Improve your iPhone video audio quality with a trip to the dollar store

    I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Straight-out-of-camera audio is terrible.

    As you recall from previous posts, I demonstrated how you can get better audio using just a voice recorder or even investing in a cheap lav mic.

    But sometimes you're in that situation where you're recording on a phone, and you don't have the option to do secondary recording. But there is a way to get good quality sound for about a buck.

    I found one of those hands-free phone devices at the local dollar store (They go by names such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Dollar Store, depending on where you live and what's available.) It's basically ear buds with a mic on it.

    I've seen some people cut the ear buds off so it's just a mic, but I prefer to keep it intact just in case I need to edit video in the field on the phone. But the microphone is good enough to give you clear sound, at least clearer than the mic on the phone will get you.

    I tried it out while on assignment, and while there was some wind out there, the recording was relatively clear.

    It's another option if you're on a budget and want to have better video. Just remember, audiences will forgive slightly out of focus video, or color balances that are off, but bad audio will send them looking somewhere else.

How to have sound in your video that doesn't suck

    When I was mostly an ink-stained wretch, I asked my TV colleagues why they had to mic up the people they were interviewing rather than rely on the microphone on the camera.

    "Because that sounds terrible," they would explain.

    Doing just home videos at the time, I didn't think it was much of a big deal.

    But later, when I started doing more multimedia journalism, I realized they were right. Shooting with an iPhone or a bridge camera in courtrooms or outdoor locations produced sound that was downright awful.

    I tried attaching a mic to the Lightning port on the iPhone, but there was some interference, and the sound quality did not improve drastically. I tried boosting the volume in post, but that did not help; in some cases it made things worse.

    The bridge camera, like many prosumer DSLRs, does not have a mic jack, so attaching a microphone to that was out of the question.

    Then, after doing some reading in online video tutorials, I decided to do what other shooters, even Hollywood productions do: record the sound separately and merge it in post.

    Editing software, such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, can automatically sync a recorded soundtrack with the camera audio, especially if there is a reference sound, such as a clap or saying the word "Go."

    (Those clapper boards you always see in movies to signal the start of a shoot? That's used to create an audible and visual sync point for the audio editors.)

    To record the audio for my video, I used a voice recorder. Testing it in my living room, the results were remarkable. The camera audio picked up a lot of ambient room noise, while the voice recorder was a cleaner sound.

    But, little did I know, the trial by fire was going to be the next day. There was a fire at the local homeless shelter's recycling center. I did a quick raw video with the iPhone to get something up on the web, and then started shooting B-roll with the bridge camera.

    Finally, I interviewed the fire department spokesman, under probably the worst possible audio conditions. We were outdoors, three fire engines idling in the background and a 10-mph wind blowing across the scene.

    Here's the straight-out-of-camera video.

    Awful, isn't it? There was no way I would be able to use that for the website.

    If you notice, he's holding the voice recorder, and here's what it sounded like when, back at the office, I used the recorder's sound instead.

    Much better, don't you think?

    I could probably improve it further by using a lavaliere mic, but this technique can also help improve your home videos as well.

    You can see the full video here.

Looking for a cheap way to geotag your photos?

    If you use sites such as Flickr or Google Photos, you know about geotagging.

    It offers you and your audience a chance to see where the photo was taken. This is helpful if you want to go back to that location, or a way to remember a particular trip.

    If you take pictures with your smartphone, the GPS data is already embedded in your metadata. If it's not, you can adjust the settings to allow this.

    But most DSLR users don't have this option. We have to either enter it manually using Lightroom's or Flickr's drag-and-drop editing to place the photos on the map. This can be tedious if you have hundreds of photos from a vacation or a shoot. And if you forget where you were exactly when you took the photo, you could be off in your placement.

    There are easier ways to do this. You could buy a dedicated GPS logger that keeps track of your location, and the log file can be compared to the time stamps on each photo to insert the geographical data.
 

    The main problem with this approach is the price. A dedicated GPS logger starts around $100 on the low end.

    Another option is to use a phone app, which is usually free and utilizes the GPS receiver already incorporated in your smartphone.

    There are two drawbacks with this route, though.

    First, the GPS logging can increase the load on your phone battery, especially if you're using it for other things, such as making phone calls.

    Second, some people don't have, don't want or can't afford a smartphone.

    Well, there is a solution. Get a used smartphone without a phone plan, and use that as your GPS logger.

    What many people do not realize is that even if you do not have a plan for your cell phone, some of its functions, such as the GPS system, still work. This is because cell phones are required, by law, to be able to call 911 regardless of whether they have a plan.

    (I spent an evening at a 911 dispatch center, and actually saw a couple calls come in from "disconnected" cell phones. The number that comes up on the caller ID looks a bit funky, but the caller's position comes right up on the map display at the dispatch console.)

    You can find used smartphones online, at thrift stores or in other places. In my case, when I was laid off, my former employer allowed me to keep my company-issued Blackberry Bold, which had reached the point where Blackberry was no longer issuing updates for its operating system.

    The phone plan eventually lapsed, but I found it did a great job as a GPS logger. Even without phone service, it is possible to download software onto the phone through wifi. For the Blackberry, I use GPSLogger II from Emacberry, which I have found is reasonably accurate.

    Since I'm not using the Blackberry for phone calls, the battery can keep the GPS logger running longer. I was able to get about six hours off it while at a state fair, allowing me to track my travels throughout the day.

    Getting the file off the phone's easy. You can either hook up the phone to the computer with a USB cable or take the micro SD card out and use a reader.

 

    From there, you can use either Lightroom or some of the other programs available to attach the GPS data to the photos. Then, when you upload them on services such as Flickr or Panaromio, they will automatically display where they were taken. Or you can convert it to a KML file and let others see  the photos in Google Earth.