Tips for Quality Video and Cable Care
A popular and often quoted maxim says, “a person is only as good as their tools.” This saying is true in many areas of life including visual storytelling. Our tools extend beyond our cameras, lights, and microphones to the various tips and tricks that we acquire along the road of practice made perfect. These useful techniques become the difference between knowledge and experience, which yields wisdom. To this effect, here are some helpful hints that might assist you in becoming a little better with your tools.
The Hard Pan
Multi-camera event recording is the bread and butter of high school video production programs across the country. Our school has several choirs, which are nationally ranked, and thus a large part of what we cover in our program consists of choir concerts and musicals. To provide the best possible video and audio quality, I like to have options, such as having multiple cameras and multiple microphone inputs. I send each of our four camera signals via HD-SDI cables to a BlackMagic Designs ATEM 1 Switcher and then mix the shows live in real-time so that our editing is mostly done before we leave the event. To ensure that we have the best quality audio for each part of the show, I have two different feeds going into our audio board. The two feeds are a line from the external house audio board and our shotgun microphone, which is positioned in the theater. This gives me full control over this audio in post-production. I have utilized a trick for years – the hard pan. The hard pan technique puts these two audio channels on opposite sides of the audio channel spectrum. I pan the theater board audio all the way to the left and the shotgun microphone all the way to the right. This allows me to have individual channels of audio to edit as I see fit during different parts of the show.
Strain Relief
Cable care and maintenance deserve their own column. Too often, we neglect these critical pieces of infrastructure and treat them like expendables instead of capital investments. To help keep your cables lasting years, here is a helpful tip for strain relief. One of the worst things that you can do with a cable is have unnecessary pressure and strain on the ends where the cable terminates. This most often happens when we connect cables to cameras via HD-SDI, HDMI, or XLR ports. To avoid pulling and tugging on your cables as they hang down to the ground, try looping your cables through various parts of your tripod or camera. For me, I run the cable up a tripod leg, sometimes through the center hub of the tripod head (if applicable), through the hand strap, and then over the camera handle. This gives the cable a path to follow and keeps any part of it from placing undue burden on the cable termination or the camera port.
Meet the Author, Josh Branch
Josh Branch has a wide amount of experience in the video production industry including over 15+ years of freelance work for clients throughout the country and Josh spent the better part of a decade working for a big tire company in Akron as a Corporate Videographer. Josh also holds an Associate’s Degree in Communication (Axia), a Bachelor’s Degree in Organizational Management (Malone), and a Master’s Degree in Career-Tech Education (Kent State).
Josh’s award winning video work has been seen on over 500 TV stations and networks across the country including History, Speed, ESPN, A&E, Discovery, Fox, Fox News & Telemundo. Josh has 100+ TV commercials to his credit and well over 1000 video projects completed.
Josh enjoys teaching because it is tangible and exciting to watch the next generation of America’s workforce discover their creativity and communication skills. Josh resides in North-East Ohio with his wife and four sons.