49 About Improving Your Soundtrack s Quality

49 About Improving Your Soundtrack's Quality

Before You Begin

7 About Making Audio a Priority

See Also

47 About Importing Existing Digital Files

When you record audio for your movie, be sure to pay attention to its quality and content as much as you pay attention to your video's quality and content. Too often, users of digital video cameras focus on the lighting and finding the best shot, but fail to pay close attention to the video's sound. The result is a good-looking video that is not enjoyable because of poor sound quality.

Microsoft warns against ambient noise , and suggests that you soften hard surfaces close to your video if possible by turning off electrical equipment such as computers and other devices that can add a hum to a video's audio. Be sure to also turn off air conditioners or heaters to keep your microphone from adding their sound to your video's background.

KEY TERM

Ambient noise ” Unwanted noise that can creep into your video, such as traffic, air conditioner motors, and echoes off walls, windows , and even your camera.

If you visit a recording studio, you will see that the walls often have curtains on them. The curtains reduce ambient noise that might reflect off the hard walls.

If you record music for a movie, use a direct cable between the stereo playing the music source and your computer instead of recording with a microphone, so you get the best recorded sound without any danger of picking up ambient noise. Connect a cable from your stereo's line out to your computer's line-in jack. Depending on your hardware, you might need to obtain an adapter or cable with the proper connections to run two output jacks from your stereo to your computer sound card's single line-in jack.

If you use your camera's microphone and cannot control the sounds around where you're shooting the video, perhaps the sound actually accentuates your movie. For example, if your microphone picks up birds flying overhead on the beach, the birdcalls might help give your video a realistic feel. Be careful when recording voices on the beach , however, because the waves share a sound range similar to the human voice, and often will detract from your speaker's voice dramatically.