In preparation for our upcoming Age of Ashes campaign, I am revising our camera and recording setup. Keep in mind, this is being done at as low of budget as possible, with a bit of creativity, luck, and inexpensive gear.
To that end, during our last session, I attempted to test our process, and record the full session – mainly to identify gaps I needed to address, but also to test and see just how well the lavaliere microphones I have would work. In general, with a single microphone (suspended above the table), the audio is workable, but not very good – some players are too loud, others are too soft, and there is a lot of room noise.
Enter the lavaliere mic, for which I opted for the cheapest possible option on Amazon I could find. In theory, with a splitter, I would record two players (the loudest and softest), and then verify that I could a) adjust the volume to balance both voices, and b) reduce or eliminate the background noises. Pre-tested worked decent – I could hear both, and they were on different channels. However…. I forgot to actually start the recording until the end of the game, so I didn’t actually get anything usable.
This was a common theme in my setup – everything was powered and functional, but I forgot to actually start recording on several of the sources as well. Audio was completely missing, and the main camera was started late in the session (when I realized it). Then my battery powered camera apparently was not charging during the game, so it failed midway thru, and had to be restarted.
In the end, I don’t think I actually have much usable, but it was a valuable lessons learned session. To help, I have started a checklist to run thru before each future game, to insure that everything is powered, focused, and actually recording.
PoP Voice 12.8 ft Lavaliere Mic – https://amzn.to/2LuNdVN
