Excellent, That’s a good set up with the Nikon and H4N @dr1.
One thing to note if your feeding straight from the H4N into the Nikon’s SD card is to make sure the line levels are set up correctly otherwise you may not be getting the maximum benefit from the Zoom technology (although it will still sound better than the iPad onboard microphone). Here’s a video to explain that in a bit more detail…
Without getting too technical, how I’ve found it most effective with this sort of setup it to use the Zoom recorder on its own, placed in a close static position approx. 1 foot away from the piano strings, make sure the audio levels at their highest are between -12 & -6 dB and purely capture the audio onto the SD card in the Zoom (no feed to the camera) and sync the files up in post-production.
I’d be more than happy to do that for you if you’d like? If you recorded it, I’d tell you how best to send me the files, I could then sync them up and do a little edit for you to upload with the quality maximized for streaming online?
For anyone else wanting to record top-quality audio at an affordable price. The Zoom digital recorders are the best out there in terms of their XY onboard microphone technology, they also allow XLR inputs for microphones if you would like to record vocals at the same time as piano. The H5N is what I use currently but they have brought out the H6N since…
I thought it would be nice to show everyone this in action Dan, here’s a screenshot of the mic/audio-recorder combo you set up to capture myself and Lyndol a few months back:
It was great how you connected the 2 mics with the XLR cable (you can actually see the cable dropping off the piano, and running under the piano bench ) and the sound quality was excellent.
The Zoom picks up the piano brilliantly, and the Rode NT1 is a really good-value dynamic mic to capture the nuances and expression of the human voice. A great combo and nice and easy to configure too.
Let’s create some threads which detail how to set this kind of thing up, which equipment to buy, where to buy from, etc.
We can do this in the Software & Setup section:
Many of our students accompany themselves, and also accompany others singing and it would be awesome to have some explainer threads showing exactly how to create this kind of setup.
Thanks for pointing out the visible production equipment This was shot on the fly in between takes but one thing to note if anybody is recording from the digital recorder using the onboard XY mics and the XLR (mic) input is to have the recorder as far away from the person singing as possible so it pics as little as possible of the vocals so you can adjust the mix in post production accordingly with minimal spill.
Hi
Interesting… and how to connect the H4n with a Nikon 5600 to have good result any tips ?
theres no audio output on the d5600 but is it possible to plug the zoom in the audio nnput of the camera, and record it both in the camera and the zoom to be able to mix it ?
so you use only the XY Mic of H4n ? i even dont know we can use the Zoom mic in such way . So where do you plut ig in the zoom : in the heaphones jack , and directly in the audio input of the Nikon ? need push the button record for activating the mic of it right ?
But maybe the sound recorded from the H4n would be much better , but is it possible without creating some noise in the camera ? and sure need to mix them after recording
I will try maybe another active mic i had for other recorder in the past too.
You should be able to plug the cable from the H4N into the microphone Jack port as above @Pierrot The thing to notice now is that the camera is now controlling the levels as well as the H4N so I’d advise to play a bit on the piano and check the two audio bars are maxing between -12 & -6 dB on the H4N screen then go to your audio settings on the camera and see that it’s first, recognised the input and the best thing to do is set that to auto if it allows.
@Pierrot this video should clarify your issue, you just need to take note of point 2…
You can just use a single 3.5mm to 3.5mm jack lead, the one @dr1 has posted offers a port so you can plug headphones in to monitor the output that your getting through the feed but as long as you do a test before recording and play the loudest your likely to play whilst checking the audio levels on the zoom don’t go past -12 DB the result should be fine.
I’d advise getting a 3-meter or even 5-meter length cable so you can experiment with different locations for the zoom whilst your camera is static.
When I use digital recorders, I record directly onto the zoom SD card and capture the video on the camera card separately, which means I end up with two sets of files. I then sync them up in post-production which I have tools to make it quick and easy but I think it’s more straightforward for you guys & girls to capture both audio and video on the same card to save another task of video editing.
) and the sound quality was excellent.
This was shot on the fly in between takes but one thing to note if anybody is recording from the digital recorder using the onboard XY mics and the XLR (mic) input is to have the recorder as far away from the person singing as possible so it pics as little as possible of the vocals so you can adjust the mix in post production accordingly with minimal spill.
