Please HELP!!! A/V to mic input converter?

[movie_freak2]

Please help me. I need to know if there is a way to convert a A/V input to a mic input. Very important. Thanx! Or... can a A/V input work as a mic input?

[Raptor]

You might be.. probably not a way to do it, the AV input is usually a dub input for audio only, without seeing the schematic for the camera it would be hard to tell, but most A/V ports are output when in the camera mode, and only act as inputs when in VCRR or playback mode... even though you can record in that mode, you only record the video coming into the AV port, not what the lens is seeing...

[LizaTrainer]

Please help me. I need to know if there is a way to convert a A/V input to a mic input. Very important. Thanx! Or... can a A/V input work as a mic input?

What are ya trying to do and with what cam and mike, I have goten away with merder more than once.

[movie_freak2]

My camera is a JVC GR-D70 http://www.electronicexpress.com/produc ... 20&refer=6 And I was planning on buying a sennheiser microphone.

[Raptor]

Short answer... nope.... already cracked the case on my D70 and not going to happen - it looks like it might be possible to insert a jack into the mic line, but I really didn't look too far beyond the AV jack..

[movie_freak2]

What?! There is no mic mic line on the GR-D70!

[LizaTrainer]

What?! There is no mic mic line on the GR-D70!

Dam that stinks, but there are alternatives to fighting.
can you give info on what eqptment ya have.

[movie_freak2]

Not much... not much at all. JVC GR-D70, some halogen worklights, a clapperboard for editing, tripod, i'm going to make a jib... that's about it. Any way around this. BTW i have barely any money.

[Raptor]

It would be possible to cut a jack into the circuit from the internal mic, it would have to be wired to make sure you drop the internal mic when the jack is inserted, not hard, just make sure the mini plug you use has a cutout. Now the tough part of the equation... the actual audio circuits of the camera. Since the camera is designed around a mic of known level and impedence, the audio circuit is much simpler than that in a camera designed to accept an external mic. The gain control ( agc or manual ) will be built to handle only the input from the stock mic. Some shotguns have a relatively hot input signal and may be too much for the limiters to handle.. resulting in even worse audio. Even higher end cameras are not designed to be a total solution to great audio.
http://www.gregjwinter.com/modification2.htm
Read the details, they may not make a lot of sense but are some indication of the intricacies of the mods needed to change the audio input and maintain sound quality. It goes far beyond simply throwing a mini jack in the mic line......
The best alternative to get good audio is record ontp a separate source. Check out some of the music videos we've done for the TV show on www.theundergroundtv.com click bands then scroll down to select the individual band pages, then click the video links. These were all recorded live in the venue. We use feeds from the PA board and two room mics to fill out the sound. These are fed into our 16 channel board and remixed for our levels. The sound engineer is there to get a good room sound based on the acoustics of the room, and that often doesn't give us good recording levels so we have to tweak his mix a bit. Each channle from our board is fed into a 12 channel input sound card, and each track is recorded separately into cakewalk on a PC. A lot of time we are only able to get 6 or 8 channels from the board, so we work with what we have. We do a final mix of the audio in cakewalk Now the console we use is a bit much to drag around for film making, we can set it up near the audio board in the venue and it sits there all night. Basically it is 150+ lb plywood case that is 2'w x 3.5'lx2'h with a complete PC, LCD screen KB mouse mixer hum eliminator etc all mounted in it with two drawers for cables, phones etc. A pain in the a$$ to get in and out of the back of a car LOL ( we have a van being modded to haul everything thankfully ) - but, for fewer inputs in the field the same concept could be applied with a small radio shack mixer ( they have one that will run on battery or AC for about $45.00 ) and a laptop or other digital recording device. Synching this master audio to the camera tracks is not all that hard, just takes some patience, and not a whole lot of that even after the first few times you do it. We use the camera audio to synch witht he master track, and usually synch anywhere from 5 to 8 cameras. depending on the venue we are shooting in. Each camera is dumped into it's own track in premiere, and then everything is synched at a start point. Now it's just a question of going thru the timeline and razoring the edit of the track you want. It usually takes me two or three hours to assemble the first cut of a video - my partner who does most of the music cutting can have the rough cut done in about an hour....