Product review: Zoom H4N

As I have learned the nuances of videography during the past four years, one aspect has constantly been made clear.

Good video means nothing without quality audio.

Thus, I’ve produced several projects at which I have been ashamed of the quality of audio. Background noise, unclear quotes or simply tinny-sounding clips make me cringe when I look (listen) back at them a year or two later. From now on, however, I have no reason to not be proud of my video’s sound quality.

A week after returning from Christmas Break, I was thrust back into constant shooting here on campus. Previously, I had used a Sony shotgun mic plugged into a camera’s audio jack to capture crisp sounds. With the HV20 this worked, but because of the 7D’s auto-gain control function, the results weren’t quite as positive. Then, during a time when I needed it most, the Sony mic inexplicably quit working.

Apparently a wire had come loose within the mic’s body, and I was only receiving a quality signal from one channel. The other was very scratchy. This could only be remedied in editing by soloing one of the channels, which is never preferable.

Here’s a video that I produced with the Sony mic where the audio was barely salvageable. This one goes into the I’d-rather-watch-than-listen category among some of my other productions.

Needless to say, I panicked and started looking for options online.

Almost immediately, I was intrigued by the power and quality of the Zoom series of digital audio recorders, particularly after reading about the H4 on Tom Guilmette’s blog - here and here. Such great sound from such a small device.

I placed my order and had it within a week. The Zoom came just in time, as it’s been getting heavy use from several gigs over the past few weeks.

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First, a luncheon on campus where Dr. David Livingston outlined the upcoming faculty portion of Mercyhurst’s capital campaign. I’ve known Dr. Livingston, along with his two children who I went to high school with, for a few years now and he’s a great guy to work with.

I plugged a small lapel mic into the Zoom’s external mic input, ran the mic up to his tie underneath his sport coat and tucked the recorder easily into one of his pockets. That way, he remained mobile and my audio turned out perfectly from across the room where I was shooting.

This setup is shown in the title image above.

Here’s the finished product. Editing was super easy, as I just synced up the audio feed from the HV20 with the 20-minute file recorded onto the Zoom’s SD card. Instant (and relatively cheap) wireless mic setup!

Fortunately, transferring the audio from the Zoom, even a big file like the one from the event above, takes less than a minute through a USB card reader.

This proved very valuable when I had another shoot later that same day.

Mercyhurst President Tom Gamble gave a speech that afternoon in the Performing Arts Center to inform students and faculty about the college’s potential upgrade to university status. This was definitely a newsworthy event, and one that would lend itself to a visual record for The Merciad’s readers to explore.

For this, I used the Zoom’s XLR inputs to tap into the PAC’s soundboard (big thanks to Production Technician Randy Stankey on that one) and recorded the entire speech while I set up the camera and tripod about 75 yards away.

To my knowledge, this might be the first lecture/auditorium speech ever recorded in its entirety using a Canon 7D. I probably wouldn’t do it again, though, if I had the choice between the 7D and a two or three-camera cart production setup like I worked on at WBGU-PBS. It was tough as a one-person operation.

Finally, here are the latest two installments of the Merciad Game of the Week series. For these, I just recorded the interviews by holding the Zoom toward the players and coach as one might with any shotgun mic or reporter’s tape recorder.

Compare the audio quality of these basketball interviews against those from the Edinboro game displayed above.

I’m in the midst of editing two other videos in which the Zoom H4N played a key role. Those will each be featured in separate blog posts over the next few weeks.

Check back soon for more!