If you are a video producer who is working with your smartphone and looking for a way to connect your audio gear to the phone, we have a great solution for you. You don’t have to go out and buy an array of accessories for your phone just to get good audio; with the help of a few adaptors you can use your old gear for your traditional camera with your smartphone.
We here at VJ love smartphones. They shoot broadcast quality video, you can edit and add graphics on them, and you can share your finished work to the Internet — all without using any other computer or device. They are easy to use, unassuming, and are like little production studios in your pocket.
While there are so many advantages to using a smartphone for your video shoots, there are some drawbacks. One of the biggest drawbacks that we always hear about it audio. The microphones on the phones are designed for phone calls, not for recording audio. While the internal mics have gotten better and better with each model of smartphone, they still are not nearly as good as what you can get with a dedicated video camera microphone. There are plenty of accessories you can buy for smartphones, including microphones, but the quality on those can vary and very few of them are wireless, which limits what you can do with the phone.
If you have some radio mics lying around that you used to use with your video camera, then you can hack a way to use them with your smartphone giving you professional level audio without being tetherd to your subject and without having to buy a whole new mic setup — all you need is some adaptors
Here’s how it’s done:
If you are working with a smartphone that has a headphone jack then all you need is one adaptor. The headphone jacks on most smartphones are TRRS while most microphones for cameras are TRS (the acronyms just indicate how many rings the plug has), So in order to plug in a wireless mic receiver to the phone you just need a TRS to TRRS adaptor. Just plug the TRRS side to your phone and the TRS side to the wire coming from your receiver, and your set to go. Put the mic and transmitter on the subject and your set to go.
If you are working with a phone that has no headphone jack, like a newer iPhone model, then you need a few more adaptors, but it is still easy to do. Now you would think that you could use just your headphone to lightenight adaptor, but this doesn’t work. So, what you will need is a USB to lightening adaptor and a microphone to USB adaptor. You plug in your receiver to the USB adaptor, then the USB into the USB to lightening adaptor and then your microphone set up will be connected to your phone.
Got another solution for getting professional audio on your smartphone? Let us know in the comments.
Originally posted on VJ.
