Record Pro Sound with an iPhone: YouTube, Podcasts, VO, Movies & More

1. Introduction to the Course: A question I get a lot is how do you record good sound or the smartphone? On my YouTube channel, I focus a lot on the video and cinematography side of mobile filmmaking. But of course, audio is equally important. You'll often hear that sound is 50% or more of the perceived quality of your production. And that's true. What did surprise you to learn that all the voiceovers I do on my YouTube channel or recorded into my phone. Yep, they are. Mobile devices today are much more powerful than people even realize. And with a little bit of know-how and a few of the right app, you can literally build a mobile studio that you carry in your pocket. Whether you're making YouTube videos or indie films, doing corporate video work or mobile journalism, or maybe recording voice-overs or podcast name. This course will teach you how to record great sound using your smartphone. So first up, just the very basic comparison to help you understand the difference in sound between using the onboard built-in phone Mike versus an external mic. Alright, so this is the iPhone with just the built-in my no external night. I'm in a room and the room has some bounce to it. And I'm about 3 ft from the camera or using the native camera app. So this is how the audio sound using the built-in mic and the iPhone. And this is how the audio sounds using an external mic. This is the Rode Video micro. I'm the same distance away from the camera. This room is a little bit echoey, has a bounce to it, but you should be able to hear the difference between using an external mic and the built-in camera Mike. Again, this is an external mic, the road video micro, and I've connected it to the iPhone using a lightening adapter to create professional work using a smartphone, you want to treat it like any other camera, meaning use the appropriate gear and accessories. Here that of course means microphones. 2. Mics - Small On-Camera: This is an iPhone 11, and I just want to make it clear that it doesn't matter what kind of phone you're using. I just happen to be using an iPhone 11. That's actually an iPhone Pro Max. Most any phone will work with a microphone and external mic. Now, the newer phones has really good built-in mic, surprisingly good. As long as you're close to the camera, of course. There's a mic here. There's a mike at the base, and there's another mic up here. So that's three built-in mikes. And again, if you're close to this, it can be surprisingly good and it can actually record in stereo. And I'll go over that in just a little bit. But we're recording voices. You tend to want to record in mono. One thing to keep in mind too though, is just because this is a phone doesn't mean you can't treat it like a traditional camera, whether that's shooting video or using microphones. This is a small shotgun mic. It's a very small mic, but it's designed for smartphones, although it'll work with traditional cameras too. It's a Rode Video micro, and it just clips on the cold shoe of your device. With a phone, you would have to put it in a case or with a traditional camera. Many of those have cold shoes on them, but these are great and this one's only about $60. Now, I'm not really here to push different brands. I will make recommendations. The idea though is to get a microphone and external microphone that will record better audio than your internal mites. And that is regardless of the camera too, because most traditional cameras have built-in mikes as well. This type of Mike would be mounted on the camera more times than not, again, this size, bigger boom mikes would be on a boom pole and typically used on larger productions. There a little bit big to put on your camera, and I'll talk about those in a little bit. But just getting a simple mike like this can really improve the sound quality of your audio. Now, one thing with this type of mic is it will come with what's called a dead cat or a wind mf, basically it just blocks the wind. I tend to leave this on all the time. It's a little bit big and can be kind of annoying sometimes because it can get down into your shot. When it's mounted on your phone. Again, you would need a mount to put this on this phone. But using these wind ***** is really important as well. Especially if you're outside, but also even inside because they can help block when from hitting the mic and creating plosives. Plosives are the harsh words you get with peas, sometimes tease, and this can help block that. On some mikes you might use a pop filter, but in this case, this can work to block the wind and also to block your breath from hitting the mic. Now, with this kind of might, and if you put it on your camera, on your phone, you do still need to be fairly close. Probably within two or 3 ft of your camera. When you see people vlogging with this type of mic on their camera using a wide lens. And so they're actually very close to the camera, much closer than you might think they are. So when screens or dead cats, whatever you wanna call them, are really important for these kind of small Mike's, especially shooting outside. One thing you'll notice though, about these type of mix is they have an analog input. Now this is called TRR S. That means it has three little lines here. And I'm not gonna go into too much technical aspect of that, but this is designed to work with a smartphone. If you have two lines, it's designed to work with a traditional camera, typically speaking. Now, with newer devices though, iPhone and Android, there is no input for analog audio. So what do you do? Well, the good news is they make cables. This is a cable that goes from the 3.5 millimeter analog connection to a lightening connection. And so that just goes in there. And then that connects to your phone. Now, again, it doesn't matter what kind of phone you have. They would make this if you have a USB phone for Android, or in the future, if iPhone gets rid of the lightning port, which has been rumored for awhile, they may have USB or a different port or they may even go wireless. Now if they go wireless, that's a whole different ballgame. The mix will probably connected via Wi-Fi or potentially Bluetooth. That's a whole another topic. But for right now, just know to connect a traditional mike like this, you're going to need an adapter. Now they do make mistakes like this that have lightning ports built-in. But most of the Mikes that I'll talk about in this course and that I use have analog connection and so we adapt them to the device. 3. Mics - Small On-Camera Mounting: So to use this type of a mic with a cold shoe adapter, you need a rig for your phone. Now it doesn't have to be this big of a rig. This is a shoulder pod and this one is a little bit bulky. But depending on what you're doing, it's a pretty popular option because not only does it hold your phone, you have a good grip. It has cold shoes on it. And so the cold shoes, you can mount your audio, your microphone, or you can mount a light. And so this is just one option. There are other options. There are smaller, more portable type mounts that will just hold your phone and connect it to a tripod. And by the way, this connects to a tripod to, there's also cages like from B script and a myriad of other companies. I'm not going to go into too much detail there, but you will need a device to mount the microphone too. And I'll put a list of different options in the additional resources. So you take your mic. Here's the cold shoe, and you just connect it. Then the actual connection to the mic itself goes into the phone. And now you're ready to shoot. This could be a good setup for doing any kind of video work, whether you're vlogging or if you are doing mobile journalism, or if you're making YouTube videos, a wide variety of different things you can do with this type setup. Again, this one's probably a little bit big for certain applications. If you're doing more professional work though, this is, this is more than fine. And a little tip here. Oftentimes, I will take a setup like this, put it on my desk because this will stand up on its own. And then you can actually record voiceovers directly into this might. And we'll talk more about doing traditional voice-over work with your smartphone. But this is a good high because you've got an affordable might record it right into your smartphone, on your desk or wherever you've been out on location. And you can get surprisingly good results with a simple setup just like this. And again, this is like $160 mic. The shoulder pod is about 60 bucks. And so you're not talking about a whole lot of money to have a complete setup that you can have in your office or wherever you want to be in your home studio and your house and your car. And you're able to record professional quality audio with your smartphone. Again, this kind of Mike is really best for doing on-camera stuff for vlogging or interviews if you're up close to someone like for Event work or even for shooting B-roll, you're recording natural sound. In other words, the environmental sounds around you. And so it's just a really good general purpose type of mike setup. 4. Mics - Lavalier: Alright, now the next Mike I want to talk about is a lavalier mike. Now this is one from rhode. Lavalier mics are a very common type of mite that you use typically in interview situations. You'll see news reporters. Where are these all the time. You'll see any kind of people doing TV shows wearing a lot of Mike and they just clip on your shirt. I'm actually using a lav mic right now to record this demo. Lab mikes are very versatile and often a really good way to go, especially when you're recording voice. Not great for recording general ambiance and that kind of stuff. It's much better for recording someone's voice. Now the same thing goes for this type of connection is went for the previous night. This is an analog connection. Now Rode makes a lav mic just like this that is designed specifically for smartphones. It's called the Smart Law of plus. This is the same Mike is that however, this works with traditional cameras along with smartphones. So you would just adapt this to go into the phone like I did on the previous one. Or you can run this into a wireless mike pack. And that's actually what I do with this, might quite a bit. I use it with the road wireless go. The main thing about using a lav mic is sometimes the audio is not quiet as high-quality for lack of better word than using a traditional boom mic or a shotgun mike buffer, corporate type video or interviews. Lab mikes are really good way to go. 5. Mics - Wireless: So continuing with using lab mikes, they tie in very nicely to wireless mikes. This one in particular because it is part of the road wireless go set up. And so you can think of these as just an extension of the lav mic. Because instead of having to plug the lav mic into your home, you can then plug the wireless receiver of a wireless kit into your phone and then have the transmitter. This is actually the receiver here. This would go with your phone. And then the transmitter. You can plug a mike right into that. Then you have this on your body. And you can walk around freely and then talk to the camera. Or you could even just record voice-over is with a might pack like this. The nice thing about the road wireless go set up though, is it actually has a built-in mic capsule right there. And you can actually record voice-overs or just clip this right here to your collar. And you've got a self-contained wireless mike system. The mike, and there is not bad. It's actually pretty good considering it's built-in to a transmitter using a lavalier mic with it, I do think has better performance. And so this is a very good way to go. But if you have this kit is a good option just to be able to quickly and easily use this setup to record a voiceover. Again, if you're running a YouTube channel or just doing corporate video, or especially if you're just doing a voice-over, This is a really easy and affordable way to get high-quality audio. This wireless kit is around $200. And there are other brands like one from Kamioka that are very similar to these and less expensive. So you don't have to break the bank to be able to get very good quality wireless audio. Just a few years ago, this was not even imaginable. A wireless mike kit would cost minimum $500 or more. Now some high-end professional kids can cost thousands of dollars, but we're not talking about those right now. These will give you excellent results for a very affordable price. 6. Mics - Wireless Mounting: So just a continuation here with how to use these wireless mikes. You might be wondering how does that connect to a phone? Well, again, kinda like with the other mic that I showed earlier, you have to have a cage of some kind or some sort of mount. Now this is a B script cage. This is a very popular cage. Your phone mounts in there and then it has a handle and it actually has another side here. This slides on to put lenses and stuff on your phone. But I like to use it what I call this half Kd set up a lot, especially if you're just connecting like microphones to it and not trying to do something overly complicated. And the Mike I'm using now of course as this road wireless mike. And the nice thing about these Rode mics, or they have this clip on the back. So you can clip this on a belt or whatever or to another camera or they're designed to clip onto a cold shoe. And so it just goes right on there. And so now all you have to do is connect the cable. This the same type cable connector that was used on the road video micro, the small little shotgun mike. You have a 3.5 millimeter analog connector. Trr S goes into that to a lightening adapter that goes into the phone. And then this cable goes into the receiver here. Now you are set up and ready to go. And these mikes are wireless mikes, of course. And they connect via Wi-Fi and not WI-FI like in your house, they create a Wi-Fi connection between each other. And this one's good up to about 200 or so feet. And so you would simply turn on the receiver, turn on the wireless mic, and they're instantly connected. You can see here there's a meter and they're connected. Now you are set up in recording audio into your phone with wireless mikes. And now this is a little more expensive setup. But keep in mind, you can use this with any kind of camera. I'm just adapting it right now to work with a smartphone. This will work with any kind of mirrorless camera or any kind of larger professional camera as well. And so the mike setup is about $200. The microphone here though we'll lav mic is about 70 BCE. Cage is about 130 ish. And so you're looking at about $400 here. But again, to be able to get into a wireless mike setup for that small amount of money and having it be very versatile, I really think is amazing today. And again, you can record all this into the smartphone. You already own. A smartphone is not an additional expense. You already own this. And again, there are some other brands of wireless mikes if you're interested. Kamioka is the one that is very similar to this. As a matter of fact, they more or less took the road design and made it a little bit better in some respects. The best thing about this setup is it's super easy to use. And again, it won't break the bank. It's a little more expensive than buying a traditional lav mic or buying a shotgun might. But depending on what you're doing, a wireless mike setup like this can be really beneficial to your productions. 7. Mics - Larger Shotgun: Okay, now I'm looking at some larger shotgun mites. These mikes you wouldn't necessarily use on your phone. Although with this DT, this is a deity Mike and this is one from road. You could use the DD mike on a phone, but it's getting a little bit big. Normally you would use these on a boom arm. And for larger productions, more like shooting movies or commercials, or bigger corporate pieces, or doing interviews where you might have a mike up on the stand over a interviewee or maybe a spokesperson. It just really depends, but these mikes are a little heavier duty and they are more expensive, especially this Mike. And they really do a different type of job than the previous Mike's. I've shown similar but different. If you're doing blogging though, you could use this deity might. This is a shotgun mic. It's battery-powered and so you charge it by USB-C, and that's how this one works as well. This also has a built-in battery. Lots of times with these mics, especially XLR type Mike's, this is an XLR mic, so it's a professional connection. They require phantom power. Now I want to get too into the weeds here. But these mixed with batteries or self-power, you don't have to provide power. Some mikes, you have to put batteries in or send power from a camera. With these types of my eggs, they have a built-in battery, which is great, and they last a long time. You don't have to charge these all the time. I usually charge it after I do a shoot. And then the standby time is actually very good. So this has a cold shoe mount and can go right on the topic of a camera, just like I showed earlier with the Rode Video micro. And again, you could mount this on top of the beast cage like I showed, or the shoulder pod. But again, more times than not, I would put this on a pole, boom pole, and then put it over a scene, you're booming a scene. This is also a windscreen and it works just like the other wind screens. I tend to leave these on all the time. I rarely take these off because not only can they work for dampening wind outside, they can also work to knock down plosives. Now I mentioned this one. This is a road in T G4 plus road has a lot of different microphones, a lot of different shotgun mikes. This is one of their mid-range Mike. I think this one is about 300 or so dollars. This mike is about $200. So again, you can see you're getting a little bit more expensive with this type of Mike. It really just depends on what kind of projects you're producing. This also has a windscreen. I rarely use this one. I usually use the other one to the side there. But they weren't very similar. This again is a windscreen and then this is a dead cat. It's thicker and heavier duty. And this further on here really helps knock down the wind. And so I usually leave this on all the time. But for demonstration purposes right now, I just wanted to show you the mic. And one thing about these mixes, they do have different settings where you can boost the gain insight or lower the gain. Gain is the, let's say your camera or your app needs a hotter signal. You can boost that with these type Mike's. That's one thing that makes them a little bit more expensive. They also have a way to, yeah, here's the gain on that one. You can boost it. Then this one has a way to cut different frequencies depending on what you're recording. Sometimes when you put a dead cat on, you'll get more lower-end and you can cut that. Again, I don't want to get too technical. Now you have more control when using a higher-end mike like this. You might be wondering if you could even use this with a phone though. And the answer is yes. They make adapters and that's what this is. This is a PRR s And so this goes right into a phone. If he had a phone with an analogue input, and this is XLR. This is a professional audio connection that goes into there. This is the same adapter I've been using throughout these videos. It is TRS to lightning. Then you are right into your phone. And so yes, you can use much more professional microphones with your smartphone. And again, the main reason you can do that as these are self-powered mikes. And so when you power this on, whatever app you're using will see this microphone. And this mike works the same way. It has an analog input. So you can plug this into traditional cameras. It will also plug into mobile devices. And, or you can use the adapter. 8. Mics - Shotgun Mounts (XLR): Now I want to talk a little bit more about this road, Mike. This is the N T G4 plus. And it's a little bit unique compared to the other micas I've shown because it is really designed for larger, more professional environments or productions. You also need a handle to get it working. You can't just connect this to a phone or a camera without something like this. This is called a pistol grip. The mic actually goes through this contraption. And then this would actually mount on the boom pole. And so with this type of Mike to you have to connect it via an XLR cable. Xlr cables are professional might cables. I'm sure you've seen these at concerts or any kind of event you've been to, whether it's a V. Then if you wanted to record into your phone, you would just connect this back into it, this adapter, and then that will go into the phone. Or what I typically do when I'm using larger, more professional Mike's like this. As I run this cable into a recorder, a field recorder, it could be a task cam recorder, or a zoom recorder, or a sound ideas recorder. There are numerous recorders in the market that you can use. So when you do that, you're doing what's called double system sound. You're shooting with your phone. You wouldn't have any audio going into the phone. You would just be recording with the MIC of your device. And then the audio you record with this into the recorder. You would take that back in post-production. You would think those two together. So you're recording scratch track audio or reference audio on your phone. And then the audio recorded with this mic into the external recorder. That is your true production audio. You didn't marry those together in post-production? I do this all the time on any movie I shoot for sure. Or if I'm doing a higher-end corporate video where you want to have the most control over your audio. Using an XLR mic, typically speaking, you would do double system sound. Or if you wanted to, you could use an adapter and go directly into the phone. Either way with this kind of setup, you'll get excellent results. But for the purposes of this course, I'm going to focus on recording audio into a smartphone versus an external recorder. 9. Mics - Handheld & Studio: Alright, now here's one last Mike I want to look at, or style of Mike, I should say, and this is a handmade. You've undoubtedly seen these before too. You might have a reporter holding one doing a newscast, or you might see someone doing an interview for a corporate video, man on the street kind of video stuff. This one's unique though it's by sin Hazor and they call it a hand mike digital. Now, I think now apogee has taken over this brand or synthesizer, has licensed it to apogee. I can't say for 100%, but I do know that these are quality mikes. These are fairly expensive Mike's all things consider this makes about $250 in that range, but the quality of this mic is really good. It has a built-in windscreen for lack of a better word. And the really nice thing is this has a lightning connector and so no adapter required. This just plugs in directly to your phone. And that's it. You plug that in and you can now start recording really high-quality audio. So the type of projects you'd probably use for this are more journalism style projects where you're interviewing people or where you are on camera, almost like doing a stand-up in a news piece. You might use it in a documentary or in corporate type work or commercial work where you're interviewing people on the street, man on the street, you put the mic in someone's face. But what I also use this for is voice-over work. Now, doing voiceover work, you don't want to handle the mic because you can have mike sounds when you handle it. And that can be a problem. Sometimes even using it as a handheld mic, you gotta be really careful and hold it steady. By using it for voice-over is you can put it in a stand. This is small stand that I picked up. The mic just slips right into it. You can set this on your desk and you can easily do voice-overs with this setup. And again, you can record directly into your phone with the setup. And so it's very convenient. And you can again get really good high-quality sound doing this. 10. Mics - Handheld & Studio Accessories: Using this mike is a voice-over Mike. You might want to add a couple of accessories to it to. One would be again, like a wind screen like this. Even being inside this can help knock down your breath when it hits the mite, which can again help with plosives. And so that can go on the mic. You could also use it when you're outside, if you're doing man on the street kind of thing or interviews. The other piece of the puzzle would be a pop filter. Pop filters go in front of the mic. This connects to that and then it would bend around like that. What a pop filter does is really help prevent plosives. Plosives, again are harsh breaths that come out when you say peas or teas, and even sometimes Ss and other different consonants that can create breath hitting the microphone. And so these are very affordable. This pop filter was under 20 bucks. And this windscreen came in a set and it was like under $10. These little accessories can really improve though. The sound of your voice over is really improve them. So if you go with them like like this, or if you use a USB mic, like a Yeti mic, a Yeti mics are great. I use those quite a bit myself. I would call these studio mics. And so if you use these type of Mike's, picking up these extra accessories will make them sound that much better. Pop filters and wind screens really will improve your voice-overs. And you can use all this and get awesome results recording directly into your phone. 11. "Wireless Mic" Hack: So of course you can use the iPhone with just its built-in mic. I'm doing that right now. And you can see the meter is bouncing right here in this app. Or you can connect another mike to it. I went over different lab mikes and this is a different kind of lav mic. It is a lightening law of Mike. It's from sanitizer, it's called the mike digital. You can plug this directly into the phone. And now you have a Just the level here. Now you have a wired law of Mike that works directly with an iPhone know adapter needed. Now you could use one of the other mix from road or one of the other brands I mentioned. But the nice thing about this one again is that it connects directly into the iPhone would know adapter needed. So you could use this setup to record audio. You can clip this onto your shirt. And this is a traditional lapel mic, a lavalier mic. Or, and this is what I wanted to really talk about. You could use this as a wireless mike. I would call this more of a hack. And so what you would do is set this up just like this. Take the phone, dropped the phone into your pocket. Of course, attach the might to your shirt, and then this becomes a wireless mike. Now obviously you wouldn't be able to record video with your phone using this setup. But what you would do like in this example here, I'm about 20 ft from a camera. I shot this with a GoPro actually. So here is the foundation. It's ready to go for these shed installed tomorrow. And so I recorded the audio with the iPhone in my pocket. I also recorded audio with the GoPro, and then in post-production, I took those two and I married the sounds together. So the reference sound from the GoPro and then the production audio from the phone. And then you delete the audio from the GoPro and you've got your wireless mic audio. So here is the foundation. It's ready to go for these shed installed tomorrow? Yeah, the shed does get installed tomorrow. Now, I want to be clear, this isn't necessarily the right way to do it or the wrong way to do it. It's the way I did it. It's a total DIY project. If you don't want to spend the money on a wireless mic, but you need those occasionally, this is a good hack. Or of course, you can use this just like this and any kind of scenario you could do voice-overs with this or you could record interviews for a corporate video or for YouTube videos. You can even record podcasts like this. Not the best mic to record a podcast with. However, if this is all you got, this will work great. So the main point I want to make here with a very minimal setup, you have a lot of different ways you can go. And so this becomes a very versatile tool to use in a multitude of situations. 12. Mics - Recap: Be sure to choose the right Might for the job. But of course, keep in mind there can be multiple ways to go for interviews and some on-camera talking head work. Lab mikes are a great way to go. This includes wired or wireless mikes for vlogging or solo on-camera work, especially when you're a one man band operator, like with YouTube videos, a small shotgun style Mike as an excellent choice for voice-over work or podcasting. A studio style mic is typically the best option. And there are lots of these to choose from depending on your budget. Narrative work like movies or documentaries or commercials, a larger shotgun mic is often the best choice. And note too, that this type of Mike could really also be used in most or all the previously mentioned kinds of work to, it really just depends on the type of project you're doing and of course what gear you have. And one last note, these are really just general guidelines because in the end, any of these mikes could work. The most important thing is to record the best sound possible. 13. What Are Polar Patterns?: Before we talk about Mike placement, we first need to understand the way different Mike's pickup sounds. All microphones have what is known as a polar pattern. Simply put, a polar pattern is a microphone directionality, how it does or does not pick up sounds from different angles center to its axis. The different polar patterns we'll look at are cardioid, super cardioid, hyper cardioid, bidirectional, also known as figure eight, and omnidirectional. Each of the Mikes I discussed uses one of these patterns. And so it's a good idea to have a basic understanding of how that affects your recordings. Cardioid mics have a heart-shaped polar pattern and are the most common directional mics used. These are excellent at focusing on one sound source and minimizing off-axis sounds from the sides and rear the mic. Microsoft featured with this pattern or the hand mike digital, the blue yet a USB mic, and the smaller shotgun mike from road. These are great for recording voices, especially when close to the microphone. Super cardioid and hyper cardioid mics, which are longer shotgun mikes, have a much narrower polar pattern and reject even more off-axis sound. The longer the tube but the microphone, the narrower the polar pattern, which has a side note, can sometimes also be called a super cardioid lobar polar pattern, depending on what shotgun mic is being used. The road in Tg four plus and the deity V might D3 Pro I featured are examples of super cardioid mics. And these are great for recording sounds at a distance. They can also work up close as well. A common use would be having a shotgun microphone, a boom pole for location recording of an actor's voice and a film or a TV show. Bidirectional or figure eight polar patterns pickup equal amounts of sound from the front and rear the mic, but then minimize the sounds from the side. The Blue Yeti mic is an example of this polar pattern. And by the way, it actually has a switch on it that allows it to change to different patterns. So that's why it also has a cardioid pattern and an omni-directional one as well. Bidirectional my eggs can be used for recording multiple people on a podcast or in a group setting, and they capture a more natural sound of the room ambiance and environment. The omni-directional polar pattern is pretty self-explanatory as it captures sound in all directions and creates a very natural soundscape. The most common type of omni-directional mic or lavalier mics, like the roadblock go I featured. These mikes allow the person wearing it to move freely and not worry about the directionality of the polar pattern. As it will pick up everything close to it, which can be good and also bad. Especially if you're recording in a noisy location. And typically speaking, lab mikes are most commonly used to record someone's voice. So polar patterns are an important factor to consider when choosing a mite. And then that of course, ties into where you place the mic before you record. 14. Lav Mic Placement: Lavalier mics are one that you will work with a lot, especially if you do any kind of corporate video or interview work. These are probably the most common type of microphone that you will use. And they look simple, and they are simple. But to get the best results, you need to know how to attach them to someone. And of course what I'm referring to is Mike placement. I've got a shirt here. I thought this was a good way to demonstrate. This is a men's golf shirt, which would be not uncommon at all to see on a shoot. You could also pretend this is a dress shirt with the buttons. This type of shirt is the easiest to work with, either that or a jacket. Shirts that don't have buttons are a little bit different and you'd have to kind of go with what you got. But when you have buttons, the best way to do it is they actually have the talent, run the microphone up their shirt. And usually what I like to do on this kind of shirt is put it through the bottom opening. If there's two buttons. And then when the Mike comes up, you have multiple ways you can attach it. But before you do that, the one thing that I learned long ago and then I practice whenever I put a mic on a shirt, I usually take my hand like this. And let's say the person's mouth is about where my pinky is. And then your thumb is about where you want to put the might and that's about anywhere 6-8 " below where their mouth is. And so then you can attach it simply on the shirt and you could run this down like this, the wire. However, that looks a little bit unattractive. And so what I tend to do is loop the wire back behind the mic. So I loop it like this once. And then I loop again behind the clip. And so then when you actually clip it to the shirt, it hides that back loop and just shows the one loop on the front. And that way you have a fairly neat looking microphone setup. One thing too, if you're working with a coat, the clip may need to be on the other side. And with a mic like this, you can just flip it. By the way, this is a road Mike. So then you would take the clip and let's say you wanted it to be on that side like that. So you would just flip Mike around. Now. So I've got the might flip to the opposite side. So if the lapel was on this side, you can then clip it on like that and do the opposite with the loop. Do it like that, and then clip it on. Obviously this is on this side, so I wouldn't need to do that, but you can do it if you need to go to the left side. But what if you're doing something like a movie and you don't want to see the mike on your collar. Well, I'm going to show you how to do that too. And for this demo, I'm going to turn the shirt inside out. If you were really doing this onset, you would potentially pull the shirt off the actor first, or you would just do this with them pulling the shirt up. And I said actor didn't have to be actor. Could be a spokesperson or just someone like yourself on camera. You want to hide the microphone. What I normally do is take the mic and you put it in about the same position, kind of right in the middle of your chest. And for this kind of thing, depending on the shirt, I would take the little windscreen off most of these lavalier Thai Mike's, you can pull the wind screens off. Then I also take the clip off. I'll take the windscreen and the clip off. Then I would take the mike underneath the shirt. And all I'm using is gaff tape. This is just plain old gaff tape that you would use on a film set any day. And so you would take the mic and you would simply tape it on the inside of the shirt. I've got a second piece here too. Depending on how much activity the person is going to be doing, you might take one more down there. Every situation will be different. And so this way the mic is hidden under the clothes. And then the actor can do whatever they need to do in the scene and not worry about showing a microphone. Now, I will say that in my experience, I would use this as a backup, not as the main might. Oftentimes, again, depending on the site, this might rub against the person's skin or their clothes and get a rustling sound. And so often on a movie, especially you might put a mic on the actor, but then also still use a traditional boom mic, a shotgun might the shotgun mike would be your main audio for the scene and then the lavalier mic would be a backup or a safety. But it's great to have options and this is definitely one way I've done it in the past that works pretty well. 15. Shotgun Mic (Boom) Placement: This is a pretty common type of a setup you might do for a corporate interview or any kind of testimonial. If you're going to someone's house or even a YouTube channel, it just depends on what you're doing, but this kind of scenario is fairly common. And so what we're going to look at here is how to position a shotgun mike in an interview situation. We are recording in a fairly bouncy echoey room, which I told you not to record in. But I'm going to attempt to make it work because sometimes you don't have a choice. And in those situations, a lot of that can depend on the way you place the mite. The number one thing you want to do is get the mic as close to the talent as possible. And that will depend on the size of shot you have on the camera or what lens you're using. If you're using a wider shot, it's much more difficult, but a tighter shot. And especially in a scenario like this would be the advisable way to go. So here are three different lens looks just using the built-in iPhone cameras. Here's the ultra-wide. Obviously this wouldn't work. Here's the wide. Now you could make this work with some adjustments. And here's the telly. This situation again, this is how I would shoot. It. Might check 123. My cheque. Being that most people that shoot this kind of stuff are doing it as a one man band or just a couple of people. I like to have the mic on a stand. So when you're adjusting the mic that way, once you've got it, set, it set. If you had a boom operator that would be different. Sometimes the boom can dip into the shot and so that can be problematic. Although having someone hold the boom can oftentimes be more advantageous than not. However, I use these types of setups all the time and it's one of my preferred ways to work. And so the nice thing about a stand is that you can raise and lower it very easily. Again, in a scenario like this, I would work to get them might just add a frame so it's as close as possible to the talent. Now one thing about this particular mic setup, this is the deity and the way it mounts, it doesn't have a way to tilt the MYC once it's on the boom pole. The road Mike I showed earlier in the course, it had a pistol grip and pistol grip so good for tilting and Mike once it's on the arm. So again, you can't do that with this. And so you need to position the mic over the talent with the actual stand. And not only can the stand go up and down using the head, it can also tilt. Because one thing that I tend to do is I like to have the mic tilting at the talents mouth at a little bit of an angle. You don't necessarily want it aiming straight down because then the mike could get reflection off the floor. You could get more reverb. Every scenario will be different, but that is one thing that I tried to do. Or another way to say that is That's one thing I've tried to avoid. One little side note I wanted to show is that I'm actually using my road wireless mikes in conjunction with the boom mic because this is actually a TRS connector and has two lines on it. And so it's designed for traditional cameras. You can adapt it to smartphones. But the easiest way I found is to go through my road wireless ago. And so this is the transmitter connected to the boom pole. And then over here on my camera, I actually have the receiver going into the iPhone. And so that's another cool thing about picking up some wireless mikes is you can use them in a lot of different ways. For me shooting with a boom mic on interviews and of course on narrative work, movies, documentaries, et cetera, is the way to go. And even being a one man band, you can use a stand like this and make it work. Now if you have a larger cast and crew that's different, you will absolutely need an audio person. And having an audio person is ideal. But for a lot of stuff, you can definitely do it yourself. Just make sure you get the mic and the right place. 16. Studio Mics, Proximity Effect & Plosives: Check one to check 12. Alright, working with studio mics, these are probably a little more self-explanatory for the distance you would be from the mic. Typically speaking, I tend to be about 6 " or so away. And that gives you pretty good results. Each Mike is a little bit different and of course the way different Mike's work, whether some mikes would be hanging or whether some mikes would be more directional. This is a dynamic mic. You can handhold this as I've mentioned previously, or you can use it in a studio configuration. But like my Blue Yeti mic hangs or my Norman Mike Haynes. And the cardioid pattern is a little bit different, but as it relates to placement of the mite, they all are very similar in the distance you want to be 6 " is a pretty good way to go for what I would call a normal sound. The one thing you can do though, and you might hear a DJ do this, and that is getting in very close and lowering your voice. And this is called the proximity effect. And you could actually use a DJ voice. Although this is kinda silly, you could also just use your regular voice getting really close to the microphone. This can be used for effect, or it can also be bad depending on what you're doing. This is something you wouldn't do very often though. It's just something to be aware of it more times than not, you'd probably want to avoid it. The other thing was studio Mike said I've mentioned throughout this course are the fact that you can get plosives. This is a pop filter in front. And so this in combination with this windscreen definitely helps block plosives. But plosives are burst of air that come out of your mouth that can cause harsh sounds. And the microphone, primarily with peas or teas, hard consonants. And so those are things to be careful about as well when you're recording and voice-over. And pop filters work. But if you don't have a pop filter, one thing you can do, let me pull this out of the way. Instead of having the aimed directly at my mouth. You can aim the mic a little bit below it and talk over the mic. That way the air coming from your mouth is going over the mic. However, the cardioid pattern is still picking it up and a lot of people record like this instead of going directly into the mic. Again, it really just depends on which Mike you're using. But that is a good tip if you don't have a pop filter, because oftentimes you may not have won out in the field with you. But studio Mike's typically speaking are a little more obvious in the way that you want to record a voiceover. But my general advice would be to be about 6 " away from the mic. And you can do that with your hand like this, just like I did on the lavalier mic. But once you use a mike enough you'll start to get the feel of it and you'll just know how far away to be. And again, every Mike will be different. 17. Attaching Mics to Gimbals: That's all you need. So all this is, is an arm you attach to the bottom of the gimbal. And this is a cold shoe and it has multiple mounts around the sides. Pretty much every gimbal has a quarter 20 on the bottom. And that's how this connects. You just simply screw it in. Then you attach to the cold shoe to the other side. If you have a tripod or recommend attaching that to, this has another quarter 20 on the bottom, which is great. Then you grab your microphone. This is a deity. Mike works with smartphones or traditional cameras. And I have a lightning to 3.5 millimeter adapter. Now, I like to configure this with the mic out to the side. Like so. That way when you grip it doesn't hit your hand. But if you wanted to, you could put the mic and tighter like that. So it's really up to you. Then you just add your phone. When you balance your phone, you want to make sure that you plug this in first. This will affect the balance. Now, you're ready to shoot gimbal footage with a microphone. So the vlog pocket here is wide open on the side of the arm and the grip do not come around to the side of the phone like bigger Gimbels often do. But the setup will work on those two. It will be gimballed, dependant, some gambles it might not work with because you've got to push the phone out to the side. And if you do push the phone out to the side, you could always use a counterweight to make it work. But heavier duty Gimbels like this, biotech G6 max, it works great with. So if you want to use a mike with a gimbal, this is a great way to do it. You can also use different kinds of arms depending on what you want to use. But this is one way to get good audio with your gimbal footage because don't forget, Audio is just as important as video and often more important. 18. Settings - Airplane Mode: If you've taken any of my other courses, you know that the first thing I like to do when I'm shooting video, and this applies to audio to do is turn on airplane mode. Airplane mode. We'll just keep your phone from interrupting your recording. But you need to be more than airplane mode. You should also turn on do not disturb. Do Not Disturb will then keep the notifications from coming, or it should occasionally some sneak through. But for the most part, this is the way to go. One other thing you do though, and it just depends on how your phone is set up. I go into airplane mode. My Wi-Fi doesn't turn off. And so then I go in and I also turn off Wi-Fi. So I turn on airplane mode, do not disturb. Turn off the Wi-Fi. This again, we'll keep things from interrupting your recordings. Now on modern phones, I find that even if you did get a text message or even a phone call, sometimes it won't necessarily hurt the recording itself. But obviously if you're recording sound, you don't want those distractions or the sound from those distractions interrupting your recordings. But one thing you can do to speed up this process because that's a little bit cumbersome. It's not a big deal. But you can also set up an automation. And so what an automation will do is it's more or less a, they call it a shortcut. And that way you can set something up to when you open an app, whatever the app may be. It will do all that for you. You'll go into airplane mode, turn off Wi-Fi and turn on, do not disturb. I actually have one setup for filmic Pro, but you could do whatever app you want. You want to go to automation, create personal automation. I want to go to an app. And I'm going to choose meta recorder, recorder as an app I use all the time. So this will happen when it's open. Now we'll add an action. You got to scripting. And here is where you choose what will happen when it's open. And so here is set, Do Not Disturb. And I want to make that on, do not disturb on. Then I want to add another action airplane mode on. Then the last thing is I want to set my Wi-Fi. I will turn my Wi-Fi off. In this automation again, just to recap, I've got it. Do Not Disturb. Turned on, airplane mode, turned on and Wi-Fi turned off. And you can also do ask before running, which is a good thing to do because you may not want it to turn on every time you hit done. Now you've got an automation setup. So now I'll launch the recorder. And at the top here you can see it says, When Metro quarter is open, Do Not Disturb airplane mode and set Wi-Fi is on. So you would select that to either engage it or disregard it. So if you don't want to set an automation to do that every time you launch an app. Just manually do it because you do want to make sure that you don't have interruptions while you're recording. 19. Settings - Record Uncompressed Files: This course is purposely not overly technical as we're not training to be audio engineers here. But I do of course, want to share the best settings to record great audio with your mobile device. And this would primarily involve using apps, or in some cases, and external audio recorder. And so what I'm going to do is show a couple of laps here. And really, I'm not showing these apps because of the app itself. I'm just showing you based on the settings because different apps have different settings. But an overall general point is to always pick the most uncompressed and the highest betray audio you can. And in this app, this is metal recorder. That would be a Broadcast WAV file. You can choose Broadcast WAV or CAF. I don't mess with CAF, Broadcast WAV or in some apps like in filmic pro, you can do AIF and we're talking about WAV files. They are uncompressed and so they are the highest quality you can record. And this would apply whether you're recording in a phone or in a traditional recorder. The sample rate you want to choose for most things, I choose 48 khz. In this app, you can choose 484041 or 22.40, 41. You would choose that if you're doing audio, it really comes from the music side like CDs and such from the past. If I'm doing something that's gonna be sinking to video, I almost always record and 48 k 4041 will work fine. But if you had the choice, I go with 48. Then the bit depth, this will really be dependent. I think most apps would default to 16 bit. This has the choice of 24 bit or 16 bit. And again, this is metal recorder. It's a little bit of a higher-end app. I always choose 24 bit. So a metal recorder, it would be a 48 K 24-bit wav file. And that is a really good way to go. 20. Settings - Other Audio File Types: Now I'm in the Moment Pro Camera app, so another video camera app. And they have some decent audio settings. And this one, you can choose the sample rate, 44, 148 K, I have it on 48 K. You can also choose the bit depth. 24 bit or 16 bit. I have 24-bit just like I did in metal recorder. The rest of the settings are choosing whether it's in stereo or the mic and that kind of thing. We're not going to worry about that right now. But this is just another example of how an app lets you choose different settings for the audio. Here. Then I'll let you choose the audio codec though the files are built-in to either H.264 and H.265. Okay, one last example here, and this is ferrite, which I'll go over in the app section. And this is the free version. And I'm showing this because a lot of people probably download this version. They don't get the paid version. In the paid version, you get a lot more settings for the audio, including uncompressed. In the free version, you get a couple of different selections for the codec. You get AAC, which is an MPEG-4 and it's a compressed file, or you get what they call a lossless and it's a CAF file. It's also compressed, but it is better quality and it's a larger file. Again, regardless of the app and regardless of what you're doing, I always choose the best quality you can. And every app is gonna be a little bit different. If this was the paid version, I would choose uncompressed. You can get away with other settings for sure. It really just depends on what you're doing. If you're recording voice, you can typically record lower-quality codecs like MP3, et cetera. But it's always best to start with the highest quality. And then when you're exporting or when you're compressing, go down from there. So just to quickly recap, if you have the choice, do uncompressed and typically that would be a Broadcast WAV file. Do 24 bit if he had the choice, or 16-bit is fine. And do 48 K if you can, or 4041 will work again depends on the app. But if you can record 48 K Broadcast WAV, 24-bit files, you'll be good to go. 21. Settings - Audio Levels & Meters: Okay, I'm back in metal recorder and I just want to briefly talk about setting audio levels and looking at the meters. And in case you don't know what I mean by meters, there are just the audio meters. And they are simply used to measure the sound level that's being brought in are being recorded into the app or the device. You don't want the audio to record too high, it will distort. You don't want it to record too low. Because then when you bring it up in post-production, it can get noisy. A general rule of thumb is to have your audio level no higher than negative six on a meter and have an average around negative nine to negative 12. And I typically don't let it go below negative 20. So e.g. using this in metal recorder, you can see the meter popping right here. And you may or may not be able to see down here at the bottom there are numbers and there's negative 24, negative 12, negative 6.0. If you hit zero, you're gonna be peaking and that will distort. I'm raising my voice on purpose to do that. So just normal talking which would be more like here. You want it to hit around, again, negative 12 to negative six in that range, when it goes into the yellow, It's going above negative 12. So negative 12 to negative six is a good range. You don't want it to really go below negative 20. And so you would set the input gain right here with this slider. Again, as I mentioned earlier, every app is different and every microphone is different. And so it will depend on the mic and the app on how you make these adjustments. But as a general rule, when you're looking at the peak levels, you want it to be between negative 20 on the bottom and negative six on the top. 22. Apps - Native Camera: Alright, so now I want to go over some apps, and this can be video apps or audio apps. And the most basic and the simplest way to record any kind of video and audio is obviously the native camera app. And now this is on an iPhone, but this could be the same on an Android. Now, the native camera app is pretty much Auto everything. You can manually set things and video. It's not really manual. I shouldn't say manual. You can lock the settings in the video side, but on the audio side, it's all automatic. Now for basic kind of stuff, this is totally fine. If you're trying to do anything more advanced or you want to have more control than I would suggest some different apps. And I'll go over those in just a minute. But let me record a quick VoiceOver here. You can see what I'm saying. Now the camera's rolling and I'm talking into the sanitizer hand mike digital. And this is a voice-over recorded into the native iPhone app. Again, the beauty of this is simplicity, but you don't have any control. But for a lot of people, this may be the way you want to go. So now the camera's rolling and I'm talking into the sanitizer hand mike digital. And this is a voice-over recorded into the native iPhone app. Again, the beauty of this is simplicity, but you don't have any control. For a lot of people. This may be the way you want to go. One other thing I wanted to show, I mentioned this when I was talking about the microphones within settings. You've got the option to record stereo sound. Now, if you're out recording ambiance or different kinds of atmospheres, maybe you're at a party, then recording stereo sound would be great. Stereo recording, mono recording. But if you're recording someone's voice, and especially if you're recording your own voice when you're talking to camera, I suggest turning that off. Alright, I'm holding this handheld and this is in stereo right now. I've got the pool behind me and then my voice talking to the camera. Now twist the camera this way you can hear my voice on this side. And now I'm in the middle mouth with the camera this way. You can hear my voice on that side. Alright, now the same thing, but with it set to mono, my voice is in the middle and now it's over to the side. Come back around. I'm in the middle. Now going through the side. So this is the mono recording. Cool Sounds behind me. And typically speaking, this is what you wanna do when you're recording your voice into the camera. You can record stereo sound with it on, or when you turn it off, it's mono. Now understand that is only using the internal microphone. That doesn't affect an external mic. So for me, I often leave this turned off as default. Then if I am wanting to record something that isn't stereo, I come in the app and turn that on. 23. Apps - Voice Memos: Another simple way on iPhones to record audio is using the voice memos app. So I showed the native camera app, and this is the native voice app. It's extremely simple and pretty self-explanatory, but it actually is perhaps more powerful than you might realize. It has all recordings. And then you can create your own folders here. And I've created one for a podcast test. And so you would go into whichever location you would want. I'll go into my new folder I created. The interface is very simple. All you do is you tap the record button to start a new voice memo. This first test I'm going to do is with the iPhone Mike only. This is a test using the iPhone Mike only and the voice memos app. You could use this to record a podcast or a voice-over. Hit Stop. And you can do playback. So if you like what you have there, you could just send it or use it however you want, or you can go in and edit it. In here you can see the waveform. And you've got some very basic editing controls. You can trim, take the heads and tails off. Now you can trim it or delete it. And so here I will actually just trim. If you'd like that trim, you would hit Save. Then you're back out here into the main screen. And up here in the upper left is a little auto fixed button, sort of like in the camera app where you can auto fix your photos, adjust the exposure and white balance in here what this does is it takes out background noise. This is a test using the iPhone Mike only and the voice memos app. You could use this to record podcast or voice-over. And one nice thing too is you can actually hit Resume here and what resumed does, it picks up the recording again. And so even though you stopped the recording earlier, it'll pick it up again and you can see my voice going down there right into the app. And it adds that to the same original file. You can go in and rename that. If you did want to just call it new recording to, you could save it to your phone. And here is the important part. You can share it. So if I wanted to, I could send it to my computer or my iPad or another device and then edit it there, or then upload it to a podcasting platform or put it into my editing app for YouTube videos or whatever. So that's a test with the built-in mic. Now let's listen to the same thing with the sanitizer hand might digital. Alright, and so I've got the sanitizer, my career, it's a lightening might. I'll plug that into the phone. Now I'll do a new test recording. Testing 123. This is using the memos app and the sanitizer hand might digital. This is just the test that I'm looking at, the meter right here. And the meters aren't nearly as active as they were using the built-in mic. So we'll see how the sounds. This is just the test and I'm looking at the meter right here. In the meters aren't nearly as active as they were using the built-in mic. So we'll see how the sounds. That sounds really good. The one thing you can't do in here is you have no control over the input gain. Just like with the native camera app, it's all automatic. And so that can be good and bad. It can be good if you don't want to mess with it, you just want to get an easy quick recording. It can be bad if you want more control. And that would depend on what kind of Mike you're using. Some mikes would require more input gain and you can't do that here. And so the voice memo app is a very simple app, but it's more powerful than you might think. One thing too is you could just use it to record your audio and then bring it into your iPad or your computer to actually do the editing. But for quick stuff, you could do some basic editing, use the automatic sound cleanup. And you can be good to go depending on the complexity of the project. 24. Apps - FiLMiC Pro: Alright, now staying with a video camera apps. My favorite app is filmic pro. And with filmic pro, of course, you can record great video, but you can also record very good audio. And that's because you can use manual control to a degree. Now, right now I have the hand might digital connected via lightning. And you can see the meters going up and down here. One thing to note too is in filmic pro. Right here you can see it says EXT, that means external microphone. If this Mike wasn't plugged in. Now says bottom internal. So now the audio is being recorded just with the iPhone mikes. And now it's being recorded with the hand might digital, it's back to external. Now I mentioned manual audio. Let me show you how you do that. Go to audio menu. Slide down here. And you'll have this automatic gain correction. Now you can leave that on. That will give you good results. However, since it's automatically adjusting the levels for you, if you're in a noisy environment, it will raise the background noise. That will raise the noise floor. And so I suggest turning that off. Now you'll see the meters are actually a little bit lower. I'm not going quite as high. And to control the meters, There's a slider right here under the timecode. Now I've turned them all the way down. And you can see the meters are just barely popping now. And now, move it back up. And the meters are moving nicely. Now in filmic pro, the meters don't have exact numbers here at the top. Normally when I'm recording audio, I try to never let things go up above negative six. Now, there's no negative six listed here. The very top of course is zero. And then the very bottom is, well here it's negative 100, I think are negative 70. But for most things you record digital audio. You want to keep it between the low-end negative 20, but typically more around negative 14, negative 12, and up to negative six. And again, you can adjust this depending on your signal right here, it's a little slider. And just one thing to note, this layout with filmic pro, where the meters are on the right side is only on iPhone ten and later, iPhone ten and before has a single meter that's underneath the time code here. Now, I'm not doing a complete tutorial on any of these apps, but I do wanna go over the basic features on how to record good audio. Now I'll do a test clip. Alright, I'm recording a test clip into filmic pro. I'm using the sanitizer hand mike digital, and I'm recording in my office and this should sound pretty good. All right, I'm recording a test clip into filmic pro. I'm using the sanitizer hand might digital, and I'm recording in my office and this should sound pretty good. And keep in mind, of course, you can plug in any kind of Mike. I'm simply using this mike for demonstration purposes. 25. Apps - MetaRecorder: Alright, so those two apps were geared more towards video, but you can record good audio with those. And as matter of fact, I actually do record voice-over is in filmic pro sometimes. But now let's look at a couple of dedicated audio apps. Metro corridor is one of my very favorite apps, and it actually comes with so to speak, this microphone. It's made by apogee and I was introduced to it via the sanitizer clip Mike digital. It's a lavalier mike designed for iPhones, created in the same vein as the hand mike digital that I'm using right now. The nice thing about the recorder app is it is a dedicated audio recording app. You have all kinds of control. Now, the screen won't flip right now on my iPhone. This also works on iPad by the way, but you have a lot of control to choose how you want to record the file. I tend to record Broadcast WAV, 24-bit and a sample rate of 48 K. You can also record stereo in here or mono depending on the mic, it usually, it'll default to whatever is appropriate. The nice thing is, you can also see right here it says hand might digital. So it tells you what Mike you have plugged in. If it's a generic Mike, it'll just say headset or something like that. And if it's the iPhone Mike, that's what it says. Iphone microphone. When you use the iPhone microphone, you don't have control over the audio levels. It's automatically set. But when you plug the mike in, now you have control. And right here is how you set the gain. Check 123, check 123, check 123. Every mic is a little bit different on how it needs to be set up. So depending on which Mike you're using as to how you set the audio levels. Alright, now I'll do a quick test with this one as well. Alright, quick audio tests using the hand might digital. And one thing I really liked and say you can see the waveform as you're recording. It's a great way to not only know that you're recording, but also just to see whether your audio is peaking or too low. And in this case, the waveform looks really good. So again, this is just a great app. It's one of many apps that are available for your iPhone or for other devices. I really liked this one and suggests that depending of course on what you're recording and what your project actually is. And then you can do playback digital. Alright, quick audio tests using the hand might digital. And one thing I really like is that you can see the waveform as you're recording. It's a great way to not only know that you're recording, but also just to see whether your audio is peaking or too low. And in this case, the waveform looks really good. And so again, this is just a great app. It's one of many apps that are available for your iPhone or for other devices. I really liked this one and suggest it depending of course, on what you're recording and what your project actually is. Using an app like this, you really do almost have a home studio in your pocket. Now one thing to note though, is you cannot edit in this app, is an app to record with, not through editing. 26. Apps - Ferrite: Alright, now here's one other app I want to look at, and it's called ferrite. And it is similar to the metal recorder app only it's simpler to use, I would say. Although this app, you can do some basic editing. Now, they have couple of different versions. This is the basic version. They have a premium version that costs more money or they actually pay for, I believe I got this one free. And that reminds me the media recorder app does cost. It's not that expensive. But if you buy one of these microphones, one of the apogee microphones, you do get the app for free. That is something to consider. Now when you go to recording. And here you can select different things that you would want to do. Again, the premium settings are down here. For the most part, again, it's pretty simple. We do have some options even in this basic version. And then under editing, you have different settings to do some very basic editing. But again, now you can see the VU meter and this is a little bit different. And you'll also notice that it says handmade digital so you can see what Mike you're using. Right here is how you adjust the gain coming in or out. The input gain check 123. Check 123. Again, you would adjust this depending on the mic. It's totally Mike dependent. So now record a test clip with it. Alright, I'm recording a test clip with the hand might digital and I'm using ferrite, very popular in the mobile journalism realm. And it's another one that is good for doing voiceovers or even recording podcasts. I meant to say on the metal recorder app, that's the app I use to record almost all my podcast. For the most part, these apps are very simple to use and I found them to be very reliable. And again, it's really great that you can record all this directly into your smartphone. And then you can AirDrop it to your computer or save it to your device. However you're going to work with it. Whether you're gonna do some editing through some sweetening to it, or whether you're just sharing it on social media or wherever. I am recording a test clip, like digital. Alright, I'm recording a test clip with the hand might digital and I'm using ferrite, very popular in the mobile journalism realm. And it's another one that is good for doing voiceovers or even recording podcasts. I meant to say on the metal recorder app, that's the app I use to record almost all my podcast. For the most part, these apps were very simple to use and I found them to be very reliable. And again, it's really great that you can record all this directly into your smartphone. And this is where you would actually do the editing. So if I had done any editing there, this would be where that would be saved in the library. And then again, you could send it, delete it, whatever you're needing to do. And so this app is a pretty powerful tool allowing you to not only record, but throughout it. 27. Apps - Garage Band: Another good app for recording voice-over, but not only editing, and it's free is GarageBand. Now this is iOS only. What you'll wanna do is go to audio recorder, vocals. Now within the actual app, the first thing you're gonna wanna do is go to the type. You wanna do narrator. And then you want to turn the, the length of the song. We're not recording a song, we're going to record voice-over, but you want to put this to automatic. Check one-two-three. Here's your input gain. Check 123. Check 123. I'm using the same mic. Again, every Mike will be a little bit different. One thing I also wanna do is you want to be sure to turn this off? That's a count down, but it's, It's like a metronome clicking sound. Again, this is really designed to record music, but in this case we're going to use it to record a voiceover or a podcast. So I got the meter a little bit, it's a little bit low, but I think it'll be okay. Check 123. There we go. Check 123. And you hit record. Hey guys, this is Blake Calhoun and I am recording a test here using GarageBand. You can use this for voice-overs or for podcasts. And it's a pretty good option, and especially considering it's free. And it has quite a bit of usability even for doing basic voiceovers. Hey guys, this is blamed calendar and I am recording here using GarageBand. Hey guys, this is Blake Calhoun and I am recording a test here using GarageBand. You can use this for voice-overs or your podcast. And it's a pretty good option, especially considering it's free. And it has quite a bit of usability even for doing basic voice-overs. So the nice thing then from there, as you can go in and edit it. And this is also a multi-track editor. And so you could put another line, audio underneath that, or you could put music. And the nice thing about GarageBand, of course, is it has all kinds of loops and music you can use. Again, I'm not doing full tutorials on any of these apps. These are more general overviews. There are dedicated courses and dedicated training for pretty much all of these apps. I didn't want to give you a general idea on how to get started using them. And of course it depends on what you're doing. Again, this would be ideal for podcasting or voiceovers for YouTube videos, or corporate video or mobile journalism. But of course, all these apps remember we'll record good audio. The main thing is how you are using the app and what type of project you're actually doing. 28. Record Sound Using Only the iPhone Mic?: So can you record good sound only using your camera might. Normally on a job, I'll record sound with a shotgun mic like this road in Tg four plus. Or I might use a camera mounted mike like this road video micro. But let's say you don't have one of those mics, or you're shooting something by yourself, or you don't have the mikes with you. Than a lot of those cases, you can just use the built-in mic, massive holiday la, la, la, la, la, la, la season to paint job. Peggy. Dang it. Thank you. So I shot the film and about 30 min when evening with my kids as a test using only an iPhone at a Mozah minimise gimbal. I was definitely a one man band. I use filmic pro to capture the video, but also the audio. And if you set the audio upright, you can get some surprisingly good results. Want to make sure you're choosing the correct microphone. You want the one on the back of the phone. That's the way your camera's facing. This will give you the best sound when you're facing a subject. And then the other thing is go in and turn off automatic gain correction. This can be helpful in some situations, but it can also hurt. It can raise the noise floor. Next you want to set your audio levels manually, grab the slider under the timecode and then set it depending on what your recording. Check 123, check 123. Now if you can't get the level you want, go ahead and put the automatic gain back on. So it will really just depending on what you're recording. Check 123, check 123. And obviously you'll get the best results when the sound is close to the camera. But in saying that I was surprised by this first shot here. So I was six to 8 ft away from them in the audio turned out pretty good, especially once it's mixed in with the music and all the sound effects. Next step, I recorded some Foley, which I think is a really good way to use a phone like this. You just do what I just said, walk towards the tree. So obviously that style and what the airplane needs to be replaced. And that's what Foley is your recording sound effects sound design later, and then matching it in with the edit. So I slowed the Foley down to about 75% to match the footsteps. Another great use for this will be recording wild lines. Wild lines are lines that are recorded after the fact. It could be right after a scene that usually don't sync up with the actors lips, they would be off-camera, but lower right there and go. So in that shot, I wanted to add a line of dialogue. Dang it one more time. Yeah, So I recorded this with my iPhone and she was leaving for school with her mom. Mom went to happy either. And so that was recorded with this tiny little camera mic and it sounds good. Next up I did another wild mine that probably should have been ADR, which would be matching the lip-sync. But in this case I just did it wild. Actually go ahead. So in this case they were just too far away from the camera and the audio sounded too distant. Say Peggy. Peggy, where are you tidy or you die. Recorded her on the way out the door to school to mom's still wasn't happy they were running late. Now here are the voice was pretty present. I recorded up close to the microphone. So I added an EQ to make it sound like it was more in the distance and I wasn't worried about lip-sync. One other thing I recorded with the camera Mike on the phone was ambiance. You might hear it called Room tone if you're inside, this is what ties everything together in the edit. That's just the ten second sample. There are normally record 30 s to 1 min. It's a good idea to record ambience or room tone in every location you shoot. In the blue layer there is ambiance. The green below that, it's crickets. I'm calling that ambiance as well. Then the other green is music and some sound effects. Your different production audio can be rough, but once you denoise it, EQ at clean it up, and then add it to a ambience. It'll typically all sound nice and smooth. So here's a version of the movie with no ambiance and no music. So you can really hear the original production sound and how it all came together. Tidy. Tidy. Hey Aughie. Hi. Hi. I always say think so. Now let me be clear here. I'm not suggesting that you don't need to use good microphones. Bad sound is probably one of the number one things that will hurt your movie or YouTube videos or whatever it is, people forget poor quality video before they do poor-quality sound for sure. But if you don't have my x like this, don't let that stop you from making a movie or a video. You just need to know what you're doing with the camera mic, but be aware of its limitations to don't try to record anything too far away, it will not sound good. And of course, using some of the techniques I showed for Foley or ambiance, you don't have to have a super high-quality Mike to record that. As a matter of fact, you probably have a mike perfect for that kind of stuff in your pocket right now. 29. Voiceovers, Podcasting & Live Streams: Two of the more interesting things you can do with your phone are recording voiceovers and podcasts. You can get high-end professional results even using a free app. To me, It's really incredible and definitely democratizes this side of audio production. Anyone can record great audio just sitting in their bedroom with a mike and an iPhone. And I call these setups studio style setups. And that doesn't mean you're in a studio. It could be a home studio, it can be a home office. It could be recording in your closet. However you want to record it in a more controlled space. In other words, you're not out recording audio on a shoot or vlogging or something like that. Although you can of course use it in that way. But here I'm focusing on more studio style setups. And so one way I do this is with my Blue Yeti Mike. This is my desk where I record all my tutorials and various voiceovers. It's not a sound deadened room. I just get close to the mic, have a lot of stuff in the room to help deaden the sound. And I just record right into my phone. And I even used older phones. I keep my older devices around for these exact reasons. This is a ten S max. I also have an eight plus, or you could use the latest greatest. That's the great thing about audio recording, is the quality never really goes away. New phones will change the video recording, but the audio will be the same. So it's a very simple setup, but you can get excellent results. The other setup I do is using my sanitizer Mike, it's the lightning Mike and I connected the same way. The Blue Yeti mic is a USB mic and I'm using an adapter to get it into the foam. The sanitizer might plugs directly and with no adapter. So typically speaking, I record my podcast this way with the sanitizer Mike, and then I record my voiceovers for YouTube or whatever with the Blue Yeti mic off and I'm looking at my computer when I'm doing that. And so it works out better for podcasting. I can either take that with me wherever I want to go, or I can be in my office or my home studio and set that up. It's very portable and easy to use. And again, you can get great results either way. As I've mentioned several times during this course, you can mix and match these mikes, whatever you have. I would call these more of an ideal way to go. Again, don't get bogged down on the brand. These are just the brands I use. There are numerous podcasting style micro USB mics, lots to choose from. Another really nice thing you can do with your phone is live streaming. With filmic pro, you can connect an HDMI cable, and that way you can connect that into your computer and you use filmic pro is your camera. So you can also record audio that way. So that way you will up your game. Even if you're doing Zoom calls, you're not having to use the computer might. Or again, if you're doing live streaming for YouTube or gaming or whatever, you're doing a corporate meeting by plugging a mic into your phone and using the phone as the camera's slash, might you really up your production value? And it's very simple to use. So again, filmic pro does this, but there are other apps that do this as well. Remember too, you can record instruments if you're a musician or if you're a filmmaker making a movie, you can record Foley. So there are a lot of things you can do with a studio style setup like this. 30. iPhone Podcasting Setup: Check 123, check, check one to check 123, check, check 12. Check 123, check, check 12. So this is exactly how I record all my podcast and even my YouTube voiceovers and go directly into my phone. I use the metal recorder app and I use a lightning microphone here. This is the sanitizer hand mike digital. This mike is a little bit hard to find these days, but this could be any mike. You just have to adapt it to go into your phone or your iPad depending on how you wanted to record it. And so all the audio you're listening to right now is coming from this mic and the data recorder app. Now here's how the camera sounds. I'm using a deity D4 Duo, just a camera mounted Mike. I really think doing podcast and voice-over work with your phone is a great way to go. I think it is underutilized quite a bit. It's just a really good, affordable and high-quality way to record audio. If you watch my channel a lot, you know, I preach about how good the video quality is and the cinematography from using smartphones today. But of course, when you're shooting video, sound is 50% of all productions. And so getting good sound is imperative. And today using very affordable microphones like from deity or road or the sanitizer, or sure or Blue Yeti. There are a myriad of microphones to choose from depending on what you're doing. And the coolest part is they will all work with your smartphone. If I was actually recording a podcast, what I would do is come in here first and I would set the level and this would depend on what Mike you're using. Then I would record my podcast. And then once I was finished recording, I would stop. And then in this app, you can AirDrop. Most apps you can do this. But so I would airdrop it to my computer. And you can also share it to your iPad or to another app on your iPhone. They just really depends on where you want to do your editing. I personally do my editing and audition. But if you're staying mobile, you could work in GarageBand or you could work in ferrite. There are a number of ways you can edit your audio. And by the way, you can also record those apps to see. You could record your podcast and edit it. Then you want to upload it. And so I use anchor. So I export an MP3 and I upload that to anchor. And by the way, anchor has its own app too. So there are a lot of different ways you can go. And then of course, the last thing is distributing the podcast. As I said, I use anchor, but you could use a number of services. And the nice thing is a course that's in syndicated out to wherever you listen to podcasts, Apple Spotify, overcast wherever. I also now put my podcast on YouTube. It's on my second channel. Well, as you know, I'm a big believer in using smartphones and video and film production. So whether you're shooting video or audio today, you really can't get professional results using iPhone. 31. Using Professional XLR Mics: I mentioned in the previous section there are a ton of different mics available to record, podcast or whatever. And that's true. I focused on USB enlightening Mike's But majority that Mike's out there, especially professional mikes are XLR. So if you have one of those mikes or you want to get one of those mikes? I went over some in the mike section. Yes, As mentioned earlier, you can use those with adapters. However, some of the nicer studio style Mike's won't work like that because they don't accept batteries. They're not powered mikes, and so they need power from the recorder to power it phantom power. The nice thing is, you can do that too. I use an Irish pre. This device will let you plug in an XLR mic into your iPad or your iPhone. And it provides power to that might. It also acts as a preamp. And so you can increase or decrease the gain coming from the MIT. Some XLR mics will need a lot more gain to go into your system. It's just really mike dependent. But with this, you can do that. It also has a headphone jack, which is great. So using this with whatever mike you want, an XLR mic, this happens to be a Neumann Mike. You can take the audio signal and put it into your iPad or into your phone. And so really it just opens up a lot of possibilities, even for larger scale productions, for higher end applications. Using a setup like this can really take your audio production into the next level. And again, you're recording all this into your phone. 32. Monitoring Audio with Headphones: An important aspect of recording good audio is actually monitoring the audio while you're recording it. That way, you know if the mic is too close or too far away, or if it turns off while you're recording. But with smartphones, it can be a challenge. You've got the one lightening port if you're using an iPhone and they make splitters. But not all the splitters work the same way. Some will allow you to have two audio signals going in, but those are pretty specialized. Usually they'll allow audio to go in one and then you can charge with the other. I'm talking about lightening splitters. Again, there are some specific devices that will do this, but the best way I've found is actually using Bluetooth. You'll plug your mic and the lightning port. And then within the app, you would go ahead and turn on Bluetooth audio. That way, you can use any Bluetooth headphones that will connect to your phone and have your audio going into the input of the lightning port. I've got a set of Sony Bluetooth headphones that worked great for, of course, you can use AirPods. I really found this to be the best way to do it. However, you can use traditional headphones while recording audio too. But that requires an interface or the device you're recording with to have a headphone jack. For instance, several microphones. We'll have Mike jacks built into the mic. The Blue Yeti mic is one such Mike. So you can plug in traditional headphones into the mic and monitor as you're recording. The eye rig pre I showed earlier and I mentioned it has a headphone jack. Same thing. You can monitor your audio using that little interface while you're recording. Another way to do this is with a video monitor. Let's say you're using filmic pro. Filmic pro again has HDMI output and you can also send audio over that. So audio and video, You put that into a monitor and you plug your headphones into the monitor. And now you're monitoring your sound, you're monitoring your video and your audio? I don't monitor everything I record. As a matter of fact, the voice-over I'm recording right now. I'm not monitoring it. I'm looking at the waveform on the app to make sure it's not peaking. So it really just depends on what you're doing. If you're doing something very critical, like an interview that you cannot re-record. I always suggest monitoring your audio. So a couple of these are workarounds in a sense, but they do all work. You'll just need to figure out what's best for you and your particular project. 33. Record Discrete Tracks with a Phone: Alright, in the course I've mentioned this device a couple of times where I've shown it. And this is the road FC6 and this is the lightning version. And what makes this thing really cool is the fact that you can plug in two microphones, and it also has a headphone jack. And so not only does it allow you to easily monitor what you're recording, which can be really important. It also allows you to plug in two mikes and then you can get discrete audio tracks going into certain apps. It doesn't work with all apps, but it does work with many, including filmic pro. You plug that in. And if filmic pro, when it shows EXT down here, that means that you're getting an external mic. Right now. It is seeing this device. Of course there's no microphones plugged in, so I'm no longer seeing the meters moved. But I will plug in a couple of mikes here. This is a road Mike. They rode video micro. You would simply plug it into this. It has to be TRS cable, which I went over earlier in the course. And that is designed for smartphones. And so now I've got that plugged in and you can instantly see that the left channel and filmic pro is now picking up that microphone. And it filmic pro, you can of course adjust the level. Check 123, check one to check 12. So I'm using this setup to bring one might channel in and I can monitor it with headphones. So then the cool thing is I could take another mic like this. This is a road wireless go and connect it into the second input and be rolling two different microphones. And so we'll do that now. This is the original road wireless go. There was a road wireless go-to out now, which I also recommend. Both of them are excellent. And then here is another cable that adapts this from TRS to TRS. Put it into the channel two. And now I've got two discrete channels of audio going into filmic pro. I'm tapping on the one mike there. And you can see channel one going. Now here's the road wireless go tapping on it and you can see channel two. So this is a really nice way to do more advanced setups using a phone. The only thing you can't do is control the input levels discretely, at least not very easily. You can adjust the input gain in the receiver of the road wireless going to depend on the micro using this particular Mike, you can adjust the gain, but you have a master control here and filmic pro again, to control the levels. So this is an excellent way to get two channels of audio into your smartphone. Now some microphones, including the road wireless go to and the comic I've mentioned. And then there's the one from harmonic that can do this. They can send two channels from one receiver. However, if you don't have those newer mix, this is a great way to make that work into any iPhone. And again, it's also a great way to easily monitor your sound, which can be very important depending on what you're doing. If you're recording a lot of audio and your iPhone, in particular in more professional environments, like maybe News or a corporate video, or even in the film. This is definitely a great accessory to consider. 34. Worst Locations To Record Sound: Now let's talk about the best and worst places to record sound. And so we'll start with the worst first. And this will depend on what you're recording, whether you're recording a voiceover or whether you're recording something on location, whether that's for a movie or a documentary. And so some of these may not apply it to the other, but this will give you a good idea of what to avoid. And the most obvious thing is just any noisy location. You want to try to record your sound in the quietest location possible. And that's really regardless of what you're doing. Even in movies where you're in a crowded bar scene, they will have all the extras in the background, not speaking, only the principal actors will be talking. I should end with a scene from CSI. You're a true we should go out sometime. Yeah. I savvy or lingo, but strangely, you're not my time. The background extras will just fake like they're talking. And then all that sound will be added later in postproduction. And so regardless of the kind of audio your recording, and especially if you're planning out and shoot, It's not something you're doing spur of the moment. Always think about what kind of sounds are in that location. So if you're making a movie, for instance, it's probably not a good idea to shoot close to an airport because plane is going overhead will cause issues with your audio. You'll have to wait to do your take until a plane flies over. Very common thing to happen. But if you're close to an airport, it makes it much worse. Another situation that may not be as obvious as if you're recording in a kitchen or in someone's house. Think about the refrigerator, because a refrigerator running in the background can really mess up audio. You may not think of it in a normal everyday situation. But when you're recording sound of two characters talking, or even a spokesperson, or even for a YouTube video, we'll know sounds are in the background. They can be very annoying and cause issues. Oftentimes it's best to unplug your refrigerator or anything like that that's making a sound. And then also includes air conditioning systems or heaters. If you can turn the AC off or the heater off while you're recording. Another big one. That's a common problem. Our landscaping cruise, or people outdoing their yard work. And typically that means using weed eaters or leaf blowers because those things are very noisy and that sound will absolutely pollute pretty much any location you're in. Whether that's outside especially, but even inside. One thing as a filmmaker that I often do is carry around bribe money in quotes, really tip money is a better way to say that have $120 bill handy and go out there. And if there's a lawn crew doing someone's yard next door, offered to pay them 20 bucks to hold off for an hour or two, come back later in the day. That'll be the best 20 bucks you spend on the shoot so you can keep shooting. Now if there are sounds in the background, make sure they're consistent, like an AC or maybe an electrical. Hm, because if it's a consistent sound, a fan maybe in the background that you can't turn off. You can more easily take that out and post-production, you can notch it out and notch filter or denoise it. If it comes in and goes away, it makes it much more challenging. And I'm not talking about lawnmowers or that kind of thing, or airplanes. Don't record when those are going over. I'm talking more about consonant sounds, low rumbles in the background. Other things that cause problems that aren't making sounds themselves are actually the room you're recording in or the area you're recording in. A big one will be a large room with hardwoods are concrete, with high ceilings, that will cause major echo and the audio, what we often refer to as a reflective room. And those are bad to record in echoey. So if you have no choice, you could always use sound blankets to put on the floor around the actors that will be out of the camera shot. And importantly, you would want to get the mic as close as possible. Another tough one is of the opposite of that. And that is being in a small room that is not dead. And you can get a boxy sound. For instance, like being in a car. If you're in the car, Get the mic as close as possible. Otherwise recording sound in there is not ideal. One week ago, covered in snow. Welcome to the Arctic today, 75 degrees outside. That's Texas for you. Another thing to avoid is when even when you're using a dead cat or a windscreen on your microphone, harsh wind will cause heart sounds and the microphone. Well, so with the nice weather, I decided to come out here and test the new Polar Pro, light chaser Pro, or the 12th Pro Max got the case. I've got a variable ND filter on here and I've got the hand grip. And then on top of the grip, I've got their Bluetooth shutter. I've also attached the handle here. This is from BCE grip. It just makes it easier for me to hold onto because this particular grip has a quarter 20th and the top and bottom. Sometimes you may not realize you get this until you get back and editing. Other times, it may be unavoidable and it's better just to record the audio, then not have it at all. But if you can help it don't record in heavy wind. And a tip would be if you have to turn your body to where the microphone is in front of you and the wind is not hitting the mic. Or obviously get behind a structure or a tree or a car that is blocking the wind. As I've said numerous times in this course, the most important thing is to record the best sound possible in camera or on location. So you don't have to quote, fix it in post. And so always do your best and plan ahead and record your sound and the best location possible. 35. Best Locations To Record Sound: So the best locations are just the opposite of the worst locations and those are quiet locations that are sound deaden. An obvious example would be a studio. If you can record voice-over is in a studio, one that has been outfitted with sound deadening acoustic panels, ideally on the ceiling and the walls and then have carpet on the floor. And oftentimes people even raise up a floor to make it even more soundproof, then that would be your best bet and amazing. And again, this would be for voice-overs and that kind of thing. It wouldn't relate to location recording. However, most people don't have that luxury. So the next best thing would be to build your own studio if you're going to be recording voiceovers and podcasts on a regular basis. You can get very good results by choosing a good room that ideally has carpet in it, or at least rugs over hardwood. And also importantly, you'd want to have a lot of stuff in there. What do I mean by stuff? I mean rugs and couches and even pillows on the couch and tables, even pictures on the wall, any and everything to help knock down the balance of a room and the natural reflection of wood, hardwood and wood floors and ceilings or concrete, whatever type of room you're in. You can build your own DIY Sound panels. Or you can also buy them off Amazon and just attach them to your wall. And if you record audio on a regular basis, and then I think this is the way to go. If you only record periodically, then using your closet is a good option. A closet full of clothes will act a lot like a small sound recording studio. Check 12 recording in my closet. Closet full of clothes. Check one to. Your clothes will act like acoustic foam or sound panels and create a very quiet dead and environment to where you can record excellent sound. It's admittedly not the best permanent solution, but it definitely works and as a good DIY solution. And one thing that may not be obvious is that sometimes I will actually choose to record outside instead of inside. Depending on your situation, recording outside will eliminate any and all echo or reflection in a room, which is often one of the worst things you can do when you're recording it just instantly sound amateurish or low quality. And that's largely because of again, the room acoustics. You take that outside in the exact same mic will often sound very good depending on where you are. There's a lot of outdoor noise are a lot of when that wouldn't work. But if it's a quiet environment, I will often go this route instead of recording in a space that is echoey, check, check. No echo. The only negative of course, is you can't control the environment around you. So there's a dog barking or if there is a lawnmower going a yard away, that will cause you issues. But in normal recording conditions, being outside can actually work pretty well. And just to remind you that might placement plays a big role in all of this. Whether you're indoor or outdoor, getting the mic in the right position can really make or break your production. And knowing the best and worst locations to record in. Well, obviously play a huge role too. So choose wisely and always record the best audio possible into the camera or the recorder. 36. Tips To Improve Sound Recordings: So now some tips to improve overall sound, and these may overlap with what I've said before, but it's good to stress that these things are important and really not very hard to do. One of the biggest things is to make sure the room you recording in has a lot of stuff in it, especially like rugs or even blankets or pillows. Just make sure it's not an empty room because otherwise you can get a lot of reverb and echo. And if you want to take it one step further, you could put acoustic foam on your walls. This would depend on the location, of course, but it's a simple solution that's not very tough to install and it's affordable. Or you could also use a small phone booth like this one. These help a little bit. They don't do a lot because often you need something behind you. But it can be nice to put this around the microphone to help dead and the sounds that would be nearby. When you're using a cardioid style studio, might you always want to have the sound behind it? Like if you're sitting at a desk and a computer is on because the polar pattern will help reject those sounds. And if you're recording in an untreated room, just get the mic is close to you as possible. Right now I'm actually talking in a room that is fairly reflective and I'm close to the mic. Related to this too, is keeping your mouth the same distance from the microphone while you're recording. If you get into close, you'll have one sound like I'm doing now. And if you back away, like I'm doing now, you'll have another sound. And so you want your distance to be consistent while you're recording your voice-over. And if you are using a mic on a desk, I highly recommend using a boom arm. These are affordable and simple to install. And they will really improve the sound because they eliminate any bumps or vibrations from your desk into the microphone. It's also just a great way to easily positioned the Mike wherever you want. If you're using a gimbal and you want to get good sound, I recommend using an arm on a gimbal as well. And it's the similar idea. It gets the microwave from the Gimbal so it won't be bumped while you're recording. Now this will be gimballed dependent. And then you have the issue of plugging them in lightning port cable into the phone. But if you are recording audio while using a gimbal, this is a good option to explore. One problem that people often will have as an air conditioning or heat or kicking on and off. And so always turn the air conditioning off or the heater off while you're recording. Often what I'll do is get a room very cool or very warm depending on the time of year, and then do their voice-over recording. That way the AC unit can stay off for awhile. The overall thing to remember is try to get the best sound possible while you're recording what that's into your phone or a recorder. The old saying is garbage in, garbage out. So you want to get the best recording possible and that way you don't have to fix it in post. 37. Post-Production Overview: This course is really all about audio production, not editing as such, but I do want to give you a few ideas on how to make your audio sound better in post-production. In the app section, I went over several apps that you use to record content, record your voice music, whatever it may be. And several of those apps actually offered post-production aspects as well. In other words, editing and or doing EQ and adding compression and that kind of thing. Working with a smartphone though, on the post side can be really tricky. It's great that it's there as an option. And I do use it sometimes, but more times than not, I use my iPad or my traditional computer when I'm doing post-production. And that would include a variety of different apps. For video work, I tend to just stick with Premiere Pro, or you could use Final Cut Pro. Again, those are on traditional computers or my iPad, I use luma fusion. If I'm editing a podcast or something that was more or less audio only on my traditional computer, I use audition. And then on my iPad, I might use ferrite or GarageBand, or again, potentially luma fusion, depending on what I'm doing, you can edit audio just fine in video editing apps, of course. But the overall point is there are really a myriad of ways to go for post-production and there's no right way or wrong way. It really becomes very subjective. And it's just what you either have access to or what you're comfortable with using. But this being a course on mobile filmmaking, I'm going to show a couple of things on the iPad. And again, note that these apps will work on your iPhone as well or your Android depending on the app. But I just find it easier to do in post-production to work with a larger screen. So it feels like more of a traditional setup. 38. Post Apps - LumaFusion: And so for a lot of you, you will be using this course in combination with shooting video. And so you want to know the best ways to record good audio using filmic pro. And in that case, you would most likely be editing and luma fusion again, if you're staying mobile. And luma fusion has some pretty decent controls. To be honest, for editing audio. Speaking of editing, you would obviously just edit the audio like you would the video in the main timeline. But if you want to fix the audio, which sometimes you need to do or enhance it through EQ or adding compression, you go into a different part of luma fusion. And here is where they have their effects. Now again, this is not a full tutorial, just like I did on the main apps. I'm just going over this so you have a general idea, but this will give you a good idea of what this can do. And the best way to learn is just by doing it. So if you have luma fusion, record some audio and start playing around with these different things. The main ones that I would probably use or the dynamic processor that's more or less adding compression in simple terms, compression is taking all the high sounds and the low sounds and evening them out. You might use the high-pass filter. High-pass filter. We'll keep the high frequencies and cut the low frequencies. Low-pass filter does the opposite. You would do this depending on what you shot. If there's a low rumble and a shot, you might use the high-pass filter. The opposite was true. You might use a low-pass filter. Then you've got this in band EQ, and this is actually pretty advanced right here. And there is a lot going on that you can try within this EQ, all the different frequencies and such. But that is a nice thing that luma fusion has. Pitch is pretty self-explanatory pitch will just shift your voice down an octave or up. Or you might talk like it's a devil talking or something. You heard that, I'm sure. And then the parametric EQ is similar to the in-band dQ, but it's much simpler and it's one I would probably recommend using over the other, especially when you're starting out, or especially if your audio doesn't need a lot of work. Which by the way, that's what you want to shoot for all the audio production side we talked about, get your audio right in camera. And then all you'll need to do is a few little things in post-production to make it really pop, but using the parametric EQ can help there. Then the last thing is a limiter. And the limiter in luma fusion acts more or less like a compressor. And so you would set this up depending on whatever the recording was. Again, a little bit of trial and error. So there's a lot of good aspects to luma fusion. Primarily a video editor of course, but you can do some decent audio post-production using this app. 39. Post Apps - Garage Band: Next up we'll look at GarageBand, and I talked about this app in the audio production section. But now we'll look at it a little bit more from a post-production and point of view. And the great thing about GarageBand, it is free. It is included with your iPhone or your iPad. Now again, it is iOS only. But if you are on that platform, this is a great app to explore because it's much more powerful than I think people give it credit for. And it does a lot more than just recorded music, which is really what it's best known for probably. But using the narrator feature that I showed earlier, you can record good voice-overs. And it's also a multi-track editor within the main interface here, it automatically has presence, compressor, resonance, and tone on this main page. Those are more or less built-in EQ and effects. If you want to go to the multi-track output. I don't have additional tracks here besides this one with the narrator. You can add tracks by going back into the audio recorder. I'm not gonna do that right now. You could put music down here. You can move this stuff around, whereas this is where you would also do your editing. But what makes GarageBand pretty cool is it has additional built-in effects, has master effects it as an echo and a reverb. And you've got a lot of different things you can choose. If you were doing some sort of effects work by for a movie or a commercial or such, or even a podcast. It's got a variety of different things regarding their compressor and their EQ. The compressor has some nice controls, looks similar to what I just showed and luma fusion. And this looks similar to most apps. He's got a noise gate. And the nice thing is, it does have a visual of what you're doing. And so you come over here and you apply different effects and you can actually see what you're applying. And then when you play it back, if you move in the treble here or the mids or the base, that visual representation would affect the audio. So that is a nice feature to have. The other thing too is this will accept plugins, and so you can use VST plugins within GarageBand. I'm not gonna go into that detail and I actually haven't used that much myself. But it is an option that makes this free piece of software are pretty powerful. So using GarageBand is a great way to go for podcasting or for voice-over type work. And of course, if you are doing music, you could record instruments and then come in here and do your mix. And it has enough control, enough effects to where you can get very professional results using this free app. 40. Post Apps - Ferrite: Alright, and the last app I'm going to feature here, just the highlights is ferrite. And again, I went over this app on the recording side in the app production section. But this app is another one that is multifaceted and will allow you to do editing and post-production work as well with one caveat. This is the free version you're looking at right now. And so what I wanted to show you is what you get for upgrading to the paid version. It's 30 bucks is 29, 99. But I wanted to show you why I think it's worth it if you are using this in a more serious way to do your post-production. Again, primarily on doing voiceovers are podcasting or doing anything on the audio side, even broadcast spot type work. But you can record up to eight channels at once, which is pretty amazing. They have automations that you can go in and automate your gain and your pan and different effects. You can do way Files, Broadcast WAV files, which I mentioned in the record settings section is very important. You have an equalizer with a spectrum visualizer, which one you're doing audio editing, I think is really important to see what you're doing for podcasting especially. But also VoiceOver is this feature is really nice where you can go in and you can remove dead air from your project. You can tighten the audio. It will automatically do that for you. And one other thing that is really important that not many apps on the iPad have, and that is noise reduction. It has noise reduction. And so that can really help because even when you record in a home studio or a quote, unquote studio, you'll have noise in the room unless you're in a high-end professional sound dead and room, more times than not, you'll have some noise in the room. And so it's always nice to be able to get that out, but most of these apps don't have it. And so that's a really nice feature and that alone might be worth at 30 bucks. And by the way, I have no association with fair. I don't get any kind of kickback or fee. This is just a popular app, especially with the mobile journalism crowd. That's where I first heard about it. And I've used it quite a bit, the free version, but to take it to the next level to do post-production, this $3 upgrade for a lot of people will be worth it. That way you can keep your work mobile on your iPad and not have to go do a lot of this on your traditional computer, which most of this you can do pretty easily on a traditional computer. But then of course you're not very mobile. So this is definitely an interesting app because you can record great audio and take it through post-production. 41. Post-Production Tips: I typically do three basic things to every voiceover I record, whether that's for a YouTube video or for a podcast, no matter what it is. And this is regardless of the app, although one of these will be AP dependent. But there are a lot of different apps that do it, especially on traditional computers and desktop, but stem apps on the iPad and iPhone will do this as well. So typically the very first thing I do is de-noise the audio track. And with most software, you just sample a section that is part of the ambience of the room, you capture it, and then the software will evaluate that and de-noise the track. Now these are very basic terms I'm using here, but that's more or less what happens associated to denoising. So I would call this one B, the de-noising would be one. A is D clicking. And most plugins will have a D click where you just get out the little mouth pops that you occasionally get an audio from your saliva or from anything else in the room that might cause a click or a pop. And so de-noising and D clicking or two things I do on almost every voice over. And also I should say when I talk about a voiceover, I mean something that you did in a controlled environment more times than not. So whether that's in your home studio, whether that's at a studio, whether that's in your closet, surrounded by your clothes to get good sound. If I have someone talking that's in a different type of location, maybe man, on the street where you've interviewed someone, that can be a little bit of a different process, although I take a similar tag with that kind of audio as well. So this is really geared towards audio that was recorded in a controlled environment. The next thing I do is add some simple compression. And just as a reminder, compression more or less will even out the highs and the lows in the waveform kinda makes everything even. But this just adds more of a robust sound, a fuller sound to your voice, and also adds polish and just makes it seem bigger and more professional. I do this, they're pretty much every YouTube voiceover. I do have an on-camera stuff. And then of course on every podcast as well. Then the last thing I do is the mix. And so after I've denoised it, clicked it, done the compression, then I make sure everything is leveled out properly. And if it's just a straight voiceover, that's just looking at the meters and making sure everything is going up to negative six, averaging around negative nine to negative 12. If you have music involved, that's a little bit of an extra step. That can be subjective to a degree. But I mixed the voice-over with the music. And I might bring the music up between dead spaces or you can use ducking. A lot of software will have automatic ducking where it'll analyze the track and it will bring the sound up where it needs to talking about the music, and then lower the music where it needs to, where there's no voice-over. So if you do these three basic things, you can get really good results, especially if you're using a good microphone. One thing I hear a lot of people do, especially when they're beginning, is a way over process their audio. There's really no need to do that as long as it's recorded with a good mic and then a good location. And depending on that situation, and again, everything will be different. You might need to bring up the lowest or the highest or do a low-pass or a high-pass filter, you might need to use a parametric EQ. There are obviously endless things you can do in post-production. But for straightforward voice-overs, I find doing those three things will get me great results almost every time. 42. Wrap-Up and Thank You: Well, you've made it to the end of the course. And if you've taken any of my other courses, are watching me on YouTube. You know, the one phrase I like to say a lot is, don't wait to create. And that applies to the video as well as audio, especially when it comes to smartphones. And I'm actually shooting on a smartphone right now. I'm using my iPhone Pro Max, a shoulder pod, and the road wireless go Mike setups. The best thing too is you don't have to be a professional in quotes to get really great results. Hope you learn something. Don't wait to create. And I'll see you in the next one.