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AI audio processing vs mixing it yourself – which is better for your videos?

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There’s been a lot spoken about AI when it comes to photographs and video. Deepfakes are rife, and the situation isn’t looking great. There’s also images being generated based off the work of people who didn’t provide permission for their work to be referenced. But what about audio? What if you’re using AI to tweak something you’ve already created? What if it’s simply modifying or enhancing what you’ve already done?

Both Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve have added a number of AI-powered tools for enhancing audio in your video edits. But are they any good? Do they really compare to mixing it yourself? Is it better than doing it the old fashioned way? Should you even bother learning to mix? The team at Syrp Lab attempts to answer these questions and more in their new video, with a guest appearance by professional audio engineer Alex Knickerbocker.

This introduction to microphones explains the importance of good sound in your videos and how to get it

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There are more people creating video content now than ever before. This means there are also a lot of people creating bad videos than ever before, too. Many of them aren’t really bad videos, as such. They just often have really crappy sound. Newcomers to video often think that they can rely on the internal microphones of their mirrorless cameras or smartphones, but you really can’t.

This video from Sennheiser has been out for a little while now but we haven’t shared it here before. It offers up a lot of valuable information on microphone choice. Alex Knickerbocker introduces us to the main different types of microphones and when and how we might want to use them to get the best results possible.

SmallRig becomes a BigFish with new follow focus, battery and audio system

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SmallRig is on a mission. They may be small by name, but they have big plans. Initially known for their camera cages, rods and handles, they’ve been scaling at an incredible rate and are excited to be expanding their range of products to better serve their customers.

DIYP had a chat with Wilson Chen from SmallRig about where the brand is headed and what we can look forward to seeing in the near future from them.

OpenRefMic is a cheap open source low-noise reference microphone you can build yourself for under $40

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Reference mics can be a vital tool when it comes to audio. They’re the microphones that capture the uncoloured sound, with a flat response and almost complete transparency to let you measure the acoustic characteristics of the room in which you’re recording. They let you test rooms for echo and reverberation. They let you hear (and see, on charts) what frequencies your room naturally enhances or destroys.

Reference mics can be quite expensive, though, so GitHub user loudifier decided to design his own and make it open source. It’s called OpenRefMic and it promises a low cost with a high performance that “meets or exceeds the performance of professional reference microphones”. And while commercially available reference microphones aren’t all expensive, they usually come with pretty high self-noise levels. And none are this cheap!

How to build your own DIY acoustic panels to treat your room for recording audio

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If you’ve ever tried shooting a video indoors where good sound is important, you’ve no doubt come across the issue of reverb. It’s the echo that you typically hear in a recording in an untreated room with a microphone placed too far from your subject. It’s an issue that most indoor spaces face, but it’s one that can be overcome with a little work.

The team at Syrp Lab recently rebuilt their gear room for filming in and they’ve faced this challenge. So, in this video, they build their own DIY acoustic panels to help treat the space and deal with some of the echo picked up by their cameras and microphones.

TV & movie boom operator explains why you’re probably using your shotgun microphone wrong

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I’ve been following Mike Delgaudio, otherwise known as Booth Junkie, for quite a while now. Mike’s a professional voiceover artist and so he makes a lot of videos about how you can record voiceovers, typically on a low budget, at home. He’s usually using large-diaphragm cardioid condensers and shotguns but rarely ventures from the comfort of his booth to record audio out in the real world. You know, the way filmmakers do.

It occurred to Mike that he had a lot of different microphones with the same pickup pattern that all seemed to do the same job and… well, in the voiceover booth they probably do. But he wanted to find out more about the real-world differences between them. So, he had a 25-minute chat with movie & TV boom operator Allen Williams, who goes by Sound Speeds on YouTube to talk about where and how you’d use these types of microphones out on the set of a movie or TV show.

Rode enters the headphone market with the new NTH-100 closed back over-ear professional cans

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Rode has finally entered the headphone market with the announcement of its new Rode NTH-100 closed-back over-ear headphones. Rode says that they offer “exceptional sonic performance and superior comfort” with custom-matched 40mm drivers to deliver an “incredibly accurate” frequency response with “ultra-low distortion”.

Rode says that the new NTH-100 headphones are designed for professionals and are equally at home uhh… at home, in the studio or in the field whether it’s for music production, podcasting and live streaming, location recording or video editing with a natural sound “akin to open-backs” but with the advantages of closed-back headphones to block out external noise and minimising spill.

“The Gift of Room Tone” is three minutes of people being told to sit in silence in front of the camera

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Room tone is literally how the name sounds. It’s a recording of the room’s tone. Its background noise. What’s going on when people are quiet. It’s the hum of the air conditioning unit, the hum of a PC fan whirring away in the background, the dull roar of traffic driving by outside the window. It’s used to help fill in the background of silence and audio dubs recorded elsewhere in a clinically noise-free studio as well as help to transition audio from one scene to another.

It’s one of the most boring parts of filmmaking, visually speaking, but The Criterion Collection made a short film out of it anyway. Called The Gift of Room Tone, this almost three-minute video shows people doing what they do when told room tone needs to be recorded. While the video below shows quite a few relatively unknown faces, it also includes some popular famous ones like Christopher Walken, Martin Scorsese, Frank Oz and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The CharisMic is a magnetic lapel mic that doesn’t ruin your clothes

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Lav mics have been around for years. Virtually all of us who shoot video have used them at some point or another. But they’re annoying. You have to deal with clips that often puncture or scrunch up your clothes – which isn’t a great look for the camera. But the CharisMic thinks it’s solved the solution through the use of magnets.

It’ a neat solution that allows you to clip a microphone either on top of underneath your clothing, and when it’s underneath the magnet is hidden under one of several cute little badges. It’s already up on Kickstarter, where it’s already gone way past its goal with two weeks still to go and pledges starting at $77.

Hollyland announces Lark 15 Solo Kit wireless lav mic for budget shooters who only need one mic

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Hollyland’s Lark 150 dual wireless microphone kit has been quite popular since its release a few months ago. The original kit contains two transmitters and a single receiver that runs on 2.4Ghz wireless frequencies. A lot of users didn’t want to have to pay for a kit containing a pair of microphones, though when they only needed one.

In response to those needs, Hollyland has now announced the Hollyland Lark 150 Solo Kit aimed towards lower budget users and vloggers. It contains just a single transmitter along with the receiver. But the transmitter is also available to buy now as a separate purchase for those who purchase the Solo Kit, but wish to upgrade to the dual kit in the future.

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