Recording Video for Your Business? Here Are 4 Audio Tips for Elevating Your Sound.
Video content is in these days. In fact, five billion videos are watched on YouTube each day and each minute more than 300 hours of video are uploaded to the site. No matter if you’re a producer or a viewer, you know that video content is two-fold. Not only is it important to have quality video, it’s just as important to ensure that the sound is top notch.
No matter if you’re listening to the video on Focal Utopia headphones or if you’re watching from a laptop, you want the sound to be pitch-perfect.
Keep reading to learn about four audio tools that you’ll want to have on hand so that you can elevate your sound and create awesome video content.
- Invest in a Quality Microphone
The first step in recording good video and audio is to have good recording equipment. You want to use a device that has a good camera and microphone. Obviously the higher quality video camera you have, the better output quality you can expect.
When it comes to recording audio, the microphone is most important. While most video camera have built-in microphones, you’re likely to get much better quality with a headset microphone or a lavalier. With built-in microphones, you’re limited and lack control over where the microphone is placed or can be moved to. But with an external microphone, you can place it closer to the audio source.
Even though our brain and ears can filter ambient noise, microphones can’t. A microphone that is placed far away from a subject will pick up all sorts of extra noise. This can be distracting to viewers and listeners. Using a portable microphone allows you to filter out ambient noise.
- Keep a Consistent Environment
We’d all love to be able to record in a studio where there’s no ambient noise to worry about and you have complete control of the sound. But since this isn’t always likely (or ideal) for video recording, you’ll have to improvise where possible. The more control you have over the recording environment, the better audio you can expect.
When recording a video with audio, try to control the environment as much as possible. With a consistent environment you can ensure top notch audio quality. This includes maintaining the same location, computer settings, and recording equipment. It’s also important to reduce ambient noise as much as possible. To do this:
- Unplug any machinery
- Turn off any fans to reduce air flow
- Place the microphone away from any equipment
- Keep your recording crew as quiet as possible
With a consistent environment you can minimize background and ambient noise, ensuring your recording is clean and crisp.
- Use Sound Dampening
If you’re ever been in a recording studio, you’ve seen the foam that is used on the walls to absorb sound waves. When recording videos on your own, you too can dampen the sound to record higher quality audio. One of the easiest things to do is to buy a portable sound booth. These booths can be found online and at certain stores. But, if you want to save money, you can also create your own booth
For this DIY project you’ll need a box and acoustic foam. Line the box with the foam and place the microphone inside of the box. By using sound damping you’re able to block sound and absorb echo while also minimizing any vibration sound.
Sound dampening is especially important if you’re recording in a noisy or action-filled environment. You don’t want to record awesome video that is backed with vibration-filled sound.
- Record Separate Tracks
Depending on the type of video you’re creating, you may find it useful to record separate tracks of audio. This can be extremely useful if you’re recording people talking and want to be able to give each speaker their own unique track. By recording separate tracks, you can focus more on audio quality versus having to re-record because of sound interference.
When recording separate tracks, you’ll obviously need software that allows you to slice, dice, and put audio files together. From there you’ll need to pair the audio with the video content to ensure that the two mesh and flow nicely.
Conclusion
Creating video content is fun and exciting. To make the most out of the hours you spend recording, not only do you want to use top notch video recording equipment, you also want to ensure that you’re properly set up to record quality sound that’s free of background and ambient noise.
