Hello
I have a JVC GR-D370EK DV camcorder. I like this a lot except for one thing and that is recording video out of doors I get a lot of bumps and thumps on the sound moreso on a windy day. There is no external mic input on my camera so I wondered if I could record at the same time onto my MZ-N710 Mini Disc with an external mic with one of those wooly socks you see on the news. When it comes to editing I can input my video straight to my Mac via the DV link, but I am not sure how I could transfer the MD to the Mac as I have never done this. If I could find a way, do you think that I could synchronise the sound of the MD to the sound of the camera and then mute the camera track so that the MD track was the live sound? I have seen on movie shows where they start a take with a slate that makes a clack sound. If I bought one of those, could I use the sound of the slate as a sort of start point on the timeline? I would like to try and achieve noise free sound for making a video of our horses to display on the Internet.
I am rather new to all this as you can gather, so any help or tips that you can give me would be much appreciated.
This will work well for you if you work with reasonable discipline. The clapperboard is exactly what you need to make it work well. If you write the Slate and Take number on it and verbally identify each Slate and take then syncing up should be a doddle with a bit of practice. Once sync is established you should find it will stay in sync to one frame in around twenty minutes. FWIW the vast majority of BBC TV drama used to be done in exactly this way but with a 'wild' DAT machine rather than minidisc. Getting the audio into the Mac depends on what interfaces the Minidisc and Mac have and whether you can record at 48kHz on the Minidisc. If 48kHz is possible then the best way to do the transfer is digitally. If not you won't loose much by transfering in analogue.
To add to Rob's excellent advice, make sure your MiniDisc recorder will record with a microphone. Not all of them do: some require a mic preamp.
If you have a bit of pocket money, you could check out one of the budget solid state recorders around now: the Edirol R1, or R-09, or the Zoom H4.
I use these a lot and they're great - they record to compact flash or SD cards, have built in mics and connectors for better external mics, if you have any.
You can set the levels and the quality, from mp3 right up to wav. The files are easy to transfer to PC, as they all have USB interfaces, or just use a card reader.
They're pretty small and easy to set up, have good battery life and are getting better all the time!
p.s. Syncing is generally not too hard if you have a good level. You can visually match up the waveforms in your editor (I use sony Vegas), and then zoom in and tweak the position until they are matched up perfectly. When you get near to sync you will get a close 'echo' between the two parts, and this goes away as you pull them in time.
This works fine for me syncing up speeches at weddings for example between a cam mounted Rode mic, and the Edirol R1 I use.