If your audience can’t clearly hear what you have to say then your video is a waste of everyone’s time. Use a lapel microphone instead of your camera’s built-in microphone and get a massive boost in audio quality for a minimal investment.

Image: Andrew Biss uses an inexpensive Audio-Technica ATR 3350 lapel microphone to get good quality sound. Bad sound stands out far more than less than perfect image quality, so it pays to get the best sound possible. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

Good audio is vital

Effective business web videos demand good quality audio. The built-in microphone on your camera is OK when up-close, but for these videos you are simply too far away.

A wired external lapel (lavalier) microphone is an effective first step to great audio. Wireless systems are more flexible but cost a lot more and often have licensing restrictions.

Monitor your sound

Attach a set of headphones to your camera’s audio output socket to check your audio quality before recording. Pay careful attention to any background noise or hum.

Offices are (electrically) noisy, so check what your microphone hears. It is a lot easier to fix audio problems before recording than afterwards with an audio editing tool.

Play back each take 3 times and concentrate on: image only, sound only, both together. This is a simple way to check that you have a good quality take.

Create a recording checklist

This is a good time to create your own recording checklist; top of that list: verify you have turned your microphone on!

It is frustrating to record a good take only to discover the microphone was off. Check your microphone is really on every single time before you press Record.

Turn on your camera’s audio level display and check the level bars move when you say the phrase familiar to roadies everywhere: “Testing, testing, one two three, testing …”

Next time

In the next video I will get back to the camera setup and show you a simple trick to make best use of a large monitor placed directly behind your camera.