Audio Concepts

What's up everybody? I'm seeing a lot of people from the cinematography and video shooting world coming over into the audio side of t And I t But audio can be really challenging to get started in if you don't necessarily know where to begin. There are a lot of ideas that translate between those two worlds though. So I want to make a few basic comparisons that'll help anybody coming from the world of picture understand some fundamentals about getting great audio from everyt Before we get started, if you enjoy these videos, you want to support my channel, head over to alexnickerbocker. com. I've got a whole collection of sound effects that I'm curating from my personal library for your royalty free use on any project that you're working on. I've also got my first course up on Udemy all about how to build and use a professional mixing template for post production sound of all kinds. So check those links out in the description down below. Anyt I t If you have a great lens that's really sharp, doesn't have any errors, any chromatic aberration or anything If you don't have a great lens, then you could be shooting on an Arri Alexa or on a red Komodo or something And it doesn't matter how good the sensor in the camera is, you're only going to be able to do so much with the footage because that lens is going to be your primary limiting factor. The same idea applies to microphones. Microphones can be thought of in exactly the same ways as camera lenses. There are different ones for very specific purposes. They all have their different looks and feels. They color the sound that comes into them in very specific ways between all of them. Some are designed to sound extremely transparent and accurate. Others are designed to pick up very specific sounds and make them a little bit sweeter or accentuate certain there are all kinds of different mics out there just Whatever it is that you're going to be capturing the most of, whatever you're going to be primarily focusing on with that microphone, you want to tailor that selection to that as much as possible. Of course, there are good general t Any kit lens from a Canon or an Icon rig can translate into pretty much any cardioid or super cardioid microphone that you can get on the market these days. So there's a lot of general purpose microphones that are going to be pretty solid. But once you start getting into specialty sort of stuff, it gives you that same kind of openness and real possibility that There are some types of mics that really shine on percussion instr A lot of the microphones that are for really quiet, delicate sorts of sounds will translate between both quiet atmosphere recording as well as really interesting and delicate instr There's a lot of crosstalk there. So matc And of course, you wouldn't be able to use a lens without some kind of camera body the same way you wouldn't be able to use a microphone without some kind of recorder. A recorder's job in principle is to capture whatever is coming in from the microphone in as clear and pristine away as possible. These days with everyt Back in the analog tape days, w It was all about getting that same idea, but you also had the coloration of the tape, just The same way you'd buy a camera body for maybe features and ergonomics, same idea with recorders, there are plenty of different options on both sides that of course, answer a lot of those different needs. But when you start getting into the So you have companies Also the Mixpre series, w I'd kind of make the comparison between maybe Canon's 1D lineup with all of the eight series recorders and maybe the EOS R series with the Mixpre's, where again, it's not The big t And I the same kind of applies in the sound recorder world with sample rate and bit depth. It's a little bit more complicated than t And with bit depth, that information is going to be that much more accurately represented out of the digital sensor. On the sound side of t And the bit depth does the exact same t It's a representation of how accurate those actual samples captured will be. And when I'm talking about accuracy, it's the same idea as there as well to have a great camera body with a great sensor, you want as many colors of the spectr In the sound side of then naturally, once you've captured that information, you need to be able to store it in some way. That's where file types come in, specifically raw files versus compressed files. Raw files in the camera world are of course, a lot more flexible, they contain all of the light information the sensor is actually captured, and you can do a lot more with them as a result. Whereas JPEG files, w The exact same t You have broadcast wave files or AIFs as usually the standard of uncompressed audio, where all of the information that you've just captured is represented the entire time as thoroughly as possible, versus MP3 files or AUG files, which do as much as they can to throw away all of the inaudible information that in theory, you're not going to be able to hear But in practice, generally degrades the audio pretty significantly. So JPEG versus MP3 and raw files versus wave files are about the same comparison, you can do a lot more and you get a lot more information and better quality out of raw files. But if you just want to pass files around really quickly, and you don't necessarily care about that as much lower resolution and compressed files will get you where you need to go. And finally, I want touch on frame rate in the video and audio world. A lot of people will equate frame rate in video to sample rate in audio. And that's not quite a fair comparison, because in actuality, frame rates between sound and picture mean the same t It's all about keeping audio and video in sync. And when you have a frame rate in picture, you want to match that frame rate with the audio that's being recorded. That's independent of sample rate entirely. When I'm doing anyt And of course, And that way, when you go to sync everyt Timecode is great for being able to put sync back together when audio and video recorded on independent devices. Sometimes it makes sense to run everyt A lot of YouTube content is done that way. But when it comes to more complicated workflows on features or television, maybe when you have multiple different cameras working, you need some kind of sync point and reference so that when you line up all that footage and you start cutting it, it can actually be an easy process rather than having kind of guests at sync and put t And it's a lot more time cons Timecode in and of itself is a pretty simple concept. It's just a clock and sort of And it'll keep all those devices in the same rough sync across an entire shoot where it starts getting complex is when you have multiple different cameras running multiple different frame rates, and you need all your audio to sync up. That's a whole deep dive unto itself. But a lot of the time, a lot of these softwares That being said, if you want to know how to get timecode specifically set up properly, I would Jam sync is all about taking timecode from one device and just piping it into other devices and making sure that everyt Beyond that, the idea of sync can actually get pretty complex, but suffice to say when it comes to frame rates in audio, it's all about keeping time with a camera and with other devices. It's not about the sample rate or the bit depth or anyt Now, obviously, there's way more that goes into sound than just these concepts, but I hope on a basic level, t So if you're coming from one world or the other, you can get a lot of those same skills and thought processes back and forth, and they'll all still be useful. If you enjoyed the video, don't forget to hit I'm over on Instagram at AXK, so come follow me over there. And as always,