S-VHS Price/Toaster
Wayne,
Sorry for this late reply–we closed down for a few days.
I'm glad to see my Panicsonic/JVC adventures may benefit someone. I learned
the hard way. As I mentioned I really don't know which machine is better
but our policy is if it says "Panisonic" we don't buy it–period.
As far as audio I'm still wrestling with that myself. So far I'm using a
Fostex X-15 Multitracker 4-track cassette recorder/mixer. I haven't been
really happy with it. One of the biggest problems is that it distorts
sudden peaks that the decks would have no problem with. If your dealing
with audio that has many peaks (which can happen alot in location shooting)
the Fostex destroys them. I also tried a Tascam (Porta-One) with much the
same results.
The source deck feeds into the mixer section which lets me control volume,
tone and pan between channels. Very often I'll only want one track from the
source to go to both tracks on the edit deck. This lets me do that.
Sometimes (but not very often) I'll also mix in other audio on the fly.
On location I always use 2 microphones–one AT lav and one (short)
shotgun–each on it's own audio track. I usually end up using only the lav
in post but I like to have both. It really depends on what's being shot. So
far I've always gotten by with this settup. Idealy I should have more mic's
and a location mixer–someday.
Other audio elements (i.e. non-sync) I always lay down on the hi-fi tracks
of a VHS tape and lay them down a piece at a time with the editor. I use
this method for V/O, music, FX or anything that's not sync.
The most important piece of advice regarding audio is DO NOT USE CHEAP
MICROPHONES. Microphone is one place you cannot cut corners. I know, I
tried!
I hope this helped a little. If not, be a little more specific and I'll try
again.
Bill.