorter the wave. The shorter the wave the higher the frequency. Frequencies are measured in Hz, KHz, etc.. The human ear can recognize frequencies between 20Hz to 18,000Hz. Audio equipment is different. You'll have to figure out what is out there that will help you pull in specifically those ranges and that will allow you to exclude the higher ranges. Equalizing the audio will further allow you to enhance the conversational part that you are looking to enhance.

Hope this helps.

[Guest]

With video, I would probably go with an infrared camera nightvision type setup.

Go to: [URL]http://www.kipkay.com/[/URL]

He has a couple of videos on how to create a nightvision camera, and how to make a spy style camera for little to nothing.

[Guest]

Awesome! Thanks brother.

[Guest]

No problem

[Guest]

I remember reading this guys blog a long time ago.

He made a microphone that hung around his neck. He somehow attached it to his Necklace so no one thought anything of it.

[Guest]

Never filmed myself, but I've recorded audio. I've been told that it's good to use low-light b&w type video recorders. Night-vision would work, as suggested above, and it would be really cool to watch.

When I used to record my sets, I'd tape the mic on my chest, as close to my mouth as possible. I've been called out a couple of times, but chicks can have a very short-term memory. I used an Olympus recorder - forget the model number - but the quality was good, except in super loud clubs.

[Guest]

I have an mp3 player with a built in microphone (sansa e250) I used to wear it around my neck (sometimes under my shirt) and no one ever suspected it was recording. Never tried it at a club so I dunno how that would work

[Guest]

OK... I traded it in for something that works.

So here's my next question - the video files are in a format called "h.264"... does anyone know what this is? How do I trim these videos down so I'm not posting 5 hours of footage a night?

And just to make it more technically hard, I have a mac. I have a program called After Effects which does video editing, but it doesn't support this file format.

Also, what is the best way to post videos on this forum?

Gracias.

[Guest]

Based on what I have read about that format, you should be able to find a converter to convert the H264 format to any other video format, AVI, MPEG 4(although H264 seems to be identical to MPEG4.. maybe try and edit it as an MPEG4 file?) Just google H264 converter and find applicable your desired format to convert to and you should be good to go.

Youtube would probably be best/more user friendly to upload here, or find a host and upload the raw MPEG4 file here for us to download.