How to capture video and audio from field interviews – the cheap and easy way
You want to do an interview and need online content. Video, audio, both or you’re not even sure. Here’s the cheap way to capture video and audio at the same time.
1. If you’re outside, you need to get audio and video separately. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s not that windy and your nifty little Flip Cam can pick up audio just fine. It can’t. Have your subject hold the audio recorder and microphone as he or she talks. You’ll have to see the microphone in your video shot, unless you use a better camera that can connect to a lavalier microphone or your subject can cleverly hold the microphone out of the frame for the entire interview.
2. Then, set up the video. Place your subject so that his or her face fills the whole frame and you can’t see anything below the top of their chest. Any farther away and you won’t have good enough quality with your cheap camera.
3. Next you just need to upload your video and audio onto your computer. If you want great audio with no video, you’ve got good quality on your recorder. If you want workable video, you’ve got that too. And best of all, you got it all in one interview!
4. You can link the separate audio track with your video to get great sound on your videos. Upload both audio tracks onto audacity and cut the voice recorder audio until it’s exactly on line with the audio extracted from your video. If you edit the tracks on top of each other it will be easier to see when you have them exactly synched. Then, you can drag the new audio onto the old video. It will just take a lot time, but you can get this result if you need it.
Audio extracted from a Flip Cam
Audio from an Olympus digital
voice recorder
You need a Flip Cam (or a similar, simple camera) and a voice recorder like an Olympus. As long as you aren’t using expensive equipment like large cameras that connect to separate mics, this is the easiest way to get a lot of content at once. You must have a working knowledge of Audacity or a similar audio editor, iMovie or another video editor, your video camera and your audio recorder of choice.
Video from Flip Cam
Video from Flip Cam merged with Audio from Olympus recorder