Audio concerns for shooting with RED camera

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Audio concerns for shooting with RED camera was created by Fred Ginsburg

A student about to shoot her video on a RED has been in touch with us, asking for advice. We thought that excerpts from our dialog might be informative for some readers. We asked her initially about the audio inputs to the RED.

:dry: "I have heard from my camera person regarding your question on XLR inputs stereo mini inputs.The Red has mini-xlr inputs, and he says he has the adapters.
"The best audio is to have a line in signal, I believe at -4Db -- or maybe 0 dB. I'll look it up.
"It would be best to record to a separate audio file..."


We asked, "Are the adapter cables wired with -10 dB attenuators, or did they come from a sound shop that made them without the attenuation? Not a major problem either way; but you do need to know ahead of time."

The RED camera uses TA3 (mini XLR) inputs for audio. The inputs are not set for true 0 dB, but closer to -10 dB (more like RCA consumer line level in). If you purchase your TA3 to XLR input adapter cables from RED, then they have a -10 dB attenuator built into them, so that the end result is that with a professional 0 dB input from a mixer, you would have the normal 20 dB of headroom for your audio signal.

If you are working in RED, then you really ought to run a recorder as a backup. The audio on early generation of RED is notorious, both in terms of getting all of the camera menu settings right (and keeping them from changing during the shoot) to the actual quality of the soundtrack (mediocre).
12 years 6 months ago #25

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