mono recording

[mrpink89]

I know you should record dialouge in Mono not stero. Although it would be easy to say " okay cool" and not think about it I really want to know why. Why is it better?

also when recording sound affects, should you record the affects in mono or stero? if in Stero, what should you do if you only have a mic that records in mono, like the NTG 2 for example.

 

[harmonica44]

It's because you don't know what the final edit is going to be. Like say you have a scene to shoot where a bad guy is behind the good guy, but to his right. He tells the good guy to drop his gun, or whatever. Say you shoot a mastershot of both of them. Then you shoot a close up of the good guy, and a close up of the bad, guy, same thing.

Let's say later in post, you want to cut the movie so the camera is on a close up of the good guy, and you just hear the bad guy say drop your gun, and not see him. You will want to have that sound come from the right, since it's too the good guy's right, from your point of view of the camera shot that is. But if you record in stereo, the sound is on both the left and right tracks.

So it's best to record everything in mono, one sound at a time, and then decide in post, which track you want each sound on, cause of where the direction is, in each shot, in the final cut. This is assuming you want the final cut to be stereo. If it's 5.1 channel surround sound then you got more channels to work with. Make sense?

 

[Alcove Audio]

I know you should record dialouge in Mono not stereo. Although it would be easy to say " okay cool" and not think about it I really want to know why. Why is it better?

Because a human being only has one egress from the body for the voice. You capture each voice separately, even if you need to "swing" the boomed mic between multiple actors (as professional boom-ops do), or capturing each voice with a lav onto a separate mono audio track (usually in conjunction with a boomed mic). A project I am currently working on used that scheme - three lavs and a boom. Recording in stereo leads to all sorts of audio artifact problems like phase cancellation, and comb filtering. These problems also exist when using lavs and calls for careful dialog editing.

Also when recording sound affects, should you record the affects in mono or stero? if in Stero, what should you do if you only have a mic that records in mono, like the NTG 2 for example.

That all depends upon the sound effect. I do 95% of my sound effects and Foley in mono. I may use two or more mics for some things, but they are all mono at varying perspectives, or when doing vegetable abuse - I have a decent mic collection, and I want the variety of tonal qualities. I record in stereo only when capturing ambiences, like crickets, waves crashing on the beach, etc.

Charles Maynes, the acknowledged master of weapons recording, will use up to 10 mics to capture weapons firing. Weapons Foley is usually two or three mics at differing perspectives.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

I know you should record dialouge in Mono not stero. Although it would be easy to say " okay cool" and not think about it I really want to know why. Why is it better?

also when recording sound affects, should you record the affects in mono or stero? if in Stero, what should you do if you only have a mic that records in mono, like the NTG 2 for example.

Perhaps an analogy would help?: Imagine shooting an entire scene as a long, wide panoramic shot. This might be appropriate for some scenes or part of a scene but not so good for many scenes, where you may want a closer shot so you can focus on or at least clearly see an actor's expression/reactions. How are you going to achieve that shot with any quality if all you have to work with is a long, wide panoramic shot? The same is true of sound, stereo recording is like a wide panoramic shot but the vast majority of the time, particularly with dialogue, you are after at least a medium close up.

Stereo is good for capturing a sound panorama when you have several or lots of simultaneous sound sources from different places/direction, say a city ambiance for example or a single moving sound source, say a car driving by. When trying to record dialogue or Foley like footsteps, clothes rustling, etc., a stereo recording is not only going to capture the dialogue or SFX but also the all the noise/s in the "panorama". This is going to result in far less intelligible dialogue and SFX which in many cases are barely audible above the noise. To make it worse, adding a sound effect to dialogue or using more than one sound FX at a time means you are also adding the noise of each one of those layers together. This is just the noise side of audio, there are also the phase considerations as alcove mentioned.

There is no golden rule for when you record sound FX in mono or stereo but for phase and noise issues the vast majority of single point source sounds which don't move or move very little are recorded in mono. For the same reason dialogue is also always recorded in mono and quite often, as Alcove pointed out, in multi-mono but never in stereo.

If you do want to record some SFX in stereo you will need two mics or a stereo mic (essentially two mics in a single larger mic casing), you can't record in stereo with a single mono mic.

G

 

[mrpink89]

Thanks for all the help guys much appreciated