anyone own it yet? if you do, Are you going to synch your sound from another audio sorce?

-- Aaron Chapplin (digitalriot@earthlink.net), November 07, 1999

Answers

I own one, have had it for a month. I did 2 infomercials so far with it, one had 2 mikes, 1 on a boom above the two actors and another one aimed at studio audience. The XLR's plugged into a Studio One XLR Pro, like the Beachtek, but quieter on the Canons, the XLR Pro has different ground settings, and both inputs are adjustable. There has been so much fuss and muss about the AGC permanently on, especially in the usenet groups, but I have yet to talk with anyone who actually shoots with one, who has had a problem. This has frightened a lot of people away, everyone thinks that the camera is going to boos every single audio signal, so if people are talking and then they are quiet, all of a sudden the ambient noise will rise up to the same level, but this is not the case, the AGC seems to be a newer technology then older AGC circuits, and in the case of the Canon GL1, I actually get a more realistic balance between low level noises and louder noises. It seems that I have notice the AGC mostly when loud noises occur near the microphones, it seems to cut the noise down below clipping, thats the only time I have noticed this circuit, is in cutting, I have yet to experience it boost anything, the circuitry does a nice job in keeping the levels where they are. Noise from camera is non-existent (I sometimes use a Sennheiser shotgun mic mounted on camera). The AGC does have attenuation, and Canon says to turn attenuation on when using external mics, I did not do this when I used the two mics and the Studio XLR Pro. The other Infomercial I shot with the GL1 was with 5 mics hooked into a small Mackie mixer and had a balanced output running into the XLR PRO, this time I turned attenuation on, left the XLR PRO inputs at normal and adjusted levels on the Mackie mixer, we would slowly bring up the office crowd talking, slowly from a very low level to a medium level and had the other group much higher level and the GL1 respected the levels and did not boost or attempt to override any thing, in the final video I was pleased to notice that the slow noise fades were exactly as we had planned them, and there were a couple of instances where we had too high of a mix for a few seconds, but nicely, no clipping or distortion, we were able to fix in post. But very nice audible quality in the low low levels. Nicest job of audio I've seen versus TRV900 (which was good) and the VX1000.

-- Brian (augmoon@earthlink.net), November 12, 1999.