On October 27, 2012, I videotaped the Supreme Court Review Conference in the Moot Court Room. The sound system provided by AV consisted of a microphone on the rostrum and two microphones at a table. Each of the speakers recorded in these clips spoke while standing at the rostrum.
The microphones were fed to an amplifier, the output of which was connected to a speaker. Another port in the ampliefier was connected to my camera. When I detected rather severe sound distortion in my tests before videotaping began, I tried various settings at my camera, none of which eliminated the distortion, however low the camera's audio input volume was set and whether I treated the incoming sound as either microphone-level or line-level sound. I therefore setup my own microphone, a RODE, and fed the sound wirelessly to my camera. I then recorded the Conference with the AV-supplied sound recorded on the left channel and the RODE sound recorded on the right channel. The inputs on my camera permit, and I made use of, different volume inputs on each channel set at the level best for each.
I did not attempt to adjust the output of the amplifier. I do not know whether the sound problems which can clearly be hear in these video clips stem from the amplifier or from the microphones but since I did not hear the distortions in the speaker, I assume that the problem lay with the amplifier.
Ideally, an amplifier (or rather a sound board with microphone amplifiers) which was capable of control of independent volume outputs for speaker and recording would provide a far better sound quality than did the device supplied on October 27. I know that the AV Department had many responsibilities at the College Open House that morning, and perhaps better equipment was allocated to those other sites.
Fortunately I had brought with me my own equipment and in editing could make use of the sound that I recorded on my equipment. Without it, there would have been over two hours of the raspy sound recorded from the AV department microphone and ammplifier.
I hope that this sample will be of use in securing better sound for future video work at the law school.
It would be best to allow the video to download at least half way on the progress bar before playing the clips.
Click here to watch the brief video.