I help out a church with their live audio about once a month. A problem they run into is the service is recorded and played back on UHF 52. When I first started running the board they used one of the monitor channels to have a mix going out to the camera. Problem they ran into whoever was running the board would generally not get a very good mix or forget to put a channel into the mix. Then they would forget about it and concentrate on the live house mix. The camera volume was normally very low and had to be adjusted during the editing. I felt comfortable running th emixer like they had it set up (however I think I was the only one that could do it because of my experience with mixing sound and how the mixer actually works) Most of them just set things and hope they work right.
We started experimenting with using a 2nd board to control the camera sound. So I brought in my personal board to see who that would work. It seemed to be ok but the issue we had and currently have is the sound going to the 2nd board is coming from the mains on the board running the live sound.
This method is becoming a problem because the house sound needs to be much louder now so there is enough signal to make sure the camera volume is good. People frequently complain about the volume in the sanctuary. Personally I feel we need to run a 2nd board for the camera to have better control over the volume level and mix.
We basically have no budget and the only way I can think to accomplish this task is by using a splitter or a break out box. I tried the splitter but noticed a drop in the signal level between teh 2 boards. We don't have the funds to go the breakout box way unless there a way I can build it. However I have not attempted that before so I'm not completely aure of all teh components I would need to build a break out box. It would also be nice if a snake would work but the Mackie board they are using doesn't really have that option like my Behringer .
Any idea on what we could do to get a better handle on the sound issue. Since the service is being aired on TV it would be beneficial to have better control over the mix. Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Travis
Comments
K I'll give that a whirl next time I'm scheduled. I think there
K I'll give that a whirl next time I'm scheduled. I think there may be 1 of the 2 post fader channels avaiable to try this with. I also should put together a traing/instruction manual for the rest of the team on how to set up the board to make sure there is enough volume going out to the camera. Most of them run the in house volume so low its hard to get a good sound level to the camera. This is probably the biggest reason to finding something else that will work.
Thanks for the input!
First off, you don't need a second console. If the pastors and
First off, you don't need a second console. If the pastors and musicians are already Miked, then you do not need to extract the sound from the cameras and I don't recommend them! You need only to mix your audio and feed that to your video recorder along with the picture from the camera. You can create that mix for television by simply utilizing any post fader auxiliaries sends, setting them all to the approximately two o'clock position of their rotation. Do this for all inputs on the console and they will be controlled by your slide faders as you mix the service. This will provide you with a solid mono mix for television. I would also highly suggest, for recording purposes, that you obtain a reasonable compressor/limiter and add some for the audio or video recording. If you want stereo for television, you may need to utilize 2 auxiliary post fader sends and adjust them accordingly to create your stereo sound field without any available Pan Pots. Of course the truly ideal method is as you surmised, utilizing a passive or transformer isolated splitter and 2 consoles with 2 operators to handle the parallel sound mixing. A splitter can be used with any manufacturers consoles! But Obviously an unneeded expense. This is not rocket science.
Praying you get it right
Ms. Remy Ann David