Capturing Video and Audio of Your Lotus.

Do you want to capture good video footage and clear audio of your pride and joy?

The high quality video camera technology available today provide some of the best tools for the classic car owner to create excellent automotive video footage, whether you prefer in car, or external video footage, or both.

But there are things you need to know to get the best out of your gear.

There is a general assumption that spending a lot of money on high end video equipment will result in broadcast quality video and audio, IE, the more expensive the camera, the higher the video quality will be?

There’s probably a degree of truth in that assumption, a high end camera in the hands of a professional videographer will certainly produce the goods. But that may not ring true for the average Joe or Jane lacking the training and the required videography skills, they could possibly be disappointed with the end result.

Capturing high quality video plus good audio also requires a reasonable level of videography and audio recording skills as well as certain editing techniques in Video post production.

It takes a bit of creative nous to make a great video, but one of the best ways to begin to understand the basics of video production is to enroll in a film production short course… the takeaway will be, that you’ll learn so much about the various aspects of telling a story via video, sound recording, and post production editing techniques. The education and training will be a lot of fun, and provide an immersive and solid base learning experience.

Every day, tens of thousands of videos are uploaded to the popular video streaming channel utube, (And many others) no doubt you have visited UT several times, there are some very good videos uploaded to the platforms, but for every good video, there are another fifty crap unedited videos, these are the videos that lack viewer appeal, and maybe some that just want to flog you something that you don’t really need or want, or they are full of monetizing adverts.

The worst videos are of the unedited garbage, you know the ones, there’s several minutes of boring video footage, and thirty seconds of real interest, but if it was edited correctly, it would only need to play for no more than two minutes to tell the story and get the point across.

Maybe people are just plain lazy, or they don’t know how, don’t care, or they simply refuse to spend the time editing and polishing their video content.

Money spent on a video editing software program (Or use a free-bee) is money well spent, and will repay the purchase price several times over, most software suites are not that hard to learn how to edit video footage, in fact, if you compare digital editing with old school film edit process of cut and splice method, digital editing is an absolute breeze.

Video Camera – Which One?
To be honest, we couldn’t, and wouldn’t advise you, there are so many on the market to choose from.

But if you want a compact and versatile video camera for automotive video work, its pretty hard to go past the GoPro, there are tens of thousands of them out there in use, and this is what the writer shoots on, and what we’ll talk about here, in the beginning, we shot with a GoPro Hero4 Silver (Now outdated) for many years, but it died, and we decided to upgrade to the Hero10. Well wouldn’t you know, within two months the ten was outdated by the 11, and now they have a hero12… its impossible to keep it all up to date.

Go Pro video cameras deliver big bang for the buck for such a small package, the video quality settings range from VGA to 4K, in short, they are quite amazing. But there are also many other video camera brands out there for you to consider also.

There is also an impressive array of GoPro camera mounts and accessories available, and if you cant find what you want, there is a good case to make a special DIY mounting bracket, or camera mounting rig, we’ve made several over the years, some mounts are best described as “once only use” and built for a special shoot, but whatever you make, keep that special mount/rig handy, you never know when it may be required again for a future shoot.

Capturing Good Clear Audio.
Having previously praised the GoPro package, there is one particular area where it fails miserably, and that is the audio department, unfortunately the internal mics don’t cut the mustard when it comes to capturing great sound quality outdoors.

The mics are quite OK while recording inside a car cabin, workshop, or house interior, (As long as the audio source is close to the mic) but when the recording session moves into the great outdoors, it all goes pear shape…  and the problem is, the slightest breeze that blows across the mic apertures of the GoPro will produce a large amount of annoying wind flutter and roar, and it simply destroys your audio and your video, and no matter how good the video action is, you’ll also lose 98% of your viewer’s because of mic wind roar.

My guess is that you’ve watched the odd car or motorbike video, only to click away from it because of the horrid wind noise, it’s a well known fact in video circles, that good audio constitutes about 60 to 80 percent of the total enjoyment of the video, which means even if you have great video footage, if the sound is of poor quality, distorted, and just plain annoying, (We’ve been here too) viewers will simply click away, never to return, your video content in the the mind of the viewer will be branded as terrible quality.

If you do a google search and type in the search phrase “GoPro wind noise”, literally dozens of videos will pop up from people who claim to have cured the problem.

While most will explain how to get good audio, it wont come with out spending some money on external Lavalier mics, or a shotgun mic, or the purchase of a stand alone recording system, which may end up costing several hundred dollars, and this is where it moves into the too hard basket for most people, because a lot of people do not care enough about their video production and audio quality to warrant the extra expense just to capture good clean sound, but believe me, the ability to capture crisp, clean audio, will lift your video work way above the pack, and will get you rave reviews from viewers.

The smart phone is also used a lot for video work, but even they succumb to the dreaded wind flutter and roar… in short, it sucks.

Like many people who are interested in this game, we have shot plenty of automotive video footage, then transferred the Raw video file to the desk top computer, but after watching/listening with the headphones, the experience has left us feeling disappointed and frustrated with the poor quality audio that was captured by the internal GoPro mic.

Yes, there are audio editing software programs available (More expense) that can clean up audio tracks to make the audio close to to what it is supposed to actually sound like. But in reality, it is much easier and more convenient to capture good clean audio straight off the bat, it will save a huge amount of work in post video production.

Its just like the photographers of old used to say, if you haven’t got it (Image) on the negative, you cant print it onto the paper. Same thing pretty much goes for recorded audio.

Smart Phone Audio Recording App.
The smart phone can also be used to record audio, but don’t use the standard recorder because the resulting audio file of the phone when played back with the video, wont match the video frame rate, and the audio and the video will fall out of sync, (You don’t want that) there are special recording Apps for the smart phone for both Android and Iphone that record in the correct bitrate and sound file and at the correct play back speed, search them out if you prefer this method, there are several different Apps.

An excellent Android phone recording app is RecForge, we have used the free version, and to be honest, its very good, user friendly, some of the the audio you’ll listen to on this page was recorded with RecForge audio recorder. You might want to try it. (No affiliate association)

RodeGo Wireless mic.
While searching for the answer for the GoPro audio problem, we discovered that Rode (Australian Co) manufactures the compact RodeGo wireless mic, (WIGO) and after watching the demo videos we decided to order a pair, (Transmitter and Receiver) they are well priced for what they are, and after testing with the Gopro and the set up we have built to capture good video angles, the audio was vastly improved with the RodeGo Wireless mics… the wireless mics of course don’t have leads, so they allow absolute freedom when positioning the mics for best sound recording, and being small and compact, they match the GoPro very well. They will transmit clearly over a distance of about 50-60 metres.

The RodeGo wireless mic and transceiver is fitted with a spring loaded mounting clip, which slips into a cold shoe camera attachment which is great if you want to use it with a DSLR and record video and audio. Another cool feature of the cold shoe attachment is that special brackets can be bought or fabricated to attach and locate the wireless go receiver right near the camera, and the transmitter or mic can be located right near the sound source (Eg, with automotive video work, place it near the exhaust or inlet for induction) to capture the particular sounds (Without distortion) that you are looking for.

The older Hero4 Silver required a patch cable (Mini USB to TRS) so that the RodeGo can be connected to the GoPro. Hooking up the mic to the Gopro does not take much time… but make sure to test the equipment before doing any serious shooting and recording, it might save having to do a re-shoot.

The Hero10 GoPro is a different kettle of fish again, and does require new bits and pieces to make it all work in harmony.

Note: For the Hero4 GoPro to recognise the RodeGo Mic and receiver, the connecting cable absolutely MUST be the original cable made by GoPro, other cheap cables may not work with the Rode go and the GoPro. (This was our experience anyway)

Wind Noise Sock For the Go Pro.
If you look on any Go Pro related web site there will be a product called the “wind slayer”, its an open cell foam pocket that goes over the Go Pro body or camera holding case, they are mainly for the later Go Pro cameras, but the slayer can be modified to fit the early cameras.

Below is a sound recording of the GoPro Hero4 Silver (Yes, its the older series Camera) with an open back case mounted on the front of a car, note how much wind noise there is. But please listen to the entire track, (Or fast forward) because in the second half of the recording is the same GoPro fitted with a 20cent DIY fur muff, or dead cat as they are often called.

The fur muff is like a glove and wraps the entire camera, the only thing not covered of course is the camera lens. Notice the huge difference in the amount of (Much less) wind roar in the second part of the recording.

The reduction in wind noise is really quite noticeable, and probably minimised enough to allow a reasonable recording of exhaust noise to be made. The fur wind muff (Dead Cat) that surrounds the GoPro body (Case) was effective in eliminating about 96% of the wind roar and waffle noise that effects the Go Pro mic so badly.

Wind roar is created by the smallest amount of air passing over the front of the mic, it is a huge outdoors audio recording problem, but can be cured.

Out of interest, the fur muff was made from scrap imitation fur at zero cost, you could make this your self if you are handy on a sewing machine, but if not, ask your wife, partner, girlfriend, mother, aunt, whoever you can find to help you out, it is well worth the effort to make the fur muff, because the movie/video industry has found that fur is the most effective material to neutralize or cancel wind noise… And work it does.

The Rode Go wireless is supplied with two fur muffs or dead cats, they have two small pegs that click into the top part of the mic casing, the fur covers the mic aperture to prevent wind or air that may flow across the mic and create annoying wind roar and flutter noise.

Fur is marvelous stuff to use on mics. But the RodeGo clip on fur muffs are not totally secure, so a rubber band placed around the fur muff and the mic body will prevent the fur muff from being lost when recording at normal road speeds or on the race track. (Not required if camera is mounted inside of the car).

While we are discussing capturing video and audio, it is probably the right time to demonstrate the differences between what the wind noise will sound like and what the difference is when the fur muff or dead cat is attached to the mic, firstly please watch a short on road video clip with raw wind noise created by the standard internal GoPro mic.

But we should also add, if the GoPro is mounted inside of the cabin of a sedan car, or in an enclosed sports car cockpit, the GoPro sound recording is really quite good. But mounted externally, the on board mic recording ability is all but killed by the wind noise, we obviously don’t want that, because as we said, it destroys the viewer enjoyment of the video. A pet hate of the writer.

Camera Mount Rigs.

In the next video which we are working on, we want to demonstrate the vast improvement with the new WiFi mics we will be using… watch this space as they say, and since writing this article, a Rode Lavalier mic has also been added to the audio recording kit, which is great for in car audio-voice over recording that you might consider doing.