I’ve been getting a few questions from readers asking how I get rid of the background noise in my Driving with John Chow videos.
My driving videos are done with a very loud convertible sport car, and I film them with the top and windows down. With a normal camera, there would be so much background noise that you would have a hard time hearing me speak. I’ve always said that great video starts with great audio. If your audio sucks, it won’t matter how great your video is. Therefore we should do everything possible to make sure our audio is of the highest quality.
To show the effectiveness of great audio, I created the two videos below. The top one was made with the built-in mic of the GoPro Hero4 Black Edition. The bottom video was filmed with the GoPro, but the audio was recorded using the Tascam DR-22WL digital voice recorder and Giant Squid Audio Lavalier Mic. The audio was synced to the video in post production using Final Cut Pro X. The final result speaks for themselves.
The Trascam DR-22WL can be had for less than $150 and the Giant Squid Audio Mic sells for $49. If you want to save some money, you can get the MIC-J Lavalier Mic for $26. It’s cheaper because it’s made in China. The Giant Squid is made in the USA. It really is amazing that for less than $200, you can now get audio quality that would have cost over $10K only a decade ago. Get the setup, and go make your own top-down driving videos.