Hello everyone, my name is Ken Lehman and I’ve been a videographer for nearly seven years. I do primarily weddings, events, and small business videos. However, even with all the time and experience under my belt, there are still things that stump me about audio, regardless of how much research that I do. Two such issues I would like to bring up here and I would appreciate any help, suggestions, advice, etc…
ISSUE 1: Videos that Sound Good Regardless of Device
Whenever I listen to my audio when editing my videos, I always use professional headphones and I monitor my meters in Adobe Audition. According to my headphones and Adobe Audition’s meters, the vocals and music sound and look good respectively, i.e. my vocals sound crisp and clean and the music beds do not overtake the vocals. However, when I watch my videos without headphones on YouTube on my TV (and at times without headphones on my computers), at least to me, my sound is not crisp and clean and my music beds are overtaken by my vocals. I do not understand why the audio to my videos sound so different on my computer with headphones versus on my TV and computers and their built-in speakers. Ultimately, I would like my videos to sound good regardless of device.
ISSUE 2: New Camera, New Audio Problems
My old video camera was a Sony EX-1R. To this day, I use a Sennheiser EW100 ENG G3 Wireless ENG Kit, specifically the lavalier, for capturing the audio for interviews and ceremonies at weddings. I would setting my old camera’s volume to 5 and my lavalier to their default -30db. This resulted in great audio.
My new camera is a Canon C100 Mark 2. However, when I use my old Sennheiser lavalier with it, I find myself having to put the camera’s volume below 5, specifically around 3.5, because if I keep the volume at 5 while my lavalier is at its default -30db, the audio always peaks/cips regardless of the camera’s limiter and how loud the speaker is. It seems my new camera’s audio is more amped up than my old one. Regardless, while recording at said level, my camera’s meter always show the subject’s going into the sweet spot (i.e. past -20db but just under -10db) for the most part. However, when I bring my audio into Adobe Audition, I see the audio is around -18db (before I apply any filters to it). Is that normal? I mean, I have tried many variations of volume, sensitivity, mic trim, etc. on both my new camera and old lavalier, and ultimately, I find myself unable to achieve the same audio quality as I did with my old camera on my new one.
For samples of my work to judge for yourself, please click here. Please note that with all my work, regardless of camera, I have used Mike Russell’s podcast and VO filters/settings that he provided in his YouTube tutorials for Adobe Audition to improve my audio.
Thank you.
