I’ve been shooting video with my new Canon Vixia HF-11 for both my YouTube channel and also for a video tutorial version of my flagship book, Listen To Your Gut.

After MUCH experimentation, I’d like to share the settings that I found were ideal – so hopefully it saves you having to go through the same extensive testing process. Cause here’s the kicker – it may look and sound fine on the camera playback, but when you upload it to iMovie, oy vey, that’s when the problems become evident.

These settings are for shooting indoors, during the daytime, with good lighting in the room. All the rooms I shoot video in have multiple pot lights in the ceiling and I usually have to draw a curtain or two closed since our windows are really big. Here’s what produced the best sound and picture for me:

AUDIO:

- I use the DM-100 microphone with the windsock in place.

- Microphone Attenuator turned on – otherwise it picks up ambient noise like the fish tank!

- Mic Adjustment on the joystick: Volume turned up to maximum (as I’m usually at least 5 feet away from the camera)

- Audio Level: ON so it’s displayed on the screen and you can make sure it’s not going too high as to distort the voice.

*Note: with the mic attenuator (mic att) turned on, even when you manually put the volume up to maximum, it does not record at a high volume. The solution is to first “Normalize” the volume of the clip in iMovie and then if that’s still not loud enough, then use the sound adjustment to increase the volume. This may seem like extra hassle, however, it’s worth it as otherwise you end up with a low level hum in the background from any house noises like fridge, fish tank, furnace, etc.

If you are not using the DM-100 or any other external microphone, then leave the mic att turned off and leave the recording level set to auto.

VIDEO:

- Cine Mode

- XP+ – high quality

- Frame Rate: PF24

- Zoom Speed: 2

- Autofocus ON

- Image Stabilize: ON

Here’s one of my videos shot using these settings on YouTube.

Hope that helps!

Jini