It's quite unfortunate, because Hal shares really important things. We're fundraising right now to get a better quality videocamera than just using a smartphone, which is what we can afford right now. I'll work on getting a transcript of this and post it here.
Does anyone here have an experience with video recording, and could recommend a quick and cheap (I imagine under $50 and within a week) solution that would make the sound quality better by an order of magnitude (not necessarily perfect)? Or is the problem other than hardware? For example the distance of the microphone, noisy room, bad audio card, bad settings... I don't have experience with sound recording and processing.
Here is a review of a microphone that costs about $30, and the quality of the sound feels good enough.
Nice idea about a microphone in the interim while we're fundraising for a nicer videocamera than just a smartphone with a tripod, which we're using currently. I'll float it past the Intentional Insights Board, thanks!
You could record the audio on a separate device at the same time placed much closer. I'd suggest recording the audio in a lossless format (I used wavpack but only because it was convenient), then converting to WAV format (lossless but no compression so large filesize). In WAV format the audio can be processed by CN Levelator to improve the quality. Then convert to whatever format you want (eg for podcast) or directly replace the video's audio with your improved recording using any video editing software. It's a annoying series of steps but may get you much better audio quality and is free.
Alternative is buying a better microphone. Probably almost any external microphone will get you much better quality, just consider whether you need a directional or omnidirectional microphone (one person talking vs multiple people plus background noise).
Any contemporary digital camera, even a cheap point-and-shoot, is capable of good video, especially when mounted on a tripod and filming a mostly static subject. Many people have digital photo cameras which they don't think of as video cameras.
Your cheapest option would be a headset with a microphone. You could then dub the audio if you still wanted to use the phone as sjcs suggested or use a webcam and directly hook up both to a computer to simultaneously record without having to edit later. Cheap mics have to be mounted close to the source to get good quality. A handheld Mic held by the speaker will also work, and be reasonably cheap. Keep cable length in mind when choosing a Mic. You don't want anything that's too short.
Anyone willing to do a transcript of this video as a volunteer activity for the rationality community? We can then subtitle the video.
It's really unfortunate that the sound quality is so poor, because I was able to understand some of it and Dr. Arkes is an entertaining speaker and he has important things to share. I only sampled one other video on your channel to see if this wasn't a consistent problem, but even though it was comprehensible, it still seemed to have a loudspeaker-like quality to it. I think that sound quality really might be substantially affecting people's impressions of your videos. Something to keep in mind for the future. Still, great work, Gleb.
Thanks for the positive feedback, and I hear you about the sound quality issue. We're fundraising right now to get a better quality videocamera than just using a smartphone, which is what we can afford right now. I'll work on getting a transcript of this video and post it here.
Wow that's great! I really have learnt a lot from this post such as, knowing how i can make good decisions despite the obstacles that might not allow me to achieve my sets objectives. The story about Dr. Hal Arkes is really a nice one with lot of knowledge to acquire.