Panasonic PV-GS400 A/V in?

[stantheman1976]

Does the PV-GS400 have a way to run audio into the camera besides a mic? I'm trying to record audio from the soundboard at church. I'm recording the audio separately on a MD recorder, but I want to run the audio into the camera and record as one.

[yoda313]

Could you use a y-splitter to get the sound into the mic input jack??

[edDV]

Does the PV-GS400 have a way to run audio into the camera besides a mic? I'm trying to record audio from the soundboard at church. I'm recording the audio separately on a MD recorder, but I want to run the audio into the camera and record as one.

Simple way.

See if you can get a mic level 600ohm low impedance feed from the mixer. This will allow use of long balanced XLR mic cables.

Use an impedence matching transformer (Low to High Z Transformer) to feed the camcorder.

http://www.shure.com/accessories/a85f.asp
http://www.nationalavsupply.com/Product.aspx?DeptID=2&ClassID ... ProdID=677

A better way is to use a Beachtek type adapter (clones exist)
http://www.beachtek.com/

That will allow long cable low impedance line or mic levels from the mixer and give you manual gain controls. You could also get the house mix on one channel and just the preacher's mic on the second channel.

PS: Third way, you could get a wireless feed off the house mixer.

[stantheman1976]

Could you use a y-splitter to get the sound into the mic input jack??

Getting the right wire run is not the problem. If I pu anything besides a mic into that jack the sound comes out overloaded and distorted no matter what settings I change. There is an A/V input outpu plug that doubles as a headphone jack, but I think it may be just for dubbing tapes.

[stantheman1976]

Does the PV-GS400 have a way to run audio into the camera besides a mic? I'm trying to record audio from the soundboard at church. I'm recording the audio separately on a MD recorder, but I want to run the audio into the camera and record as one.

Simple way.

See if you can get a mic level 600ohm low impedance feed from the mixer. This will allow use of long balanced XLR mic cables.

Use an impedence matching transformer (Low to High Z Transformer) to feed the camcorder.

http://www.shure.com/accessories/a85f.asp
http://www.nationalavsupply.com/Product.aspx?DeptID=2&ClassID ... ProdID=677

A better way is to use a Beachtek type adapter (clones exist)
http://www.beachtek.com/

That will allow long cable low impedance line or mic levels from the mixer and give you manual gain controls. You could also get the house mix on one channel and just the preacher's mic on the second channel.

PS: Third way, you could get a wireless feed off the house mixer.

Thanks. Do you know exactly what's going on inside the camera that's making this happen?

[edDV]

Consumer equipment use high impedance (cheap) audio connections good for a few feet. Pro gear uses 600 ohm low impedance balanced audio for long quiet cable runs.

The Panasonic pro cams have the 600 ohm inputs.

[stantheman1976]

So would this work?

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?pg=2&parentPage=search&cp=&productId=20624...&tab=techSpecs

[edDV]

It would work for a guitar to XLR cable on one end and the Shure adapter on the camcorder end but aren't you coming off a house mixer?

What make/model mixer?
You want a low level mic output from the mixer to use the Shure adapter.

Doesn't your church have an audio guy?

[stantheman1976]

The board is a Soundlive 4 2 (that 4 and 2 there being 4 squared I believe). We have a couple guys who know enough about audio to hook the board up and put mics and such into it, but no one who has ever done any recording off a board, so I'm kind of trying to figure this out myself. The board has a L/R 1/4" Record output that I used to record onto Minidisc and it sounds great. If I can transform that output to go into the camera it would be great.

[edDV]

Try to find me a link to the mixer specs. All I find for Hangzhou SoundLive Electronics Co Ltd. are car amplifiers.

[stantheman1976]

Here's a PDF of the user's guide I got from someone else. You'll see where it shows outputs for a cassette recorder. That's what I used to record onto MD. This board was donated to us from another church who upgraded their equipment. Later this year we'll get a new sanctuary and all new A/V equipment. For now we're just trying to make the best out of what we have.

http://www.martinbluffchurch.com/spirit_live4_2_user_guide.pdf

[edDV]

OK, Soundcraft. Good mixer.

Follow wiring guide P6-P7

Use Aux Sends if free. 1/4" balanced connection mixer end to XLR at cam end. This is at line level so a mixer like the Beachtek is required at the camcorder end.

Alternate, call Soundcraft and ask it a Mic level send is possible so that the Shure transformer can be used into the camcorder.

[stantheman1976]

I'm looking at Shure's site you linked me to, but I can't find if there's a XLR male version of that transformer.

[edDV]

I'm looking at Shure's site you linked me to, but I can't find if there's a XLR male version of that transformer.

read above
It won't work with your mixer, not unless you talk to Soundcraft.

plus you can make a cable with a male or female connector.

[stantheman1976]

Or I can just forget about all that and learn to sync the SB Minisdisc audio up with the video. Is there a trick to that which wont' take weeks or months to learn?

[edDV]

You can lead a chimp to audio but you can't make it listen.

Someone else?

[dwill123]

I love VideoHelp.com but seriously this and any other question you have dealing with the PV-GS400 will be answered in about 30 seconds over at the Panasonic 3CCD User Forum.

[stantheman1976]

Ah, so now I'm a chimp, huh? Seriously though, I know you're getting frustrated with me. I appreciate you sticking in there this far. You just have to understand that this is the first experience I've ever had with any type of professional sound equipment. Even if it is a 10 year old used mixer. I don't totally understand everything you're saying, but I'm trying hard. I'm the kind of person who learns things most easily if I'm shown face to face. I understand that the simplest thing would be to buy that Beachtek adapter and be done with it, but that's at least $150 and I'd like to spend as little as possible on this since it's not a true necessity for our church. We have a good video camera and Rode Videomic to go with it, but filming from the back of church the mic pick ups a lot of extra noise. I have a MD recorder and the record out on the board works well with it. So I was just saying that if there are any tutorials or advice pages to show me how to mix the two that would eliminate the need to spend any more money.

[stantheman1976]

I love VideoHelp.com but seriously this and any other question you have dealing with the PV-GS400 will be answered in about 30 seconds over at the Panasonic 3CCD User Forum.

Didn't know that forum existed. I will check it out. Thanks.

[gadgetguy]

If you want to go the MD route, it should be fairly simple to extract the audio from the video to a wav. Open the wav in Audacity, then go to Project/Import and import the MD wav. By trimming or inserting silence you should be able to align and match for length the MD wav with the video wav and then close(remove) the video wav and export the modified MD wav for a perfectly matched audio file.

[Dosdan]

I do churchmixer-miniDV, churchmixer-MD, church mixer-MD & then later replace the miniDV soundtrack with the MD one, churchmixer-MD-(via the MD's lineout at low monitoring level)-miniDV, PA-MD & audience-miniDV and then mixdown to combine clear announcements/recorded music with audience response, all the time.

If mixer-miniDV cam: either take it off from the headphone output at very low headphone volume level into the miniDv's mike input or take it off the recording lineouts and attenutate it with 4 resistors (2 per channel). The level of attentuating will depend on whether its pro-level output (+4dBV) or comsumer-level (-10dBV). With a mike input I suppose -50 dbV would be OK so you're looking at 54 or 40 db of attenuation.

If combining MD with miniDV (either mixed in with the miniDV soundtrack or replacing it completely, you need to adjust for the different running times due to the two separate clocks in the MD and miniDV. I find that after about 50 mins the difference is about 280ms. I adjust for this by doing a time stretch in Adobe Audition of 99.9918% (working of memory here, I'm at work now). I bring the waveforms of the two different sources and look for prominant sync points similar in both waveforms to work out the amount of temporal drift. It requires a fair bit more effort when you have to resync more than once due to camera or MD pausing/ media or battery changing.

[Steve Stepoway]

Radio Shack has an "attenuating dubbing cord" that you can use, in a pinch, to run line-level from a mixing board to the mic input of a Panny. I've done it once or twice into my GS-250. It's only mono, so get 2 & adaptors, or plan on replacing 1 channel of your sound. Worked OK. Not as good a solution as a Beachtech-type box, but $$$ cheaper. I now use a box from Studio 1 (I think it is), and it's better. But I know how it is for churches -- I help run audio at mine.

Steve

[stantheman1976]

Can you link me to the cable you used?

[stantheman1976]

I do churchmixer-miniDV, churchmixer-MD, church mixer-MD & then later replace the miniDV soundtrack with the MD one, churchmixer-MD-(via the MD's lineout at low monitoring level)-miniDV, PA-MD & audience-miniDV and then mixdown to combine clear announcements/recorded music with audience response, all the time.

If mixer-miniDV cam: either take it off from the headphone output at very low headphone volume level into the miniDv's mike input or take it off the recording lineouts and attenutate it with 4 resistors (2 per channel). The level of attentuating will depend on whether its pro-level output (+4dBV) or comsumer-level (-10dBV). With a mike input I suppose -50 dbV would be OK so you're looking at 54 or 40 db of attenuation.

If combining MD with miniDV (either mixed in with the miniDV soundtrack or replacing it completely, you need to adjust for the different running times due to the two separate clocks in the MD and miniDV. I find that after about 50 mins the difference is about 280ms. I adjust for this by doing a time stretch in Adobe Audition of 99.9918% (working of memory here, I'm at work now). I bring the waveforms of the two different sources and look for prominant sync points similar in both waveforms to work out the amount of temporal drift. It requires a fair bit more effort when you have to resync more than once due to camera or MD pausing/ media or battery changing.

I'm having decent luck syching them in Ulead. Like you were saying, it does start to drift just a bit near the last part. When I lower the sound on the original audio at about 45-50 minutes I can hear the SB sudio going about 1/2 second before the cam audio. I'm using Cool Edit Pro. To stretch the time I go to Trasform>Time/Pitch>Stretch? Now where do I enter in either the 280ms or 99.9918% values? How do you figure out how much the differentce is? Compare the 2 in Audition and stretch a little at a time?

[Dosdan]

I'm using Cool Edit Pro. To stretch the time I go to Trasform>Time/Pitch>Stretch? Now where do I enter in either the 280ms or 99.9918% values? How do you figure out how much the difference is? Compare the 2 in Audition and stretch a little at a time?

Lets take the simplest case: the offest is linearly gradual and there's need no disruptions on to both the miniDV & MD's soundtracks.

1. Open up CEP in multitrack view

2. Use Alt 9 to open the file organiser (if not already open).

3. Open both waves.

4. Drag them from the Organiser on to the track waveform area.

5. I click on the track names on the left and change the Track titles from
Track 1 & 2 to Cam & MD to aviod confusion. I usually put the Cam as the first track and do not alter it. (Since it's in sync with the video, I don't want to change its length at all).

6. Press Alt-9 again to close the file organsiser to maximise horizontal screen space.

7. Now you're got to sync the start. (It's impossible to start the cam & the MD at exactly the same time.) Look for a prominant part of the waveform that is common to both displays. As long as this is within say 5 mins of the beginning of the Cam start so there has not been much drift yet. Move either the Cam or MD waveform to the right until the prominant point coincides when you zoom in on the timescale. Also Zoom in on the vertical track view so your only dealing with two tracks to maximise their height on the screen.) Usually I can find some point and sync to less tham 5ms difference. (Since MD is a lossy recording medium, there may be phase differences but you can usually see a similar start point.)

8. Once you got the start points synced, right-click on each track and lock it it time so you won't shift it by mistake. You keep the Cam track locked now, but you will need to unlock it later.

9. Now, asuming both tracks are only single sessions (no breaks) you need to find a prominant point that in within about 5 mins of the end of the cam track. Say it was 60 mins long and you find a point near the end that differs between the now-start-aligned tracks by 343 ms. You highlight the complete MD track (actually the part that overlaps the Cam's length since you may have started the MD before and stopped it after the Cam.).

10. Unlock the MD track now (you do not do this until after you work out the end point to minimise the chance of moving it accidentially left or right.)

11. Open the highlighted MD track in solo waveform view. Say that cam waveform is 3600 secs between the start & end sync point and the MD one is 3600.343 secs. A calculator shows the diff is 99.99047% or 100.00954 % (depending on whther it's longer or shorter that the Cam length. I always get confused but once you've done it once CEP will have the last ratio you used still in the Timestreach box and the drifts usually close, so it remind you which value to use).

12. Enter the timestreach ratio and then you should see the track length, in this example, of MD change to 3600 secs.

13. Switch back to mutitrack view and confim that your end points now coincide. If not, undo your timestrech and try agin.

14. If they do coincide, lock the MD track and then look for a prominant point half-way through to confirm that the drift was linear. They should be within 5-10 ms of each other near the middle.

15. Finally chop the Cam track so neither it's beginning or end is outside the lenght of the Cam track. If you started the MD after the Cam (not usually the case), you will need to insert silence at the beginning of the MD, and when your working on the final video, crop off the silent start of the video.

If dealing with disrupted recordings, you have to work out where the disruptions occur and split the MD track at that point and process the segments individually. Generally, the offset in the clocks of the MD & Cam will be a constant value and once you've worked it out for a major (longish) segment, the same time stretch percentage will work for the smaller segments to.

Generally when doing MD/Cam sych recording, try to keep both running uninterupted for as long as possible to make it earier to sync them afterwards.

[edDV]

or you could record sync audio from the house mixer.

[Dosdan]

Yes, direct in to the Cam is easiest. But sometimes you can't physically get near the PA/Mixer or you want to set the camera up a long way away. Eventually I'll set up a radio link for this and remote mic situations. But RF interference with the the mixer might be a concern.

[stantheman1976]

I found out yesterday that we are getting some new sound equipment in the near future. We have a certain budget approved and I'm going to throw that Beachtek adapter in as a suggestion and that will take care of everything. I just wanted to avoid that at first because I can't afford it myself and I didn't think the church wanted to spend any money on things that weren't totally necessary, but our praise director REALLY wants some new A/V stuff and got the money approved.

[edDV]

You need to work out a mix with the guy driving the mixer. House sound reenforcement is very differenent from a video sound mix. It will be a compromise. Larger boards allow separate mixes and equalization.

[Steve Stepoway]

Can you link me to the cable you used?

I think it was catalog number 42-2152 Remember it's mono.