I am looking to record prairie dogs vocalizations paired with their behavior continuously in the field, so the device will be exposed to the elements.
This Question has been answered, I appreciate all feedback, thank you!
Hi Elise,
I'm not sure if you want the sound separately from video but I know that digital camera's come with great sound recording. Actually, a rather old camera of mine could make really clear sound recordings even during concerts! So it's definitely worth looking at. Plus, these days you even have waterproof camera's and these will be fine in all sorts of weather circumstances. Something you could look into, depending on the budget you have for this.
Upon further investigation, this added link (paper) may be of interest to you!
Best wishes,
Tessa
https://www.eeb.ucla.edu/Faculty/Blumstein/BirdsongPapers/Brandes_2008_BCI.pdf
I'd imagine you could connect a good quality microphone (sennheiser for example) to a great variety of video cameras, which should give you good quality sound recordings. You could of course also simply record on different devices and use a timer to ensure overlap of video and sound.
It sounds like an interesting project, however it will be much easier for people to help if you tell us: what frequency and duration of sampling will you need, in order to address your research questions?
In favourable conditions you can get good video and sound recording with almost any compact digital camera, even with older models as Tessa mentioned. And you can easily mount a compact camera on a low tripod or other stand and add a rain-proof cover (or choose a waterproof model), place it near your study animals, turn on video mode, walk away and leave the camera to run continuously...
...until the battery runs down or memory card fills up... maybe half an hour, maybe an hour or two, depending on camera, memory and video settings.
Much more challenging if you want to record continuously all day, day after day. You will need external power and high capacity data storage... and afterwards you will need to spend many days watching/listening in order to extract the data of interest.
Some other considerations: can you work near these animals (set up equipment, change batteries, etc) without disturbing the behaviour you are studying? Can you predict fairly accurately when and where the behaviour of interest will occur? How near and how far from the recording equipment do you expect the animals be heard/seen? Do you want the vision to be clear and close enough to identify age/sex/other characteristics? How much ambient noise from wind or road traffic or other sources? How many animals do you want to record concurrently?
Good Morning,
Although each of us investigates different species, I agree with Tessa, most cameras today are equipped with high quality microphones. However, we as researches need to be mindful of how the sound is recording. GoPro cameras are wonderful for media quality, price and size, but because the files are saved in a compress fashion (.mp4) it alters the quality and parameters of the sound. We have used Cannon cameras in the past (G9, G12, 5D, 7D) with success, even underwater (dolphins) and the files are not compressed when recorded (.avi, .mov). The audio on all Canon cameras is calibrated from the manufacturer, and they are happy to recalibrate (at a minimal cost) when needed (typically once a year). Each of the mentioned cameras samples audio at 44.1 kHz with a quantization bit rate of 16 (I believe that other cameras like Sony and Nikon produce similar results). This works nicely with the sound analysis program we use, RAVEN Pro 1.4 from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bioacoustics Research Program.
Good Luck!
Holli
Daniel Day-Lewis, Ray Dolby, Acoustic looping-Avantone CK-1 Pair and American Accuracy Recording Co.
Just a note that if you are interested in the absolute sound level of the vocalization or background noise in your recording, it would be a good idea to check if there is automatic gain control in the recording device you decide to use. With AGC, the volume of the incoming sound can be amplified or tuned down without user control. This can cause problem in the above types of analyses.
Dear Elise,
you can make a wooden open field equipped with a sound and video recorder.
The open field is a wooden box. your box must be equipped with a webcam (2.0- Megapixel, Gigaware, UK) and a microphone and all activities were monitored from another room. for elimination of person effect.
Good luck,
Mehdi
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