I am wanting to improve the audio quality of my future films, and I need a not too expensive way to get good sound recording while shooting my film. My camera doesn't have an audio input so i can't connect an external mic to my camera. So i need something that i could record seperate from my camera and edit the audio in on my computer. I would like something similar to a boom mic. What kind of equipment or things could i use to accomplish this without spending too much money.

Thanks

A decent MiniDisc recorder plus a decent mic? Honestly, for DV, it's rarely worth the hassle to record double-system sound, since you can get 2 tracks of 16 bit audio at 48 kHz on the tape. Is it possible to borrow a camera that has an audio in? If not, go with MD...

On my camera (a GL2) the built-in mic is surprisingly usable. It won't win any awards, but if you use it appropriately (in quiet settings) and ADR when necessary the results can be quite good. I've been reasonably happy with the mixes on my recent projects, and I think most further improvement would involve refining my mixing skills, not buying new gear (although I should borrow a decent condenser mic for Foley...)

No offense Evan, but I don't know what your GL2 has to do with this I'm just jealous.

Anyway, someone else posted this and I said the Canon Optura 20 is inexpensive but if you can't afford that to go for the MD recorder.

Also, a little tip, for recording dialogue, stretch a nylon between your actor's mouths and the mic if you're recording sound especially close.

Ps and Bs in human speech have especially high and low frequency levels which a nylon softens (you could also fix this by normalizing your audio in post).

I think I'm using the right words here, I know a nylon works, I'm not yanking your chain, I just can't find the book with all the fancy ****ing explinations and lingo in it.

Nah, you're right. It's not especially high frequencies so much as air blowing on the mic though. They call the professional versions of the nylon pop filters.

Something you may be thinking of when you mentioned frequencies is the proximity effect, where the low frequencies are exaggerated in relation to the rest of the frequency band, the closer the audio source gets to the mic. This can be solved with EQ in post, or the bass roll-off feature on some mics. It's useful for voice of God style things though.

Brandon, you mean compress, not normalize. Normalizing would just bring up the audio levels to where the spikes barely go 0 db.

Compressing isn't what you'd want either, though. You'd have to try and EQ the pops out, but it's really hard and does not always work. Much better to just avoid them to begin with.

What's your price range?

I thought he was referring to volume control, in which case you would want compression. Use a parametric EQ with a big Q number to isolate out the pops although all this could be avoided with a $20 pop filter off ebay.

You should look for portable DAT recorders.