Audio Quality!

Tom Stevenson

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Okay, You've got fantastic visuals, king of special effects and your cannon 600D looks awesome.
But Sound Quality is AS important, it is important that your video sounds as good as it looks!
I'm going to break this down into 3 sections to help three types of YouTubers!

VLOGGER
Of course we all wish we had a shotgun microphone on top of our camera to capture perfect sound. Quite frankly If you buy a cheep one you're quality will be as good as your camera microphone. If you want a good microphone, it comes at a cost. Look for bespoke video microphones or 'Riffle' / 'Shotgun' microphones. If you're looking for the cheapest option, you may have to look for 'Hyper-cardiod' microphones.

If you are working with the sound directly from camera, you can improve the quality massively!
The first thing to take into account is EQ (Equalization), You will need to increase the low frequencies (50-250Hz), this will make your voice sound closer and are the frequencies lost with small microphones.
It is also important to keep your audio at a fairly constant level, People want to listen to constant sound not quiet then loud! If you're using final cut or similar high end editing - You can use Compression and Limiting to great effect to create and equal loudness. Making sure your background music and sound effects arent too loud comparatively also... If not, Using the 'Normalizing' function can create a basic optimum loudness.

GAMER
Using a close microphone (SM58 or similar) can massively increase the audio quality of your voice, If using a headset be sure to position it above your mouth facing slightly down, this will reduce breathing noises, pops and also reduce the chance of a naisil voice (which we all hate!). Similar to this you can improve the quality of the audio in post production with similar techniques to the vloggers microphone. Make sure your voice is audible and infront of any game play or music.

One trick is to use 'Ducking' or 'Sidechain Compression', this is when the audio from one source (Your voice microphone) dips the volume of another source (the music/game). This will create an overall louder sounding video - which is better for the viewer experience. If your editing software doesn't have this function, the background audio can be cut and reduced behind the voice manually. That's very time consuming - so reducing the volume to make the voice as clear as possible is probably more ideal.


Adding Music to vlogs and games improves the experience! There are many websites giving FREE royalty free music... go and find some and take away the awkward silence of your videos!

MUSICIAN
Music important to get right - especially with the quality loss and bad compression of internet streaming and playback. A lot of quality is lost in dynamic Tracks (loud and quiet), so heavy compression should be applied in the mix. If you're going to upload a song to YouTube, it is best that you get it mastered, this can be done yourself or by a professional - either way, there are some specifics to Internet based mastering.

Compress Compress Compress! It is important to keep the level constant and fairly loud! Music sounds better live, and that's not just something Hipsters say to sound cool... It's actual Science! Which is why all the songs in the charts are REALLY LOUD!! Make sure you're EQ is perfect too - The problem often comes in the HIGH (5kHz+) and LOW (bellow 100Hz) frequencies being too loud or too quiet. try to make them all level.



I hope that this information is helpful to at least one of you, and I hope that you use this to improve your videos and that the audience notice the great quality of your videos!
 

AndrewProductionsTV

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what about filmmakers? i currently own a rode videomic pro
 

Tom Stevenson

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what about filmmakers? i currently own a rode videomic pro
As I say - this was more for people who are working with low quality equipment, so they can improve.

For you, the thing about video microphones is all dependent on how you use them - if you're shooting from a long distance for a film, you will want to put your microphone on a boom, because on top of the camera it would be too far away to have a significant directionality to the microphone.

The longer your video 'shotgun' microphone is, the more directional it is, and the further away you can go without having everything impede on your wanted sound. I briefly worked with a guy who does the audio for the English TV show 'Doctors', they work with very basic microphone recordings, of which he will clean up in post production with a piece of software called 'Cedar Audio', but this is about £500! you can get similar noise reduction software. but this will make the audio sound a little unnatural.

So if you've got diolouge make sure you're adding in background sound, music, folley and sounds so it still sound natural.
OR, you could go down the route of ADR (additional dialouge recording), which is what they do in the big holywood films, you basically record everything, then you get your actors back in to re-do the voices over the final edit. its the best way to get high qulity audio but only if you're actors can stay in sync.

I think creative media is about experimenting and doing what you think works best - but I hope the idea's I've given you are something you feel you could look up and try out?

ADR
Noise Reduction
Boom Micing


Tom
 

Andrew Flint

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'is as important'
most people in the film industry actually think it's more important to have better sound than video.

Nicely written article though :) thanks.
 

GGVN

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i'm a filmmaker
i usually some dubstep mix song for my vids , but i can't pass copyright solutions about audio
How can i bypass copyright audios?
 

Andrew Flint

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i'm a filmmaker
i usually some dubstep mix song for my vids , but i can't pass copyright solutions about audio
How can i bypass copyright audios?
Use royalty free dubstep.
 

Tom Stevenson

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i'm a filmmaker
i usually some dubstep mix song for my vids , but i can't pass copyright solutions about audio
How can i bypass copyright audios?
Use royalty free stuff, or if you change the audio to the extent its unrecognizable... Speeding it up and changing the EQ will bypass copyright - still a little dodgy, but can be done.