Disappointed with the voice audio quality of your camcorders? Here are some suggestions to greatly improve the quality of the people speaking in your video presentation. Take a look at two typical scenarios that may be familiar to you.

Scenario n. # 1: Thirty to forty feet from your kayak, your friend places the hook on what appears to be a low monster and asks you to record the action. Your camcorder records your every move. Scream and shout while describing your emotion in detail.

When you play the video, you discover that while the video is very good, your friend sounds a million miles away and most of what he hears is waves crashing against the hull of his kayak and sounds of traffic on a highway. close. Another precious moment lost to poor quality audio.

Scenario n. # 2: You may have been filming videos of children and family, but now you want to move from the consumer category to the next step. You recently bought an iMac computer and would like to use iMovie09. What do you need to make this happen?

Most camcorders are equipped with a condenser microphone that is designed to pick up all sounds within a 360 degree radius of the camcorder. While this might be desirable at an outdoor baseball game; a fifth grade school play; a quiet conversation or a birthday party with a group of kids running at Chuck E. Cheese. But if you want a high-quality voice in the middle of the action, I have two affordable recommendations for the emerging kayak-based filmmaker!

In my case, I wanted to make semi-TV quality videos while kayaking. I also wanted to post some movies on YouTube. After researching various options, I found a shotgun microphone, when connected to your video camera, it captures sounds mostly from whatever is aimed. Shotgun microphones are designed to be very directional and do a good job of ignoring most other background sounds. If you want to interview your child (and be able to hear his voice clearly) at a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese with a million more kids running around making a lot of noise, a shotgun mic is the way to go. This is true for any noisy environment.

In fact, I now always use a Rode Videomic when recording and try not to use the condenser mic. The quality of the sound used is dramatically improved with the Rode. http://www.rodemic.com/microphone.php?product=VideoMic

The second and most impressive addition to my growing collection of video equipment is the Azden WLX-PRO. VHF wireless lavalier microphone system (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAR45nMyTs4). This little beauty allows you to connect a very small lavalier microphone with a cable that leads to a small receiver that clips onto your belt. Another small receiver unit is connected to the camcorder and picks up the sounds from the lavalier microphone, rather than the camcorder’s condenser microphone. The Azden WLX-PRO produces high quality voice audio and can be used at distances of 150 to 200 feet from the video camera! For my proposals, this is the best investment ($ 150 via Amazon) in camera equipment that I have made.

However, for these two items to work properly, you must have a video camera that has a port into which to connect a shotgun microphone or a wireless lavalier microphone. (You cannot use both microphones at the same time.) In my search for a new standard resolution video camera, I found that Canon offers input jacks for an external shotgun or wireless microphones and another headphone port so you can hear what is being recorded. I use a Canon FS11 with very good results and the video files are easily transferred to Apple iMovie09.

If you are looking for better quality audio in your videos, choose a wireless microphone from Azden and a shotgun microphone from Rode. Both additions cost around $ 150 / each, but are well worth the expense.