Allow myself to indroduce...myself

[HankCastello]

I don't really disagree with Jim.  I'll gladly sign off on everything he says, except I think maybe VHF gets a bad rap.

If your choice (due to budgetary matters) is between not enough UHF sets or having sufficient VHF (like the WMS-PRO), then I say go with the VHF - at least for one or two of the sets, especially if your wedding shoot areas seem to be VHF friendly.

Twice, I've had interference issues with my WMS-PRO and both times have been in big cities and both were short, intermittent problems.  But this set has shot over 100 weddings in big cities.  In fairness, I've never had interference issues with the UHFs.

Also, I only have Azden wireless sets (4), so my experience is limited, but if we want to rank these for how well they sound with male voices, this is my ranking:

1. Azden 500 with Sony lav mic
2. Azden WMS-PRO
3. Azden 100

True enough, the VHS has  a light hiss that I remove in post with Premiere Pro or Audition.

As for being the "sheriff", we are putting together a board and although things aren't yet complete, they've already redirected me a few times.  We are planning to meet and solidify the board and rules of operation, etc., this winter.

I agree with Jim plenty and I have confidence in anything he writes here.

[Dynesh]

Yeah, I think audio is where my knowledge is going to be lacking the most, except for when I get out there and film that first wedding, I imagine.  I've been listening to a two part series from wedvidtalk.com where they talk to a guy about audio, and he seemed to have some good thoughts on it.  Picking audio gear will be harder I think than buying the camera, which I just did.  The pd170 is on the way, and I'll play with it and get used to it before I buy the second.

[HankCastello]

Check out our Articles section and you'll find one where I blew this (wedvidtalk) session out totally!  His "information" was  nothing but misinformation.  Be careful where you get your info.

Here's the link -

http://www.weddingvideodoneright.com/articles.php?p=audio-Francese-20070525

I don't know anything about Francese's work - maybe he has a great video style, but I can tell you that as of the time he did this broadcast, his knowledge of audio was not sufficient for him to be doing a lecture about it.

[Dynesh]

I read your article Hank, and it makes a lot of sense.  I must say, when I said what he said made a lot of sense, I was more referring to  the second part, because I didn't get to hear the first part that great, as there was a crying 2 year old in the back seat while I was listening.  I do remember thinking it odd how he said to not mike the minister and the deal with switching audio seemed a little harder then it needed to be.  

He talks on the second part about receptions, and about going with the record out RCA jacks on the D.J.'s board for all your audio, and how that will work 90% of the time, and chastises people for using mics in front of speakers.  Again, when he explains it it seems to make sense, but as I said, audio is not my specialty by a long shot, so I'd be interested in hearing your take on what he said in part 2.

[Forever Endeavor]

Alot of things sound good until you experience them. My rate of success when plugging in to the DJs soundboard is well below 50% (for various reasons) and I know Hank and I have both had great results by mic'ing a speaker. You just have to go with what works best for each individual wedding. They are all different. The trick is to be prepared for any situation. That's why I recommend getting a couple (or more) iRivers as backup recording devices.

As Hank has said before, audio is the bane of wedding videographers.