Audio Troubles

[Justine]

I don't really know how to explain this, but when I record my game sessions with my friends I always just use xbox audio. I have my xbox set up so party chat goes through my regular speakers, therefore allowing party chat to be recorded through my elgato. I also use my laptops mic to record my own commentary, which I know is rather bad quality but i'm getting my blue snowball this weekend.

I've been told a few times that my audio is rather quiet and I have a feeling its from the technique I'm using and not because of anything else.

Basically, is there any other way to record a group conversation while playing a game off my xbox? Possibly one that's rather easy to understand?

If anyone can help me out with this is would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Tegra]

Now, rather than provide you with a method to fix this problem (I own an elgato and can barely hear party chat also) i am going to provide a higher quality method of recording a party chat. One limitation is that every member of the chat needs to own either an iPhone, or a laptop or PC with a mic.

This may not be possible, but on the off chance that it is, I suggest downloading TeamSpeak 3, finding a public server, and bringing every member of your party into a private channel. Then, recording the chat using TeamSpeak's inbuilt recorder, you are provided with high codec chat that can be matched back up to your video in the editing process.

Just thought i'd let you know about this method as audio sounds great over TeamSpeak!

 

[Tarmack]

I can't recall, does the Xbox and Elgato combination separate the voice from the game audio? (In windows, you should be able to right click the video file and choose extract audio streams. If there are 2 audio streams, then it is likely doing this.)

If that's the case, then you can edit together the chat audio from your friends with the one you recorded on your laptop, and then put it over top of the game audio at a higher volume.

If not, then Tegra is correct. The ideal recording environment is to do all voice on the PC. TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Skype, Mumble, etc. Just set up for recording voice there, start recording, and then snap your fingers at the same time as you begin recording on the Elgato. This will give you a nice audio spike sync point so you can line up the audio with the video in post production.

The other issue you will have is that the Snowball is designed primarily as a desk mic. The theory being that when doing a podcast, you're not doing a lot of typing and you're also very close to the mic. If you're playing Xbox on the couch, 2 feet away from the mic, you will get a lot of room echo and background noise. So try to situate the microphone as close to you as possible, whether on a coffee table or something else.