Sailing and videos

[Brian D]

For all you sailors out there that like to make videos of you and your boat. Please, please, do something about the wind noise that is picked up by your microphone.

How? You ask? Glad you asked!!!

Give it a try at home before you sojourn off to ports unknown. We might enjoy your videos if we can hear you talking and the water lapping along your freeboard. And not the wind causing distorted sound.

We thank you in advance. LOL

 

[RussC]

I wish I had a solution for my point and shoot, but I don't think that's it. I've tried several similar methods with equally poor results

 

[dlochner]

A couple of suggestions.

Some cameras have a "wind noise reduction" setting, turn it on.
Some video editing software can reduce the volume on a track, reduce the volume.
Replace the audio with a pleasant piece of royalty free music. Search online for Royalty Free Music.
If the piece needs narration, use subtitles or over dub the audio.

 

[Kermit]

Interesting. Sailors complaing about one of things we love about sailing.

 

[Meriachee]

The racket? If the dead cat, infinitely adjustable 20db of linear gain, and the possibilities of the add in's to FCPX are not enough to get rid of any noise the new Deity V-Mic d3 might bring to the party, then it's simply time to go watch somebody else's videos. At that point, I give up.

 

[Brian D]

An option is to visit you nearest Guitar Center and get a cheap microphone wind screen. They do work. Or you can purchase one off of Ebay (if that is what you like) or even Amazon. Just about any music store should have windscreens.

I know the wind noise (if controlled) sounds cool, but when it over powers everything else, then it should to be dealt with.

 

[RussC]

The problem lies (in many cases) not in what to use for a wind screen, but in a way to apply it to your camera, phone, or whatever you use. if a mic plug in is available on your camera then solutions get a lot easier, but when you need to cover a couple small slits in the narrow edge of a small case.... not so much.

 

[John Nantz]

This is to Kermit - (and anyone else who follows along)

Interesting. Sailors complaing about one of things we love about sailing.

Sound: that audio you want to hear
Noise: that audio you DON'T want to hear

Unfortunately, [Edit: or maybe fortunately] us humans can tune out noise. Think of someone who lives next to a freeway or a busy railroad. Most humans consider sounds that are emitted from those sources to be noise, but after some time we kinda tune them out. That which we tune out, or want to tune out, is what we consider NOISE. And what we tune out varies by frequency.

In the case of recorded audio, though, it hears everything but what needs to be removed is the noise so it sounds like what we would normally hear, or maybe what we would like to hear. This is not easy!
In fact, it can be, is usually, really, really difficult.

There is a saying: "Two thirds of good video is good audio." This is why good audio is so important.

 

[Kermit]

...Sound: that audio you want to hear
Noise: that audio you DON'T want to hear...

This explains why husbands have selective hearing.

 

[Sailm8]

Another tip. Shoot the video in LANDSCAPE MODE. I hate to see what could be a great video shot so it looks like it was shot through a keyhole.

 

[John Nantz]

Kermit -

This explains why husbands have selective hearing.

Yes, and almost wove this into the post ... and I think there is a little bit of truth to it.

If one is really into video it is easy to get really anal about audio. For example, a while back PBS had a special about steam trains, or rather steam engine pulling cars, typically for tourists, and the yo-yo's drowned out the engine "noise" with music! In this case, the engine noise is what we wanted to hear, not the stupid music.

When doing video on a sailboat it is amazing about all the noises the mic picks up that you don't even notice. The sounds are there but while we're sailing we just tune them out; the mic, on the other hand, is faithfully picking up every noise to it's fullest. The wind noise, though, is mostly the air turbulence on the mic and because of the proximity of the mic grill to the sensor the noise is many times louder than it should be and overwhelms the other audio you want to pick up, such as the crew talking in the cockpit, or the sound of the boat going through the water.

Back to selective hearing, though, a good husband retort is "Did you say something dear?"

 

[Brian D]

I would think the wind noise is more like the air blown across the hole of a flute. Wind is not getting into the mic, but more over the sound of the wind "sliding" over the mic hole. Cover the hole and the noise should abate. However, by covering the hole one also dampens the other audio sounds. So the proper wind screen will reduce wind noise but allow other ambient sound to reach the mic element.

 

[Meriachee]

That’s where the “dead cat” comes into play. The strands are far superior to extruded foam in breaking up the airflow, while allowing the sound waves to pass through.
The thing that these things are great at is allowing a slightly higher gain settings to get quieter sounds above the noise floor.

 

[John Nantz]

Last season I started ramping up my boating videos. The goal was to capture smooth video with good audio while at the same time maintain a horizon that was horizontal. In the past I used a hand-held cam but when things got more exciting, shall we say, one really needs both hands for the boat so the cam gets put away. Don’t want to loose it overboard or have an accident.

Taking steady video on a boat where the waves are constantly causing motion changes to the boat and the videographer on board isn’t conducive to smooth shooting with both hands. Or even one hand for that matter.

After analyzing various options I decided to join the action-cam crowd. The problem with the action cams is their video quality isn’t as good as the bigger cams and their controls and everything else is more limited. However, for real action the picture quality doesn’t need to be as perfect.

I already had a Sony AX53 with a gimbaled lens but it isn’t one that I wanted to expose to the salt spray as it isn’t weatherproof. Sony recently came out with the FDR-X3000 action cam that also has the gimbaled lens design and it has the weather sealed capability so I decided to try it out. At the end of last spring I set it up on my boat / mountain bike to see how it would work and after some setup tweaking the results were really good.

The best bike setup was with a separate mic to provide the audio. The mic is a Røde SVM that provides a stereo input and the wind screen was a Rycote Softie (that’s their marketing term). The setup doesn’t maintain a horizontal horizon but it is close and the biking videos look very good and the audio is excellent.

The next step was to rig something up on the boat. To maintain the horizontal horizon an electronic gimbal was added to the system. The initial test sails using the X3000, Røde mic, and gimbal mounted on the radar mast support were really good. Both the cam and the gimbal can be controlled (start, stop, zoom, and direction; both up, down, and horizontal) with an app on the iPhone, AND ... one can actually see the video being recorded on the iPhone. Really neat.

Unfortunately, right after getting everything sorted out the weather changed. Forest fires all along the Pacific coast caused unbearable smoke and this effectively ended our boating season for the year. By the time the smoke started to subside it was time to catch up on household maintenance for the little bit of outdoor season that was left. We really hope that this season will be different because we’re ready. Well, after doing a bottom job, anyway.

This season is going to be a GREAT season for boating videos.

Below is a picture of the bike-cam rig with the mic.

 

[Meriachee]

The next toy on the list is a little thing called a “WeeBill Lab” to use with the Sony a6500. Once you’ve had the pleasure of editing in 4K, you’ll never go back.
Mostly that’s because you’ll be buying hard drives by the case, the files are so freakin huge!