Getting Levels Right for Voice and Instrument on Videos

Question

I don't know if this is the right forum. Apologies if not.

I'm making videos on playing the recorder and I'm using a good quality headset and a loop station (Boss rc505) as an audio interface. Trouble is the sound from the recorder is much louder than my voice, and even loads of compression on the audio interface doesn't make much difference (and also messes with the sound a bit too much). In principle I can try and remember to adjust the mic level every time I switch between talking and playing, but in practice I forget as often as not. I do have a condenser mic I could use instead of the headset, but I definitely need to listen as I play, as I'm often playing over a loop. The headset seems to make sense, but I keep making videos where my voice is just too quiet. Any suggestions for how best to address this issue please?

For an example of what I'm talking about, please see here:

Answer 1

Consider to mix your video in a proper multitrack video editor. Record your music to an audio workstation. Record it also to the video as you shoot your performance, but only to be used as a sync guide. Use in the rendered video soundtrack only what's mixed well together in the audio workstation.

It has been possible at least 10 years to import to a video editor a mixed music track and get it synced to the video which was shot by listening the same music track. The devices stay in sync so well for ex. 5 minutes or even more without any special syncing hardware. What's captured to the video can be low quality with no harm, if the stuff captured to the audio workstation is good.

Do not expect you can easily make plausible looking instrumental solos or vocal performances on the video by trying only to play or sing in sync with a prerecorded performance and by using only the prerecording as the video soundtrack. Extremely well trained persons can do it plausibly. 2...3 second quick clip may be successful easily, but not a longer passage. All long important solo parts must be performed and recorded to the audio workstation at the same time as the video is shot if the performance must look good.

If there's something so tricky that occasional errors must be fixed by re-recording you may meet a moment where the video and audio do not fit well enough. That can be covered by showing in the video something else.

ADD after reading again all given comments and other answers: The method above is nothing big nor complex. It only uses common tools available for everyone and gives a possibility to get something more finished than the linked video but without increasing the complexity substantially. BTW the video has quite good sound, but the skills of the performer are worth a finer production.

Answer 2

In all honesty, it's not that bad. I could hear everything fine and my right ear is bad atm.
Recording two very different sources on one mic is always going to be troublesome, as you don't have isolated control. Also, I can hear a lot of muddy low end on your voice, which makes it less clear and won't help when the compression is applied. But anyway, if you're not that into making it into a big, time-consuming production (as @user287001 suggests), but you still want the dialogue to be a bit clearer, I'd just take some low end off the mic and then add some levelling compression in post to bring down the higher-level parts. You will probably have to mess with the parameters of the compressor a bit to get it right, but you can use those settings as a starting point for other similar videos.

That's a quick-fix method, and it's not ideal. If it was me, I'd use the condenser for the recorder and the headset mic for dialogue, record it all and just cut out the bits you don't want from each mic in post, providing you can record to different tracks. That would be a good balance of time and quality for me.