The Wichita Language Documentation Project

Documenting the Wichita Language on Digital Video & Audio (2002-present)

Equipment For Our Field Work

Testing Equipment at CSILW (Boulder,CO)

This page is maintained and updated by Armik Mirzayan, Research Assistant

This page contains information on the equipment that we used for the Wichita Documentation project. It emerged as a result of a series of communications that I've had with various linguists and technical experts regarding fieldwork, especially the type of fieldwork that involves recording natural conversational/narrative language. As a result, the document weaves in and out of items that we bought, things that were recommended, and questions that were asked of us; the reader may sometimes notice that this document is taking the form of a dialogue! Within this "dialogue" there is information about equipment we used and we liked, things we purchased that we didn't like, and things that we would do different if we had another chance at this (for instance, if someone gave us a time-machine).

As you will notice, the equipment information is not perfect, and in fact it has many gaps/problems due to our own lack of understanding of the nature of the work and the media prior to embarking on the fieldwork. Keep in mind that a lot of this is a linguist's, a field-worker's, best guesses. But, judging by the results, it *mostly* worked OK, and we have good quality audio and video in the end.

Disclaimer: If the reader is wishing to pickup some information about doing digital linguistic fieldwork from here, she/he should be warned that the ideas cast into this page are merely explorations and suggestions. If you are taking this as "advice" do keep in mind that, like any other advice, if taken too seriously it could be dangerous! So, while looking through this document readers should use their own judgments based on their own experience, budget, desire, field-work conditions, etc ....

Armik Mirzayan
Original: January 2003
Update 01: September 2003
Update 02: January 2004
Armik.Mirzayan@Colorado.Edu

Brief Table of Contents of This Page:

1. Video Equipment

2. Audio Equipment

3. Other Useful Devices

1) Video Equipment:

1a) Recording Device:

The camera I purchased for doing group recording, and individual interviews, was:

Digital Video Camera:
Sony DCR-TRV50 mini-DV digital video recorder
Price: $1200 in Summer of 2002, from B&H Digital Photography, NY

There are a lot of digital cameras on the market (and I mean A LOT). They vary in quality quite a bit too, so you want to look into one that you can afford but which also produces good quality images. Generally, from a basic physics perspective, you want one with at least one good resolution CCD (equal to or greater than 1 million pixels). Look at the camera specifications carefully. It should let you record in SP and LP mode, though you should only use SP mode in actual field-recording. You should be able to do at least 20x optical zoom (NOT digital zoom). Ideally, it should have a memory stick that lets you record still images (just like a still digital camera). This particular one met all these requirements and it was one that DOBES also recommended, so this is what I purchased. See the notes that follow for more information.

1b) Long-Life Battery - A Very Important Thing!

It is a good idea to get a long-life battery for the camera, especially for places where electricity may be limited, or noisy (in our case, the electric lines ended up adding a lot of noise).

Battery:
InfoLithium M NP-QM71 ($30, price varies depending on kind, time of year ....)
Charging Time (on Camera) = 260 minutes
Approximate Recording Time with LCD screen open = 250 minutes
Recording Time with Viewfinder = 350 minutes

(You may consider getting a separate battery charger, but I didn't do this. Since we were doing mainly audio, and video was a secondary aspect, I figured that with this much playing time I could just get away with charging the battery on the camera.)

1c) Stabilizing the Image

To get stable images, I used a tripod. Highly recommended! This particular one has a little gauge that lets you know that your camera is horizontal relative to the local landscape.

Tripod:
VideoMate 607 HeavyDuty (includes carrying case)
Price: Don't remember ( ? ~ $50)

1d) Recording Medium

The above camera - and most other commercial DV cameras - take mini-DV tapes. They cost about $5/tape (or lower if you order them in bulk).

VideoTapes:
60-minute mini-DV cassettes (record in SP mode only)

1e) External Microphone(s)

You will have to use external microphones for better quality (at least one of them, if not more). See the notes under

"Audio Equipment" for information on microphones.

Notes:

We picked the TRV50 camera because it was one of the consumer (affordable) ones that was recommended by the project DOBES at MPI in Nijmegen, NL. You can view their hardware and software recommendations at the DOBES Websites.

The things to look for in the camera have to do with the audio-quality, video-quality, and zooming capabilities. If you're going to move it around a lot weight may also be an issue, and how easy it is to setup, load tapes, and any other considerations that may be an issue. The reason we picked this particular one is that it is small, light, and very easy to move around when doing field work. Also, it takes a nice little battery that lasts a *very* long time (the numbers I gave you above are average; in the two recording days they lasted a lot longer actually). As far as video quality goes what matters a lot is the type of CCD device that the camera uses to digitally capture a "frame" (a picture). The TRV50 has only one CCD chip that contains 970 kilo pixels (which seemed to be on the "good" end of things from our hardware recommenders for the purposes of linguistic field recording). There are some cameras that have 3 CCD chips and they capture better quality pictures, but they were mostly above $2000 when we looked at them (prices may have changed by now). We couldn't afford one of these, so we went with the one that cost more about $1100. It also has very nice high precision 3.5" LCD screen, does nice night-shots, and has a very good memory chip and takes great still photos. Most of the nice quality photos on our website were taken in Anadarko, with the still mode of this video camera. Also, this camera can optically zoom 20x, which is good (there are better ones). These cameras have great range of digital zoom, but we didn't pay attention to that because digital zoom is not important for most linguistic work (it gets too grainy and it's not that relevant).

The audio quality of the camera itself is very important as well (from my own perspective, it's even more important than the video quality). Again, we picked the TRV50 because it does 16 bit sampling at 48kHz rate (essentially the quality of DAT digital recorders).

Other nice features on the camera that you want if you're going to work with transferring video into computers/CDs are:

If you're using a Mac you need a 4pin-to-6pin firewire cable to go from the camera to you Mac. If you're using a PC you need a 4pin-to-4pin firewire. I find the Mac transfer much simpler to deal with overall, but it's not too difficult on the PC either.

2) Audio Equipment:

2a) The Recording Device

For recording good-quality digital audio in interviews, and during the larger group meetings, we used the following (small, portable) device:

Sony PCM-M1 Digital Audio Recorder (DAT)

Sony sells this for $1100 or so (check current price at Sony ). I was able to purchase it from Oade Electronics on sale for a lower price. I don't understand how this works, but it works!

During the language meetings, which involved more than one or two native speakers, we used two Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorders, with separate microphone inputs into each one; in these language sessions the DAT recorders acted primarily as backup for the video recording, but in the end they ended up being very valuable because they captured sounds and utterances that are completely missed on the video tape (either because the microphones going to the video were too far from the speaker or I was in the process of changing video tapes but the DATs were still running). During work with individual native speakers one DAT recorder, with a microphone, was used for a) elicitation fieldwork, b) recording the sessions with the speakers when they helped us with vocabulary lists, clarifying older stuff, or helping annotate the videos and older audio tapes.

The DAT recorder has an Optical digital output, which will let you take your audio digitally into a computer, IF your computer sound-card has the proper connection. It also has analog line-out, and regular speaker out. It does not have internal speakers, so you need either a pair of headphones or a pair of speakers. I like headphones for monitoring the sound and making sure it is recording, and checking the audio input levels (volume) ahead of time.

The other option is a mini-disc recorder. I have colleagues that use this, but have never used them myself. They cost about $200 or $300, but you'll have to look into this yourself. You may be able to get one that has an outputs that computers can read digitally, and that would be the best way to go.

2b) Recording Medium

We used DAT audio tapes since we had DAT recorders. Tape durations were 125 minutes/tape, and they cost ~ $6/tape. We purchased Sony PDP-125C brand tapes from tapeonline.com; other tape durations and brands are also avialable. It is important to record at 44 or 48 kHz sampling rate only (and on these tapes we did indeed get about 125 minutes out of each tape when sampling at 44 kHz).

If using Mini-Disc recorder then you need Mini-Discs as the medium.

2c) Microphones

We purchased the following type of microphone (originally to use with the DAT recorder only, but it yielded good quality, so we used it with the video camera as well).

Sony ECMMS957 Stereo Condenser Microphone (~ $170, but price varies with time).

I used 4 of these microphones. One to each DAT recorder, and two were used in conjunction with a mixer, the output of which was taken into the digital video camera.

Comments:

The microphone is probably the most important part of the purchase. We have four of these microphones which are a little bulky, but I like their quality. They are the best microphones that we have here. Their frequency pickup is quite good, between 50Hz to 18000Hz, which covers everything you may need for human speech and a lot of music as well. The microphone cord is a standard 4 mm one with a stereo mini-plug that plugs into the camera and the DAT. It comes with a windscreen, a small microphone holder, a stand, and a carrying case. It is, however, not a pro quality microphone. It's output is not in a balanced XLR cable form. Ideally, it would be nice to have better microphones, but they're also more expensive.

This microphone (ECM-MS957) is basically unidirectional with a directive angle that varies from 90 deg. to 120 deg, and you get to set it. You really have to mess with it ahead of time to see what the best setting is. Another one of my complaints about these microphone is that it is a little too sensitive and picks up too many odd little noises (pens hitting the table, etc ...). Aside from being a bit bulky and obvious (which does not help in minimizing the traditional linguistic problem of the observer paradox!), it is also a little time consuming to get used to. So, if you're willing to put up with all of this you get a very good quality recording. I haven't tried it outside. It is powered by two small batteries, so you don't need to plug it in.

I also used an omnidirectional mono microphone (a flat one that sat in the middle of the table and recorded on a second DAT recorder), but I don't like it at all. There are good omnidirectional microphones, but you'll have to research this. I looked into it in May 2003, and it got too complicated. The factors you need to look into when purchasing a microphone are:

i) Microphone type: condenser or dynamic (I like condenser more). In dynamic microphones the sound waves create a pressure that moves a diaphragm in a magnetic field, creating an oscillating electric field output. The condenser microphone is a parallel plate capacitor, with one plate being moved my the incoming sound wave (which changes the capacitance, which in turn sends out an oscillating electric field).

ii) Capsule Size: Smaller ones are better for field work, but for obvious physical reason, smaller microphones have a higher signal-to-noise ratio. Also, the larger capsules have a better low-frequency resolution. However, the large-capsule is subject to a proximity effect in which they over-represent the low frequencies if they are close to the person speaking. So ... it's really a hard thing to decide. Linguists like smaller capsules because of the never-ending attempt to resolve the observer's paradox (you can think of it either in terms of linguistics or in terms of quantum mechanics).

iii) Diaphragm and Back-Plate: Look into these if you have time, but it's a bit complex to explain here quickly.

iv) Pickup patterns: You can have cardioid pattern, omnidirectional pattern, or unidirectional pattern. For elicitations and individual interview, uni is best. For group recording at least cardioid, if not omni. Again, you may need more than one microphone. You could also try a bunch of unis. The unidirectionals are supposed to pickup less ambient noise (for instance, if there is a TV playing somewhere, or if it's just noisy in the background for whatever reason).

(There are more issues that I don't have time to get into, and I'm afraid that I don't understand some of them too well either.)

3) Other Useful Devices

3a) Wide Angle Lens For Video Camera:
I used a wide a angle lens with our camera to be able to capture the "whole-group" without having to move the camera too much. Apparently, not all wide-angle lenses fit on all the consumer cameras (as I found out recently), so you should get one that fits for the camera that you will purchase. We purchased a very simple one that works OK. There are some really fancy ones, but you should be careful with distortion effects (often appearing as "rounding" at the edges of the picture).

3b) Microphone Extension cord:
A local music store at Denver made a 25 foot extension cord for our microphone. That is so that we could move the camera round without moving the camera. We ended up having some problems with this actually. On our first recording session we didn't use a battery to power the camera (plugging it into the wall) and also used this extension, which gave us a huge headache. It produced a really bad 60 Hz noise, going all the way up to the 100th harmonic of this fundamental noise! We had very little time to get our act together, so I ended up not using the cord in that session. Back in our lab in Boulder I figured out that the problem originated in the power supply, not in the extension cord at all. So, on the next session I used the long-life battery and the extension cord and all our noise problems were solved. So, you might want to keep that in mind if you think you may use an extension. The other option of course is to use cordless microphones, but DOBES didn't advise that, and David and I didn't have enough experience with microphones to know how to work with cordless ones. If you can get better advice on that that may be another way to get flexibility in relative camera-mircophone placement.

3c) Mixer: (this is a very messy issue!)

I wanted to hook multiple microphones from different locations into our camera, since I only had unidirectional microphones, so the audio store in Denver also purchased a nice mixer for me (a Mackie small 8 channel mixer). Unfortunately, many consumer microphones (as well as video-audio recorder) come with mini-jacks these days, not with the proper XLR Mic pre-amp connections. So, the audio people in Denver custom made a set of *stereo* XLR to mini-jack connectors for the work! This was quite the task for me, and I don't know if I care to repeat it, but it worked out in the end. We didn't manage to have all of this ready for the fieldwork in Summer of 2002, but we did have it in the Summer of 2003. I used the mixer during the group recording of the language sessions. Generally, I got much better sound quality; you can hear each speaker better, for I was able to selectively amplify individual speakers from the place I was sitting. We also had one speaker who talked in a very low volume in the Summer 02 recordings, and we were able to partly correct for this by amplification on the mixer. However, in the end the enterprise ended up being a somewhat expensive failure! Unfortunatly for us, there was a high-frequency noise in the room in which the meetings took place, and try as I could, I was not able to dampen it. I think it was coming through the electric lines in the room since changing location or relative orientation of devices seemed to make no difference at all.

3d) Capturing the Video Onto a Computer
If you ever want to capture your video tapes (or parts of them) onto a computer yourself then you want to be equipped with a laptop/desktop that has a firewire (IEEE, iLink) input (either 4-pin or 6-pin). I have not included any information about computers in this page. More information can be found on the DOBES Website (http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/).

We found it very nice to have a laptop in the field. We could test many things right on the spot. Also, we could use the firewire link on the laptop for simple video playback and control of the digital tapes. This was very useful for getting together with a consultant and going through the tape and asking their help and clarification of material that was on the tape. This is best done in the field, the day or so after the tape recording is done. We also used the computer for audio playback of older material that we wanted clarifications on. Replay, volume control, etc ... is much more flexible with a computer playing from a file than with tapes or audio CDs.

3e) Capturing the DAT (digital audio tapes) Onto a Computer
One of the biggest challenges for us turned out to be: what do we do with all these DAT tapes that we have recorded? The quality is nice (most of the time even nicer than the video sound), but DAT players are not very common, and the rewind/playback features on the portable DAT are somewhat awkward. How are we to make this more accessible (at least for ourselves)?

After much research and questions from various people, we ended up buying a USB Audio-Capture device (purchased in Nov. 2003). We needed a device allows us to digitally capture the DAT tapes onto a computer, yielding a wave file to work with (which can be saved, backed up, and transferred to other media).

The only Digital output on our DAT recorder turned out to be of the optical type. The DAT recorder does have analog line and phone output, BUT, it seemed silly to have to re-sample already digital data by going through analog input of a computer sound card. So, we purchased the following device.

Digital Audio Capture Device:
EDIROL UA-5 Audio Capture (up to 24Bbit, 96kHz)
Price: ~$280 (but varies on when and where you buy it!)

This device also has a a pair of XLR microphone inputs, as well as regular analog coaxial inputs/outputs. The digital interface has both optical and coaxial (both input and output). It is relatively easy to install the drivers, and the device itself sits outside of the computer (free of noise, etc ...). The only warning we had about this was that the transfer was not bit-by-bit accurate, an issue which does not seem to have had any effects on our audio transfers so far. But, we are still working with it, so more updates may come in the future.

Also, we have not tested this yet, but it is possible that this device can be used for fieldwork. One could potentially use the XLR microphone inputs for directly recording onto a computer in the field (provided the computer has a large hard drive of course). I don't know how noise-free the recording is. This is yet to be tested by us.

3f) Finally: Other obvious things, which naturally one tends to forget, are to make sure that you have lots of DAT and mini-DV cassettes, a surge protector (if you can use external power), and, perhaps most important of all, to try all the equipment together, and all permutations you can think of, ahead of time!

David and Armik
testing sound connections before a language session
(Anadarko, June 2002)

This page is maintained and updated by Armik Mirzayan.

1. Video Equipment

2. Audio Equipment

3. Other Useful Devices

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