How To Capture Great Audio For Your Course

Nothing will distract your students more than bad audio. This lesson will look at how to make sure they can hear you nice and clearly.

Setting Up the Right Recording Space

To start with you want to pick a quiet space.

You’ll want to minimize background noises that can come from your surroundings like the air conditioning or outside traffic, and noise you make like clothes ruffling or a squeaky chair.

You’ll also want the space you are in to absorb the sound and not have it bounce around. You can put up sound proofing panels or even blankets to help the acoustics of a room.

Picking the Right Microphone

Then you want a good microphone set up.

Your smartphone and camera will have internal mics but these generally sound terrible because they don’t isolate your voice, they pick up lots of noise and you can even sometimes hear the camera internals.

What you need is an “external mic that’s close to your mouth”, so your voice can be isolated.

One option is to have a shotgun mic which focuses the sound pick up in one direction and reject the sound to the sides.

Even though you can put these on top of your camera it is better to put it as close as you can on a boom poll just out of shot pointing at your mouth.

Shotgun mics are a good choice if you are only in one spot. If you move too far to the sides or
away the pick up will be less.

Another option is to use a lavalier microphone which you‘ll want to attach fairly close to your
mouth. Unlike the shotgun mic the sound level will be the same even where ever you move to.

It’s worth noting that these types of microphones can sometimes pick up a lot more surround sound and can make a noise if rubbing on your clothes.

Keep the foam part on your mics particularly if speaking directly into it as these will help remove the plosives popping sounds when you say p and b words. If you have to shoot outside then you might even need a dead cat to help reduce the wind noise.

Syncing the Microphone and Camera

To input your mic to your device or camera you need to right cable.Smartphones use the TRRS cables with the 3 rings and cameras use the TRS cable with the 2 rings.

Some shotgun mics have an xlr output and require phantom power. So you’ll either need a
camera or external audio recorder with xlr inputs.

Also some mics use a USB cable. These can be handy if you are just want to plug directly into your computer when doing screen recordings.

There are even options to enable you to go wireless if you need.

The Process of Recording Audio for Your Video

When recording you’ll need to make sure your levels are correct. Cameras have a pre-amp which boosts the input sound and you’ll want to switch this from auto to manual in the audio settings.

While talking you then adjust the level until your voice is peaking in the orange around the -20 to -12 db region. This the sweet spot. Don’t go into the red.

Keep in mind you can also adjust the gain on some external mics which will change these levels.

If you are recording directly into your computer then some applications enable adjusting the levels and you’ll want to dial this in to peak at that -20 to -12db sweet spot.

If you want to step up you audio quality then you can use an external audio recorder. These will generally have a better pre-amp than your camera for cleaner sound.

You may need to get one anyway if you need an XLR input from your mic. You’ll also want to dial in the peaking to -20 to -12 db.

If you run it back into your camera then set your camera pre-amp to the lowest setting though.

If you plan to record separately to the recorder and sync later with your footage then just make
sure you do a loud clap for a nice clear audio spike so it easier to line up when editing.

Finally, always record a few seconds of background noise with no talking at the start of each clip. This can then be used for sound sampling when you do any noise reduction when editing later

You might also want some reasonable headphones to check your audio and for when you are editing later.