Sound Track: Use Your Head(phones)

If you are like many of today�s video hobbyists, you may have spent thousands of dollars on your video gear. Go on. Add it up. You invested $2000 for that fancy digital camcorder, several hundred for professional lighting gear, a couple hundred more for some good mikes and audio cables, not to mention a few grand for that nifty nonlinear editing system. What you may not realize is that all of that technology can be wasted if you fail to use a simple set of $10 headphones.
All too often audio is a forgotten element in making video. As a result, getting good sound on location is rapidly becoming a lost art. In fact, because most consumer camcorders don�t have manual audio controls or VU meters, it can be difficult to know if you are recording any sound at all, much less good sound. Audio disasters can be very common, but most are avoidable if you follow this one simple rule: use headphones when you shoot.

Sound Disasters

Imagine coming back from the family reunion, where you conducted a once-in-a-lifetime interview of your grandfather talking about the old days, only to find out that the sound of the kids playing across the hall had drowned out every word grandpa said. Or to start editing your cooking demonstration video, only to find that the hum of an air conditioner ruined your sound track. If the batteries in your wireless mike went out in the middle of recording the wedding vows, would you know? You would if you were monitoring your audio with headphones. Had you worn a pair of headphones when you interviewed grandpa, you could have hushed the kids or moved to a quieter place. If you had worn headphones during the taping of the cooking show, you could have noticed the hum of the air conditioner and switched it off before rolling tape. And only a pair of headphones would have cued you to switch batteries before shooting four hours of silent wedding video.<…