Gear Report: Recording Video Interviews at the NAB Show New York

On October 9 – 10, 2024, I recorded thirty 10-minute one-on-one video interviews at the NAB Show in New York City. To do this, I used a mixture of my own gear and rental equipment.

NOTE: Before I get into gear, I need to say a BIG THANK YOU to Bill Rabkin for his unfailing help and support during these sessions. From finding guests to processing paperwork to running cameras and dealing with technical support, Bill was amazing. Thanks!

LIGHTING

Trade shows have harsh ceiling lighting. Recently, I purchased Lume Cube’s Studio Lighting Kit. These two LED panel lights did a great job of providing even fill light to smooth and soften shadows on faces.

I placed them six feet from each subject, set them to 45% brightness and decreased the color temperature from the 6,000°K in the hall to 4,800°K to provide a warmer light on the subject’s face. I used the barn doors to minimize spill on the subject sitting nearby.

Nothing will make trade show lighting look great, but these lights did an excellent job reducing shadows in a difficult situation.

MICROPHONES

I rented two Sennheiser HMD-26 headset microphones. This is the second time I’ve used them – and I still don’t like them.

They do a great job of reducing background noise. They are rugged. They fit all head sizes. (Though, while the headset fits fairly comfortably on the ear, I would prefer an over-the-ear headphone.)

But, to get good bass response, you need to put the mic very close to the speaker’s mouth. This placement always generates serious “popped-p” explosions. The best place I found to put the mic to reduce popping was just below the chin (which actually didn’t look too bad on camera).

But, this placement made the mic sound tinny. Due to the way the boom is made, you can’t position the mic far enough to the side of the mouth to reduce pops but retain bass.

Also, these condenser mics require phantom power and a very strong pre-amp because they need a LOT of amplification.

Time to look for a better option for recording interviews in a high-noise environment.

MIXING

I used an iRig Pro Quattro I/O for mixing the two mics. This little device was surprisingly flexible. It can mix up to four mics, supports multi-channel output via USB, supports phantom power via battery or USB power, has individual channel audio meters as well as main mix levels, and is the size of a thick iPhone.

While the preamps are barely enough to support the Sennheiser mics, when boosted to full they were sufficient. And, unlike analog gear, when volumes are cranked full there is virtually no noise.

I was very pleasantly surprised by how well this worked and how good the audio sounded. I ESPECIALLY liked the built-in limiter which meant I didn’t need to constantly monitor levels.

For reasons I’ll go into shortly, I recorded interview audio directly from the iRig into Adobe Audition on my MacBook Pro using a USB-C connection. This process worked perfectly. I created a session for each interview with each mic on its own track.

AUDIO DISTRIBUTION

The iRig only has one audio output. But I needed audio sent to at least four, and potentially five, destinations. So, I bought a PreSonus HP4 – a four-channel headphone distribution amplifier. Each output has its own volume control, which allowed me to customize the volume for each guest.

The PreSonus worked great. I’ve used one before and I can count on them. Audio distribution was:

• Output 1: Host headphone
• Output 2: Guest headphone
• Output 3: Camera 1 audio feed
• Output 4: Camera 2 audio feed
• Main monitor: Could feed a PA system or provide a fifth headphone

The main mix was captured via USB directly into the computer, so I only used this for headphones.

CAMERAS

Sigh… Such a mess.

I rented two Canon XA35 HD camcorders. I’ve never had good luck with Canon video cameras and that tradition continued.

While the video quality was OK, the auto-focus was never really sharp. The cameras preferred to focus on the background. Skin tone color was OK, but saturation varied. It took more time than I had during editing to get the cameras to match for each interview.

But the real problem was audio. The cameras were absolutely unable to record audio from the external XLR audio input. Both Bill and I read the user manual to confirm our settings.

When that didn’t work, we tried to get support from the rental company. First, they don’t provide a tech support hotline. Second, when we finally reached someone, they simply sent us pages from the user manual. Apparently, they had no dedicated support for their rentals. During both days, Bill was on the phone multiple times trying to get these cameras to record audio.

Nothing. The rental company was totally unable – or unwilling – to solve this issue.

It is one thing for a piece of hardware not to work. But for BOTH to malfunction – especially when we were “assured” the rental company carefully checked each piece of gear before it left their facility – is hard to believe. And the complete lack of competent tech support … well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

NOTE: And, for the record, one of the SD cards they supplied to record these interviews could not be initialized.

My lesson here is to find a more competent rental house, avoid small format Canon video cameras and allow an extra day for setup and testing. Sigh.. this was so frustrating. Any decent video camera should be able to record audio from a mic.

SUMMARY

Any live event is a balance between plans and reality. I was extremely pleased with the content of these interviews. My guests were great. The audio was clean, but not rich. The video was good, but not great. The results could always be better.

On the other hand, we had a solution for every problem and much of our gear worked exactly as we hoped. So, overall, I’m pleased. I hope you enjoy watching these interviews as much as I did creating them.

---

Bookmark the permalink.