Darreen

To clarify, we are making an archive here and not a documentary, so there will be hundreds of 1-2 hour recordings. As such, it is impossible not to leave anything for post as that will be up to the documentary makers that tap into our archive as they deem fit for their documentaries' particular sound. There are no sound engineers in the field team so I am trying to put together a kit that works with little involvement, hence the wired lav mics that keep a reasonably consistent level at 8 inches below chin level. I am trying to decide whether to clean the files a bit (conservative noise removal and normalize) before storing. If we were only using clips from those interviews, that would be easy.

[quote name='morgancooper' timestamp='1350133955' post='19705'] I think you need to clip the important parts of the interview and stitch them together in a quality way. I did this once and it worked for me. [/quote] Yes, that much is obvious, wait, is this spam? (asking because of the signature)

Indoors, usually very small rooms. The camera is a panasonic sd900, there is also a lesser sony that sometimes get used.

Hello All, I know there are a million messages on recording interviews, and I'm parsing through them, but I wanted to enlist your help as we are slightly limited on time. We are a group that is creating an archive of interviews with witnesses/relatives/victims of human rights abuse, we have a team of non-AV professionals that conduct these, and capture video as well. The interviews are usually 1-2 hours long, and are between the interviewer and the interviewee, though we sometimes get an extra person chiming in in the middle We would like the interviews audio to be good enough to splice into future documentaries and research projects. Our current setup of zoom h2s facing the person contribute too much noise, and render it pretty useless for splicing. I do not know if it's possible to get decent audio running a lav mic to the h2's mio-in, especially since it would need a Y-adapter to get two omni mics, one going in the left, and the other going in the right channel. My suggestion was going to be a recorder such as the dr-40, h4n, or the dr-100 along with two phantom powered wired lav mics. It is not crucial for us to not have it visible in the shot, and we cannot afford a boom operator (too much travel to sometimes dangerous areas) Our budget is a little flexible, but I wanted to keep it under $120 per mic, though ideally, they would be around the $60 mark. Vampire clips would be a plus. ps. Is there a way to have it so that there is an extra mic recording the room for unexpected people chiming in, or in cases where are two interviewees and we want to interviewer for information purpose? I know some recorders will multitrack internal and external mics, but I also heard that causes a lot of noise. Another thing I thought that might work was to use to on-cam mic, or put another mic on camera for splicing if that emergency arises. Thanks a lot for the suggestions!