Producing Great Sound for Digital Video

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review




Great Book, January 19, 2007
By R. Peterson (Chicago, IL)
for anyone that wants to have a professional approach to digital video this is a good book.



If you only buy one book on sound.. This is it, September 9, 2006
By Brian R. Findlay (Merrimack, NH USA)
Where do I start? In a nutshell, this book *IS* the only book to have on sound if your only buying one. No lie. My background... 20 years ago I used to be the "The Amp Dr" fixing commercial PA systems, amps, etc. I have a much better background on sound than most, I was an electrical engineer after that, designing power supplies, and other analog interfaces to digital equipment. Most of that has been dormant for the last 20 years, but I recently decided to make documentaries, and as two of my first projects deal with music, sound seemed pretty important. I got several books on sound, I figure buy six, one has to be good. You can save your money, this book was the one in six.

Knowing audio but NOT audio for video, one of the most important things I discovered is that a professional quality product (video) can only be made with good sound.. If you think you $2 -$10K pro-sumer camera is going to deliver it with the standard mic turn on "auto level", you're really wrong. Half of good sound is the absence of sound, or at least the absence of unintended sound. Insuring good sound is more work than it sounds, but the quality and impact of what I am shooting now is significantly better than before. Otherwise, its' all like home videos, maybe pretty shots and cleverly edited, but still seems like home videos. It all becomes much clearer after reading this book.

When I picked up this book, it was a mental orgasm. Not only does this guy know his stuff, even more importantly, he knows how to communicate it. The way it was written, I was easily able to skip over the stuff I didn't want to review, and go straight for the meat. It is meaty. Almost EVERYTHING I wanted to know was here. I did end up going back just to see how he explained the basics.. great! One of the things I liked about his style, is some authors will tell you something is bad or wrong, with no explanation.. Jay give you good examples.. the CD recording with the book is worth it's weight in , he give examples of proper recording and bad recording (with explanations). You can actually hear it as oppose to read an explanation and take it on faith. Borrow money if you have too.. but buy it.

My message to Jay:
If you read this Jay, I have a few requests. (1) Don't let this book go out of date. Please do you SNR and distortion measurements on some of the new HD cameras. Given the bit resolution is now even less with HDV (12 bits (HDV) vs 16 bits (DV)), I think dual systems are even more important to cover in greater detail. (2) Update with some of the new digital recorders that are replacing DATs (3) Thanks for a great book!






A rare 'how to' book that delivers actual content!, January 5, 2006
By N. Utzig (Princeton, MA)
I've often been taken in by large reference books that promise to be a comprehensive guide to a subject, but turn out to be a lot of filler (screen shots of PC applications, or an excuse for the author to give lots of less-than-useful anectodal stories, etc.)

Not so with Jay Rose's 'Producing Great Sound for Digital Video' book. This informative guide covers a lot of ground, including sound theory, equipment explanations and use, and techniques for sound production including NLE tips, audio mixing, mic use etc. The great thing about this book is it is written with the expectation that your sound production values should be professional, but it's still accessible to hobbyists and those on a budget.

While I think novices to the field of sound engineering (like myself) probably benefit most from this work, I think a lot of the material here is useful to the video production community as a whole. I learned a lot from this, great work.



A Top Resource for Anyone who does Serious DV Recording, April 23, 2005
By John A Lee III (San Antonio, TX)
This book is a top shelf resource. It is useful to both novices and those with more experience. Starting with the very basics, and that does involve some physics, it works its way through virtually all aspects of sound production for digital video.

Do not be fooled. You are not going to learn much to improve the built in recording that comes with your camera. The author is unapologetic in his broad condemantion of the built-in stuff in terms of both quality and usablility. He goes into the reasons and gives a bit of advice on making the most of what you have but this is not what the book is about. Instead, it is about exactly what the title claims. Unfortunately, this is seldom if ever achieved with the built in stuff.

After going over some of the basics of sound and recording, different types of equipment are described in terms of suitability to task and cost. After that, the actual use of this equipment is considered in a variety of situations. The book is not just concerned with equipment and its use, however. There are chapters on editing and even on the use of prefessional talent. In short, the assumption is that you want to get good quality audio for your video production. The author then describes how to do exactly that in a variety of settings. Unfortuately, doing the job sometimes takes a bit more effort than just pushing the record button on the camera. It also take a bit more money although it does not have to take a great deal more. It depends on what type of sound is needed and how you are going to use it.

If all you want is to catch the background sound in a home video, spend your money on something else. If you want to learn how to get the best possible sound for your particular need and preserve that sound to use with video, you need this book.



You will understand sound after this book, March 2, 2005
By E. C. David (Brooklyn, NY)
Audio is really important, and this book will make sure you get incredible sound at every shoot. I really recommend this book!