hello all, so i'm here for some advice about recording sound. i've bought myself a shotgun mic, i won't lie it's a cheap one because i'm skint but was hoping it'd do the basic job untill i can afford a better one. Now i had initially thought i could record straight to my laptop because my camera doesn't have a sound input (i wan't to call it a hole, can't think of it's technical term, apologies if i've caused major offence). This is where my problem lies, my laptop will not pick up any sound from the mic, sometimes it will show that sound is being recorded but it is silent when i play it back, and other times it won't show that any sound is being recorded at all, and it insists on using the laptops built in mic at other times. this may well be an issue with the laptop, (she's old and haggard god love her, poor ethil is on the way out) So my question is am i doing something seriously wrong here or is it possible to record straight to a laptop by plugging the mic straight into the laptop, or am i best off purchasing a seperate audio recorder? if so, any recommendations would be most welcome. As i said i'm dirt broke and funding this myself, so cheap recommendations would be swell. I have never made a proper film myself, so i'm literally starting from scratch here with no clue what i'm at so please, if anyone could offer any kind of tips or tricks i'd be very appreciative. =]
Post-Production : Going to show how new i am to doing all this by myself by Geri Toohey
Going to show how new i am to doing all this by myself
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Geri you need DAW Software and a USB dongle Or better like behringer UCA202 aka Ucontrol. For an interface like that, with stereo RCA in/out plus optical digital output You'll need adapters and you don't usually want to try going direct into the computer. Especially in your case in which I am guessing the impedance would be wrong. Is the mike that you have balanced, and does it require phantom? You should not need a direct box, which allows you to go XLR to quarter inch or vice versa, usually for bass guitAr, or keys, but again that depends on the mic which probably is low impedance.
....read up on Audacity by Sound Forge!!!
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Geri - you may need to check your shotgun mic as well - if it is "electret" it will require a battery to function, if it is a regular "condenser" micrphone element, you will need a microphone pre that supplies "Phantom Power" or +48v. There are a lot of great devices out there as Lloyd mentioned that you can hook up to your laptop to act as an interface. There are also ones that can convert your iphone or ipad into a recording interface as well (check out http://www.ikmultimedia.com/) Also you may want to look at the tascam recorders. They have microphone inputs as well and are very reasonably priced.
ik good idea