iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Replace the Microphone

The built-in microphone on your camcorder can’t be beat for convenience. It’s always there, it’s always on, and it’s always pointing at what you’re filming.

Unfortunately, camcorder microphones have several disadvantages. For example:

• They’re usually mounted right on the camera body. In quiet scenes, they can pick up the sound of the camcorder itself—a quiet grinding of the electronic motor, or the sound of the lens zooming and focusing.

• If your subject is farther than a few feet away, the sound is much too faint. The powerful zoom lens on modern camcorders exaggerates this problem. If your subject is 50 feet away, the zoom may make it look as though you’re right up close, but the sound still has to come from 50 feet away.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONAutomatic Gain Control

Where’s the recording-volume knob on my camcorder?

There isn’t one. Modern consumer camcorders use something called automatic gain control(AGC). They set the volume level automatically as you record.

That may sound like a neat feature, but it drives professionals nutty. AGC, in essence, strives to record all sound at exactly the same level. When something is very loud, the AGC circuit quiets it down to middle volume; when something is very soft, the AGC circuit boosts it to middle volume.

Over the years, automatic-gain circuitry has dramatically improved. The electronic boosting or quieting is smoother and less noticeable than it once was. Even some modern camcorders, however, sometimes exhibit ...