Season's Greetings!

David Kilpatrick
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Season's Greetings!

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

Here's a short video made with my second attempt (or second finished attempt, out of many) to kill the Alpha 77's extremely noisy auto gain audio problems:

http://youtu.be/AgFU2nV2A4c

I've been trying to rig up some way to record to the camera (after all, it has 48 kHz sound which is better than CD quality) using either the onboard mic, or the stereo input. There is a real issue with the onboard in quiet situations, it simply boosts silence to the point that a loud white noise hiss dominates, which then ducks out in an ugly way if speech or music comes in. Using external mics of different types, it's not as bad, but still bad enough to be unusable for serious amateur purposes.

If anyone has a solution, I'd love to know. I have tried: external Audio Technica Stereo Shotgun mic - camera does not seem to like the stereo and records left side only, but will try to buy another cable. Built-in mic - unacceptable auto gain changes and quiet passage noise. Mackie Onyx preamp with two AKG C2000B studio mics - results vary, if camera is switched on with this plugged in, terrible auto gain with hum and hiss; if the rig is plugged in during a take which starts with the internal mics, sometimes the external will take over and have much cleaner sound and apparently disable auto gain, but sometimes the internal mic will not be defeated. Small Sony ECM-717 tieclip stereo mic made for MiniDisk system - so far, the best sound, less volatile auto gain and lower quiet passage hiss.

Sony MUST issue new firmware for the A77 (and future NEX, or other cameras) to enable either one fixed gain audio level, to disable auto gain when using external mics, or to have controllable gain (Nikon has auto plus three manual levels, Canon has a 64-step manual volume option with on-screen dB meter).

David
aster
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Re: Season's Greetings!

Unread post by aster »

The sounds were great to my ears, David. : )

I think you captured the sounds well even if you say that there are some firmware shortcomings to the Alpha video capturing..


Thans for the new video forum and the guitar show. :D You play real nice...

Season's greetings and thanks for sharing,

Yildiz
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Dr. Harout
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Re: Season's Greetings!

Unread post by Dr. Harout »

A very musical start for a new section.
A99 + a7rII + Sony, Zeiss, Minolta, Rokinon and M42 lenses

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KevinBarrett
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Re: Season's Greetings!

Unread post by KevinBarrett »

Lovely, David! Thank you for sharing it, and merry Christmas!
Kevin Barrett
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David Kilpatrick
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Re: Season's Greetings!

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

I have ordered a Rode Video mic and a dead cat windshield for it. It gets much higher ratings than the dedicated Sony mic, and Jacobs had them reduced to £69. It will have to be mounted on an accessory shoe adaptor or a handgrip braket. It has three dB pad levels and hopefully by the correct choice of this setting I'll get the right balance of auto gain and mic volume.

David
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InTheSky
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Re: Season's Greetings!

Unread post by InTheSky »

Nice as usual David, thanks for the music and the info also.

Frank
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