On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 22:56:28 -0500, Stacey wrote:

>This may be a dumb question but I'm going to ask anyway. My camera (a
>ZR40) has a stereo mic input jack and I have an external mono mic I
>want to use. Is there a problem using a mono plug mic in a stereo
>jack?

No.

> I know a mono mic plug will short out one chanel of a stereo jack to
>ground, does it then only record on one track and the other is blank?

Usually there is internal switching to
place the mono signal in both stereo channels.

>Can this hurt the camera (I don't want to kill anything). I killed a
>sound card once plugging a mono jack into the stereo output (whoops)
>and don't want to repeat that mistake!

Shorting the input will not hurt the circuit
components, though shorting an output can
(though it shouldn't, in a well-designed
circuit...).

> On another point can I use two mono external mics wired through a
>stereo jack to record say the talent on a shotgun mic on the left side
>and background noise on an omnidirectional on the right and mix them
>(adjusting the levels of each) in post into one mono track?

Yes. This can easily be done using the compact
Radio Shack dual-mono-to-stereo miniplug adapter,
under $5...

>What would
>be the easiest way to mix this type of setup in VV3? TIA
>
>Stacey

I don't know VV3, but it should be easy...;-)