How to improve your production’s audio quality with a range of hardware and software solutions
Our iPhone is usually able to capture high-quality video footage in a variety of locations, but in some situations it might struggle to capture comparably good sound. We took the iPhone 14 Pro Max to a noisy beach where the wind and wave-driven pebbles threatened to drown out our speech. Audio quality also dropped the further the subject stood from the built-in mic. Fortunately we were equipped with a Joby Wavo Plus gun mic and a SmallRig wireless mic to experiment with ways to capture better audio. We’ll also show you how iMovie can improve audio quality using its suite of sound tools.
Step-by-step Capture high-quality sound
1 Skimmer info
Import our clips into a new project. To identify each clip go to the View menu and turn on ‘Skimmer Info’. A label appears when you move the cursor over a clip.
2 iPhone mic
Drag the ‘iPhone Mic’ clip into the timeline and play it. The subject’s voice is being picked up by the iPhone’s mic but it’s being drowned out by the waves and wind.
3 Gun mic
Attaching a Joby Wavo Plus to our iPhone improved the quality. The directional mic listens to the subject in front of the camera but picks up less of the wave sounds.
Reduce rumble
4 Add the ‘Wavo Plus’ clip.
