A630 movie sound quality

[John1000]

I recently purchased the A630. Camera was everything I needed, but I noticed that the sound quality on the movies was poor. There is always a high pitch whine which is very noticable when recording quiet scenes, and when I compress the movies for distribution on the internet, the sound quality became even worse and unacceptable. Not only is the whine an issue, but the audio becomes very digitized and unpleasant.

I've tried two different A630 cameras and experienced the same poor sound quality, so I guess Canon has decided to use the cheapest of parts for the audio components on this camera. I've compared the movie sound taken with much cheaper cameras with that of the A630, and the A630 always sounds worse.

Any thoughts before I return the A630? I am considering the S3 or S5 at this point which should give me much better sound recording on movies.

[zhulikas]

There are a lot of tools with "Noise Reduction" function. For example I'm using Pinnacle Studio Plus 10 and this function actually is very impressive.
About quality.. Try convert to DivX, then you will not loose so much sound quality.

[John1000]

Thanks for the feedback. I can probably do quite a bit to clean up the audio as you suggest. Seems like a camera in this price range would be able to produce at least average audio. The background hiss and whine is not acceptable to me. I'll probably check out the s3/s5. I am a bit disappointed in the A630 at this time.

[John1000]

Just a quick update. I purchased the S3, and I am disappointed to say that the high pitch whine is still present on this camera, too. I like the camera, though. I plan to call Canon to try to figure out why I am having this issue with the video audio quality. Actually, the whine on this camera pulsates and would become a chirp if the pulses were fast enough. In a few more years, though, I probably won't be able to hear above 15K Hz, so problem solved.

The S3 seems to be a bit slow to find focus when recording video in less than a well lit scene. It eventually focuses, but not sure why it takes so long. Wonder if the S5 with a faster processor might correct this problem.

I was going to wait for the S5 to come out, but after reading all the reviews, seems like the S5 doesn't just take the S3 and make it better. Never understood why manufactures take a good thing, degrade it a bit, and then upgrade other areas so you are forced to compare the two cameras feature by feature. For instance, the S3 had it right in my book to have a separate door for the SD card. I understand that the S5 has the SD card behind the battery door which can be very inconvenient. How many times can the battery door be opened and shut before it breaks or wears out? Just this one feature lacking in the S5 persuaded me to by the S3 (probably along with others, I am sure). If the S5 were identical to the S3 with just improvements, the S5 would be the camera to buy.

[Darren Lang]

I too purchased the sd630 and found the same sound while shooting video. I ended up taking it back and getting the sd700 only to find that it too had the same sound. I can only describe the sound to be a high pitched 'crackling' sound which is very annoying.
John1000 if you do get in contact with Canon will you please post any information you may get.

[Xatoichi]

I have a similar problem, but in trying different video playback programs, some had it, some didn't. It must be a playback codec problem or some such. I also couldn't notice it during in-camera playback. ????