From the course: Video Foundations: Cameras and Shooting
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Setting proper audio levels
From the course: Video Foundations: Cameras and Shooting
Setting proper audio levels
Crisp clean sound can only be achieved by recording at optimal levels. You can use a great mic or boom as close as you can get, but if you're not mindful of where the Audio Level Meter should be on your LCD screen, you may still screw up your audio in the end. Now before I jump in too deep, note that some cameras like the one I'm using here, don't actually show decibel or dB indicators on the display. Instead, they just have a generic digital meter that rises and falls and turns red at the far right end whatever the audio over-modulates. In the rest of this movie as I talk about specific values, keep in mind that if your camera's meter has low and high level picking markers like this camera, the low-end mark is -20 dB and the high-end mark is -12 dB. Now if your Level Meter has no markers at all, you should pretty much just eyeball the meter and try to keep your levels just right of center. So where should your levels be? I've got six words for you baby, the super happy fun sound…
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