So last week we tried to film the second episode of our show “This week on Baduku” but unfortunately we ran into a number of technical difficulties. As you might have noticed, during our last show we had issues with the wireless microphones so I had to hold one microphone thought out the show while Jessie had the other lapel mic.

It wasn’t easy and sometimes the sound would go in and out depending on how I would hold it so we returned that Wireless Sony mic system and is time we have a Hisonic 4 Channel VHF Wireless microphone system. This system allows us to each have our own microphone signals which allows us to adjust the volume individually for each person.

Every thing seemed to be working fine before we started filming, but there were some initial hurdles. The mic system had 4 individual line outputs and 1 mixed out. At first we tried using a splitter on the mixed output so that we could send one to the our camera (Kodak zi8) and the other one would just go to a headphone so that our camera/sound/producer Matt Brechbuler could listen in. However, when we split the output it seemed that somehow the output itself was cut in half and we could barely hear anything. So we had to forego the splitter and Matt just had to hope that the sound would come in correctly.

After our continued sound checks, we assumed it was ok, although our only form of testing the sound was to preview it through the dinky speakers on the Kodak camera. For some reason Jessie sounds just fine but we sounded slightly lower than him but not enough to think it was the microphones when in fact it was. Additionally on top of that problem, the camera was running low on battery power and we were unaware of it. As the power continued to drain, it was actually affection the sound input. We started recording anyhow and then just as we were starting on the 3rd topic, the camera turned off. So we had to take a break to check the recharge the camera. The problem with that camera was that we always assumed that the camera could be charged through built-in USB connector however as it turns out that port recharges really slowly so we had to start looking for the wall adapter and finally found it and that actually recharged the camera at half the speed.

That unexpected interruption made us lose track of what we were saying so it took a few minutes to figure out just were we left off and resume. We finally finished the taping and everything was great but when we looked back at the recording, that’s when we found out that the sound was messed up. It’s too bad since many of our comments and interactions were genuine and on the fly but I’m sure we’ll do just fine again next time.

So in light of these problems, we’ve bought some new items to help us with better production for our next taping. After testing the Hisonic system to see if it was mic system or the camera it turned out that the system had on bad channel that could have been affecting the other channels. Luckily Hisonic’s HQ was only a half hour away so I went to their offices where their technician Kelly personally confirmed that the receiver was broken and then tested another system before giving it to me as a replacement. Secondly we also got a 10 channel Behringer mixer so that we don’t run into issues in different channels and Matt can also listen to our audio though his headphones. Also another new addition to our show will be the awesome new green screen that we’ve added. This will let us show videos in the background while we are discussing topics. It’s probable going to be just like The Totally Rad show on Revision 3 but we’ll be discussing Baduku topics instead.

Hopefully it all turns out well so we will be filming next week on Wednesday and if all goes well you should see something up on itunes by Friday.