Using an External Microphone with Kodak’s Zi8

Last Saturday I decided to make a series of videos using my Kodak Zi8. I’ve had the camera ever since I started testing the Filp to the Zi8. Best part of the Zi8 is that you can plug in your external microphone so you don’t have to shout when recording with one of these little point and shoot video cameras.

The worst part of the Zi8 is that Kodak no longer makes the Zi8. Now it’s called the “Playtouch” video camera. But you can still get them on eBay… at a lot less than I paid for mine.

One thing is you will want to add extra memory to your camera. I got a 32 GB chip for mine and it sure lets me make lots of videos and still shots.

Now on Saturday I made two video and then found out I had forgotten to plug in my external microphone. So the sound quality was very low. And when you boost audio usually you also boost noise, something you really don’t want.

Anyway, I got past that issue by writing some simple steps to take each time I’m ready to make a full motion video with the Zi8. Only when I exported the videos to my computer I ended up with some serious noise.

So the initial question I had was is it my microphone or the camera. Well, due to other commitments I couldn’t test until Monday morning. I tested the  microphone going directly into my computer and it was working okay. I even put in a new battery with no change in audio quality.

So next was the test with the Zi8. Now I should tell you that on Saturday I found the battery indicator we low on the Zi8. So I had put a full charge on the camera using the AC Adapter over the weekend.

According to Kodak it takes 2 hours with the AC adapter and 4 hours with the USB Port. Since I had been using the USB I decided to use the AC and get it up quickly.

Well, on Monday morning with a fully charged Zi8 and a working microphone I got the output I had expected. Noise was gone and the camera was working as it should.

So one thing you need to do to get the results from the Kodak Zi8 or the “Playtouch” is to make sure your battery is fully charged when starting a project.

I had heard the Zi8 picks up noise on the microphone when recording and plugged into AC power. However, when I tested the microphone with the
camera on either battery and AC power I didn’t hear much difference. Both setups have some noise. But I was able to remove it using the simple automatic
noise reduction feature in Camtasia. Yes, I use Camtasia to edit simple full motion videos… those that I don’t need special effects. If I need special
effects I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio.