Olympus Pen E-PL2 records video without sound. Why?

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Oleg Volk

Just recorded a music performance using friend’s E-PL2 camera. None of the video files have any audio data at all! Any idea why? I searched on-line for answers but only found people raving about how great the audio is.

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11 Responses to Olympus Pen E-PL2 records video without sound. Why?

  1. Freiheit says:
    June 6, 2011 at 7:44 pm

    Is this on the camera or after offloading to your computer?

    Either way, run through the basic checklist, are the speakers on, not muted, etc.?

  2. Oleg Volk says:
    June 6, 2011 at 7:54 pm

    Both.

  3. Wookie EMT says:
    June 6, 2011 at 9:53 pm

    I own and use the E-P1 religiously but never had any problems with the audio. Is there a possibility it was set up to use an external mic prior to your use? I assume all the settings were set appropriately prior to usage?

    • David Dyer-Bennet says:
      June 7, 2011 at 8:24 am

      It was my camera. I’ve never connected an external mike, never consciously messed with anything related to sound recording on it.

      Which doesn’t mean I’m absolutely positive I didn’t somehow mess with some menu item I didn’t understand.

      (Also have never recorded video on it myself, and haven’t had time yet to either experiment now that I’ve got it back, or even consult the manual. Tonight, I hope.)

  4. Jack says:
    June 6, 2011 at 10:57 pm

    The files contain no audio track or there’s just no audio playback? You may need a codec pack to handle the audio. You might want to try a player like VLC and see if you can hear the audio through that.

  5. Randy Pollock says:
    June 7, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    I’m going to guess it was turned off in camera or muted in camera. When you look at the file in a video editing program like Pre Pro do you see a track for audio when you place the video on the time line or do you just see a video track?

    • Oleg Volk says:
      June 7, 2011 at 12:51 pm

      No audio track at all. I am just curious why…I’ve never seen a digital camera with an option to disable audio when recording video.

      • Wildman7316 says:
        June 7, 2011 at 6:11 pm

        Before memory became relatively large (and cheap) by turning off the Audio feed you reduced the size of the file so as to be able to take longer videos. Earlier cameras would allow you take a higher resolution video with the sound off than you would be able to take with the sound on due to data write speed constraints.

  6. Wayne Johnson says:
    June 7, 2011 at 5:31 pm

    I have never handled an E-PL2. I do own an E-PL1. There is indeed a menu item for movie sound (options being ON and OFF).

    On the E-PL1, it can be accessed by pressing MENU, selecting the “gear” option, then “MOVIE”, then “MOVIE [microphone symbol].”

    It can also be accessed in movie record mode by pressing the center button, then using the up and down arrows to select the microphone symbol, then selecting ON.

    God bless!

  7. Stephen says:
    June 7, 2011 at 7:40 pm

    What about pictures on the camera? Do they have any sound?

  8. Fernando Salazar says:
    September 4, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    @Wayne Johnson, thank you! I have had this problem myself and there was indeed an option for putting on/off the movie sound in E-PL2.

    As I am in Germany (learning german among other things) I bought this camera and I did not want to change the german menu items, so I do not fully understand them (hopefully yet).

    Thank you again!

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