advice on taping for voiceover

[Linda@vizardkuvasz.com]

I have just started using the video studio 9.v & I have some VERY old films that I'm now getting transferred to DVD's they have no sound, what I'd like to do is record my family while watching the films & later add that conversation to the movie.

I'm looking for advice or if someone else has done this what they used to make the original recording? I've found that my laptop recordings are not loud enough? & I wondered if I need to buy a digital voice recorder like you'd use @ a seminar or conference but, I've never used one so don't know if it would produce the sound I'm looking for or not?

I have a program on my computer called "video live" for doing email but, when I do a recording I can turn the sound all the way up on my computer & you can hardly hear it so I don't think it will work for putting onto the movie video.

I want to be able to in the end transfer the recording to my computer so I can insert into the video during editing.

Thanks for the help,
Linda

[BrianCee]

oops made a mistake - but now we seem to have lost the ability to delete our own posts

[Ron P.]

Hi Linda

There are a couple of ways to do this. You mentioned that you have a laptop. Well you could record directly onto your laptop using http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. This is a great Free audio program. You should use an external microphone for this.

Or you could use a digital tape recorder. However make sure that it has line out jacks so that you can download to your computer. This can also be done using a standard cassette tape recorder. Just connect the line out of the recorder to the line in on your computer's soundcard.

Regards

Ron

[THoff]

See if the mixer for your audio device allows you to apply a 20db boost to the input.

There are two types of audio input, amplified and unamplified. The LINE IN or AUX inputs are for amplified devices, while the MIC input is for unamplified devices.

If you plug an unamplified passive microphone into a LINE IN or AUX port, the sound volume will be too quiet, and boosting the volume will result in hissing and other problems.

With laptops especially, there is often only one input for the audio device, i.e. it doubles as both a LINE IN / AUX input and a MIC input. In those cases, the mixer software usually allows the port to be configured for the type of input device, or a boost can be applied to amplify the input signal.

[RichardB]

Hi
An alternative could be to use your camcorder to record the audio. It will produce a reasonably good quality recording that you can transfer to the PC. Record it in the PC via line in and save as wav format. You can then add it to your project.
Regards