I want to record a QuickTime video of me playing my 1927 Buescher Euphonium and send it to a band director in Indiana. I'm playing along with a march that I wrote using Sibelius notation software, and as I play, I'm following the music as it passes across the screen. I can't move away as I record, or I'll be unable to see the music.

Recording this all -- audio and video -- is my iSlight camera. Unfortunately, because my playing plus the MIDI sound coming from my speakers is so loud, the recording is horribly distorted. I need to turn the input of the iSlight's microphone down, waaaay down. How do I do that?

In the strange-looking A/V controls window of QuickTime, the sliders apply only to the audio output, not the input. The same controls appear in the redundant Properties window.

Since the answer is not to be found in QuickTime, I went into the Audio MIDI Setup utility, where I selected iSlight as the Default Input. In the Audio Input controls there, I slid the Volume control all the way to the left, yet this has no noticeable effect in a QuickTime video/movie recording.

I own one expensive microphone which I have used with a Griffin iMic as an input source, but when I used that microphone, the application I used was GarbageBand, where I could control the input volume. As I am making this recording using QuickTime (7.4) it doesn't appear that I can control the input volume at all.

I'm running 10.5.1, but none of these controls seem to have changed from earlier systems.

Can you not set your mic input level from the Input tab in the "Sound" pane in System Preferences?

DOH! That's so obvious! That shouldda been the first place I looked!

Thanx Chuck.

The distortion is still there, though. The ySight is not a good microphone for music.