 Hi there, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosel here in Jerusalem. So earlier today I was going out to Ikea driving to Ikea as one does towards the end of the week I was driving with my wife driving from where we live in Jerusalem to One of the new Ikea's in Israel. It's built near a place called Beit Shemesh, Hartoof and We were driving through the the countryside and saw just these crazy crazy burnt hills The hillside's completely full of trees that were just charred black as if you'd put them Into a barbecue or something and the reason this was there was recently one of the worst ecological events in Israel's history a crazy crazy forest fire that kicked off in this area in which is called the Jerusalem Hills and Thankfully was brought under control but not before unfortunately a lot of houses were a lot of houses were burnt to the ground and a significant amount of acreage Was destroyed so? We were on the way out to Ikea and I happened to have brought my camera because I thought it would be You know as I'm trying to learn YouTube and learn about making videos I thought we'll go to Ikea take a couple of videos of the of the five shackle falafel there and the other and the other wonder is it exists in in Ikea in Israel and We decided we'll just stop by this stop on this hillside to take a video of The burnt trees So that's what we did now. I wasn't really prepared for this so Ended up taking four three or four different clips Along with some B-roll on the way out there of just kind of the The landscape as we were passing by and I just kind of edited that into a Two-minute clip which has just gone up on YouTube. So the reason I'm recording this screencast is to Demonstrate to you guys to anyone else who owns the Canon vixia hf-r 800 how essential it is to Set manual levels whenever you're working with an external microphone now I've mentioned this many times, but why not why not once more because it's such a fun topic That was supposed to be sarcastic. So here's the vixia hf-r 800 and there is a 3.5 millimeter Microphone input jack now. This is actually the whole reason. I brought this camcorder. I'm I'm serious It was the only camera I could find at this price point that has external and external audio jack a mini jack So that opens up a lot of possibilities for working with different types of microphones was the camera the camcorder so There's a couple of things to know about that and I learned this by error the Canon community Canon community community dot canon calm is a great form of Canon users Nick over there Sort of me out. Thank you again, Nick Because I got a wireless system in the US and I brought it out for a test run Hooked up a wireless lab mic and the audio was unusable. It was the gain was was the gate The game was something awful. You couldn't listen to it So what Nick told me to do is well, you need to very carefully dial in a manual level Before you use an external microphone with the Vixia I know I don't want to generalize and say this is every single camcorder before the Vixia you do need to do this And I've demonstrated how to do that. There's a Put a I'll put a link in the description. I'll put a couple of You know end-screen cards up there, too Now what I want to do here is actually just demonstrate because I just I still have the raw clips up on my computer here And I want to show you what a difference it makes now as well as that I want to show you a flaw or I'm not sure a bug is the right word, but there's a problem with using the Auto mic levels even when you're not using the external microphones, or you're just using the built-in microphone On the Vixia which by the way is at the front of the camcorder And that is this if you're shooting in windy conditions or even mildly windy conditions like we were today Then the auto level is going to be just trying to adjust The level based upon the loudness it detects right so if it hears that suddenly there's a lot of noise Like there's a lot of wind share hitting the microphone then it's going to dial down those levels now What happens if you are speaking? To the camera and to the microphone like this At the same time that there's a gust of wind so gust of wind hits the microphone the camera turns down the levels And then the levels of you speaking are much too low. So One thing I always do is just to keep the level Meter always visible on the monitor. That's something I always do and Just for a quick reminder if you do want to change the auto levels at toggle between them hit the camera icon And then you will have another Thing they're called mic level and you see it's currently set to a And I can go from a you can click on my clever and now I have the option to click on M I'm going to click on M here Now I've clicked on M now we're now I can now I'm configuring a manual mic level is currently set to 24 As I mentioned in my last video there. I think if you're working with a bunch of different microphones Figure out what the what the gain you need to set on the camcorder is the level and then you will be able to use That going forward and maybe make a couple of tweaks, but if you're in a pinch just use the same level use last time So this is it and you can adjust it with these arrow symbols. It's got a touch screen. So I'm just going to go back to Automatic so that further ado, let me show you Exactly what I'm talking about. So you should be able to hear me speaking now and I've got these this studio headphones on because I'm gonna play a couple of clips here from from my raw footage I took earlier what an exciting what an exciting technological project This is so I created a folder here called audio comparison just just just for this video and Three clips here and I want to demonstrate the differences and I'll just say before I play them Before I play them I'm going to just explain what you're listening to so clip number one is internal mic With auto levels and this was just my my my assistance for for this scene Was just just using the internal microphone on the Vixia Recording me and the levels were set to internal now listen and I'll point out what's going on Regarding the wind and the problem that creates with the levels So you can already I'm just gonna make myself a bit smaller I didn't didn't plan this out in advance as you can probably tell You're hearing now already the wind is kind of picking up there now This was on kind of an exposed hillside. So there was a lot of wind and so ready starting to kind of struggle a bit And this particular road Transverses lots and lots of forestry and what you can see all around this area is just the absolute Devastation caused by these forest fires which have happened already Now there just a couple of things to point out and look I'm not a I'm not an audio expert But I do listen back to my clips and just pay attention to what it can do better next time Now what you saw there happening was when I was speaking to the camera Here look how directional the pickup is so that's one major advantage of using a Wireless uh lavalier microphone is you've got it clipped on to you. So when I'm speaking to the camera, it's fine. And then as soon as I soon as my Stage assistant Pans across we lose the audio in a pretty dramatic fashion All around this area is just the absolute Just at this point here. You can hear how quickly that level drops off Devastation caused by these Forest fires which have happened to forest fires that were extinguished a few days some of the worst in recent years in israel Can't get through youtube and you can't smell is the very very distinctive smell of burning wood That is still very very much in the air and that's this is the smell that's become unfortunately those of us living in jerusalem Wendyms, I'm not sure Land destroyed in your crisp some of the worst fish by these all around this area So the there's parts there where the audio is like reasonably reasonably. Okay, and then there's a lot of wind Noise in the audio track as well and it dropping off. That's number one. That's the internal vixia microphone with um Auto levels and by the way, these are the raw clips you're listening to so there's no Normalization or post processing applied to any of these number two is going to be voice to camera one Lav mic with auto levels now this this should provide an interesting point of comparison Was the next clip which is going to be how this came out when those levels were set on the camcorder So we're just here driving from jerusalem to behames to check out the latest ikea here And the road between jerusalem and behames transverses lots and lots of forests And this is just after the recent forest fires. So you can already hear here that the um Levels are too high basically I'm just looking at what they're what they're coming up to in my level meter In fact, I can show you the level meter here This is me speaking on the lav mic on the top top channel in the mixer and then the System audio is the is the track that i'm playing in here is that we're only declared extinguished um Literally last week and you can just see the scenery all around this area. It's just absolutely burnt and the distinctive Thing about this that you are not going to be able to smell Through youtube is the fact that that very distinctive smell of burnt forest is still very much in the air when the Fires were going on If you can already tell i'm essentially saying the same thing in every single clip I think these were these were takes firstly. I did it with the camera and then I said, you know what may as well Try the lav mic See if it sounds better Um, and then it's like wait, I forgot to set the level on the lav mic. So we did this clip one more time Jerusalem in as far as far away as south jerusalem in the city And this is outside of jerusalem. You could smell the strong distinctive smell of burning forestry I'm not sure I have a career in broadcast media. I'm just coming in through our air conditioners and you can see I mean have a look at these trees they are literally burnt to a tinder and You can just see the rubbing off The wood on me and you can still green trees and unfortunately right now it's a mixture of green trees and burnt trees By the way, this was this this imaginative Um script was uh impromptu I was just trying to think of but it was I mean it's crazy. It was like There was literally burnt trees and you could rub off the tree and It's tragic tragic. Uh, so that was the auto levels there on the um on the vixia with the Lavalier microphone now to wrap up this exciting audio comparison. Now, I this is boring I don't I don't envision many people will want to watch this youtube video But I just want to say that this is for me a very crucial part of the process of learning is I go out I try to learn about audio and video I go out The real kind of I wouldn't say sucks, but like there's a lot of it That's really bad and I watch it back and I try to figure out retrospectively. Okay. What what went wrong there? Um, and I'm just kind of taking notes Sometimes mental notes other times I actually do write notes in my google drive. Okay final clip here as I as I said was the voice to camera to lav mic with manual level So this is going to be the same sort of me narrating um the uh the devastation and the forest except that I dialed in the uh levels before And you should actually I'm trying to think they're probably what the hissing wasn't too bad But that's the main problem. I've had with uh using the auto level with external mics on the vixia is just this terrible hissing So I'm just going to play that back So we're just here, um To Jerusalem forest the is the fact that as far away as south Jerusalem in um just coming in through our air conditioners So the clip there's never really silence in the clip because there's either wind noise or there's narration, but um So you can't really hear it But I I'd be pretty certain that if the wind miraculously Completely dropped um and I stopped speaking for a few seconds. You would hear uh, you would get that hissing sound And that's basically how I set the manual level If you know a better way drop a comment, please. I'd love to know about it Um, I reduced the gain level until I got to the point where the hissing was Gone then I spoke one testing one two three testing one two three Until I saw that the levels were uh not clipping basically Not going up too high in the level meter and once I had those two things then I left it now final clip Sorry, that was uh wrong clip that was the I I was like that that does not sound better That was the uh internal auto level. So let's go for lab mic with manual levels We're just driving today between Jerusalem and bay chamois my wife And I were going to check out one of the latest ideas in the country and as we're doing so this part of Just a quick point the lavalier microphone being used to record this is a $20 Wireless lav mic from Ali express. So There's things I can do to get the sound right including in post-production including getting the levels right, but I'd imagine there's like quite a lot that I just can't do because the Quality of the hardware is just not that great. Uh, the second thing to note is that I'm recording this straight into the camcorder And uh, that's always, you know, you're gonna be working with the preamps that are part of the of the vixia. So that's another Thing that is uh making it difficult for us to achieve nice audio quality here Um, I am going to I did pick up on eyes in the us a zoom h1n and I'm going to graduate soon To recording it separately. But for the moment, uh, I didn't have time to sort of do such elaborate setups On this on this goes. So let's just listen to a bit of this Israel the road here between Jerusalem and bay chamich is full of forest and under normal conditions The forests are very green and verdant But if you take a look around you can see the devastation that has been wrong The rider in me is getting annoyed green green and verdant mean the same thing Didn't need to say twice thought by these forest fires that were burning all over the jr. Some hills uh for the last week now. They're only officially declared extinguished. I believe about it Anyway, I think the level is I think that definitely sounds better. Let me just give you a quick head-to-head comparison. Let's open up the Auto level clip and let's open up the manual level clip on the one screen. Can I manage this with my burgeoning obs uh, I need to do them All right, let's just do it this way. So we're just here, uh, driving from Jerusalem. It's just absolutely Burnt as we're going on in Jerusalem in as far as They are literally burnt lab mic with auto levels and lsd lab mic was manual levels again There is that we're burning all over the Jerusalem hills For the last week now. They're only officially declared extinguished. It's going to take a tiny bit of the twig Yeah, I think it's definitely better. So, uh, that is it guys for this uh for this video over here As I have mentioned many times. I am continuing to learn about the Exciting the fast fascinating world of video audio lighting. It's also interesting Uh, and I'm just sort of uh doing these video blogs as I learn stuff because um Anyone who's watching this youtube channel knows besides learning video. I'm a huge linux and open source geek And I kind of believe in the in just as a concept that if you are learning something in a crewing knowledge Why not just share it because there's just no point in not sharing it I'm not going to monetize you're not going to see me putting on a course as a guy doing this for a couple of months About how to get good audio levels in the vixia. So therefore I'm putting these out and the reason I mentioned that is just, you know Use your own discretion as to whether you regard this info as As trustworthy or or me as not trustworthy But that is anyway the the comparison between What the vixia sounds like recording with the internal microphone External mic using auto levels and finally an external mic after I dialed in the correct level Or what I think was about correct using the manual level meter now This is clearly about the vixia But I do imagine that this might be applicable to other consumer level camcorders um on the market So hope this video was useful slash interesting and if you would like to uh receive more such videos and musings For me then please feel free to subscribe to this youtube channel If you need to find it on youtube you can either type my name into youtube Or you can go ahead and use the url The web address in the bottom of this uh of this screen here. Thank you very much for watching and until next time