Video recording equipment

[Amy L Sheldon]

I recorded triads of 3-4-and 5-year-olds on videotape and got wonderful
crisp sound, even able to hear and transcribe their frequent overlapping
talk and talk during noisy play. They were engaged in normal preschool
play in a room at their daycare center.

Here's how I solved the sound problem. Each child wore a wireless lavalier
microphone connected to a transmitter. They wore a specially made
"research" vest. The lavalier mike was clipped onto the vest's lapel under
their chin. A wire from it ran to the transmitter which was sitting in a
pocket on the back of the vest.

An audio engineer was present at each session. Three high quality cassette
tape recorders were used to record each child on their own, separate
cassette. A line from each cassette was fed into the audio channel of the
video recording equipment. This produced the high quality of sound on the
videotape, because speakers were recorded on their own sound channel, by
an external mike, on high quality audio recording equipment,  which
was then mixed onto the video recorder's sound channel. Recording audio
with what comes with a video camera does not produce research quality
sound.

It was possible to transcribe the whole triad by using just one speaker's
audiocassete recording, because the kids played pretty close together.
This lets one use a pedal operated transcribing machine. If anything was
unclear, we played the tape of the speaker whose talk was unclear, and
got clear audio for that speaker.

The only downside is that it is important to make a copy of each tape one
records, and to work from the copy not the master. I had 96+ original
tapes x 2. Paying an audio engineer was worth it because she tested the
equipment each session, sometimes found dead batteries, and monitored
sound levels throughout the recording session. She worked behind a curtain
in the playroom.

I describe this method in A. Sheldon. 1990. Pickle Fights: Gendered Talk
in Preschool Disputes. _Discourse Processes_ 13.1,5-31.

I tried other microphone arrangements (hand held directional,
omnidirectional hung from the ceiling, wall mikes, etc.) but they didn't
come close to working out.

Amy Sheldon

On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Alison Henry wrote:

> We are currently collecting spontaneous and elicited language from SLI
> children. Video (camcorder) recording helps transcription by recording
> the context and ongoing action, but separate high quality audio
> recording equipment (directional microphone) is also being used to gain
> the sound recording quality required for accurate transcription, since
> stardard video recording does not seem to produce high enough quality
> sound. However, synchronising the playback can be difficult. Does anyone
> know of any combined video (camcorder) and high quality audio recording
> systems which allows simultaneous recording and playback of sound and
> picture (but that doesn't involve long trailing wire between video and
> microphone)?
>
> Karen Brunger and Alison Henry
>
>