Audio sound when recording a video.

i still have the same problem as you, mines was just a partial solution.

selfie camera volume works fine on Instagram camera and other social media..

i just don’t use the selfie camera for videos lol sorry

No. I did a restore from iCloud. No desktop/laptop required for that. If it does not work try the wipe without a restore and just setup the phone so you can get in and test the audio/video recording. If it is still doing it then there must be another issue at play.

If you do find that the full wipe doesn’t work please let me know and I’ll escalate the matter with engineering via my developer interfaces.

FORGET IT. This does not solve it either. I’m utterly perplexed. I’ll be reaching out to Apple engineering to see what is up. I loath to load yet another beta on my phone but maybe 14.2 addresses it. Idk

———

I believe I’ve discovered what the **** may have been causing this for so many users across so many iPhone versions and OS versions. Researching this has been affecting many users for YEARS!

So here it is. You need to clean the speaker/microphone grills on the iPhone.

Each model has the mics and speakers in slightly different locations. There are three on the iPhone 11 Pro Max for example.

One mic is next to the ear piece speaker above the screen, where the face unlock and selfie cameras are at.

Another is on the bottom (where the holes are next to the lighting port.

And the last is on the back where the camera array is. (Looks like a black dot / hole on the bottom right of the square.)

Here is exactly what I did to fix the audio gain using stereo.

I first used a “mild” soap to wash the exterior and rinsed it very well. I then blew into the holes and grills to get as much water out as possible. I then used a hair dryer very quickly and gently to dry out any remaining moisture.

DO NOT use the maximum setting on the hair dryer and do not cook your phone with it. You only need some heat to evaporate the water. If you wish to be ultra cautious just let it dry overnight.

Lastly, and this one is probably the singular more important thing I did:

I used an alcohol pad (the sort used to sanitize and area before getting an injection or drawing blood) and carefully cleaned the grill on the front (top) of the iPhone where the earpiece and face cameras are at. I rubbed back and forth a few times using my fingernail to push just enough of the alcohol pad in to clean the grill.

You will want to avoid getting alcohol on the screen as it can wear out the oleophobic coating and then fingerprints and other stuff will become far more challenging to clean.

once done I wiped the few drops of alcohol around the grill area and tested the camera.

and boom. It worked.

why is this happening you may ask?

As we use our phones we may sweat or get other natural oils and residue that deposit in these grills and holes. They obviously block proper sound conduction and as a result cause the mic to be totally off calibration. This is why the video starts quiet and gradually ramps up.

frankly, this should be part of the basic user maintenance manual for all iPhone models. Especially those with water protection because the grills on those are also coated with a thin veneer of plastic which makes them more sensitive to residue collection.

If this process is too intimidating for you to try and your phone is under warranty just take it in for service or replacement. They will be able to resolve it by replacing the speaker / mic arrays.

PS: I’ve been writing and recording music for 29 years. I’m embarrassed this wasn’t the first thing I thought of. LOL

Ok apparently I Spoke too soon. I cleaned the earpiece grill more vigorously with alcohol this time and then dried it with the hair dryer.

alcohol evaporates quickly so this is just a quick pass with the hairdryer.

now it works as intended.

just an FYI. I swear a lot. And often have challenges with that grill getting clogged with debris or fluid which requires me to switch to the speakerphone when on calls.

again. This should be part of the user guide for the iPhone.

That’s really great to hear. I’m glad it worked for you too.

I think **** has been happening to a lot of people over the years. It’s odd that this particular iPhone was the first one I’ve ever had the problem with. Maybe I was less meticulous about cleaning it. Idk.

idk if it’s possible but we should mark the solution I provided as the correct answer so others can find it as well. I’m also going to circle back with Apple engineering and ask that they put out something about cleaning and maintenance that covers this topic.

I’m so sick of this BS... It ruined what would of been an awesome video of my sing singing. They have to know this is happening. When I make it to the closest Apple store I’ll see what they say and report back.

This is not an issue of a dirty microphone. The audio levels are low at the beginning and you hear it Ramp up the volume from 7-10 seconds into the video. It's occurs ONLY on the selfie facing camera . It happens if you open camera app, or record a video from within the Messages App.

• iPhone 11 Pro , iOS 14.0.1 - Not a developer build or beta.

• Occurs in stereo mode and non-stereo mode.

• Reset / Erase all content and Restore from iCloud backup - Issue persists.

Hello Guys

I have had this issue since July.have iphone 11.did full restore, did everything what was written here but nothing helped. Even called apple and they did diagnosis.everything showed up fine.

Few days ago, I took the phone to authorized service provider. They were surprised to hear about this issue.

After few hours they called me and said that the speaker grills and microphones were cleaned and the issue has been resolved.since then everything has worked just fine.

Exactly as expected. I actually managed to completely resolve my issue the evening after getting an express replacement order in with AppleCare. A waste for sure.

Glad you got it fixed without replacing your device. I think this is 99% of people’s problems and it’s entirely reasonable to accumulate dirt and grime on something we put our face and hands all over for at least a year or two (if upgrading regularly).

however, I will say that this iPhone was one of the most sensitive to this problem. I’m not sure why. Lots more testing needs to be done. :)

I have the same exact issue! Muffled sound for the first 10 sec, then back to normal recording sound. Mine is also intermittent, it’s been several months now, sometimes it will just fix itself. But I don’t want to wait til it fix itself coz what if it doesn’t!!!!! All my videos taken during the broken days are ruined!!! Sob sob! The videos that I took today are all ruined! Can’t hear the first 10 secs unless I put the phone to my ear! So frustrating!

if its coz the mics are blocked, then video sounds should be muffed throughout the video. But the issues we are having is that the sound is muffed for the first 10 secs only, then it goes back to normal.

@emmy2017

Actually this is an incorrect conclusion. The iPhone's native camera app uses automatically adjusting dynamic gain. And the way they have implemented it is at a very low baseline (likely a choice with a few technical justifications from an audio engineering perspective, I won't get into those now).

So when you start a video recording the audio is analyzed in realtime and as the camera app detects the peak gain or what ever the defined threshold is not being hit it slowly increases gain.

The result on a less technical level is a somewhat more refined "fade in" on the start of a video.

You could install and use a third party camera app like Filmic to record video and it does not have this algorithm so the audio recording sounds pretty much "normal" from beginning to finish.... but.... the occluded / obstructed grill is still there and still causing loss of fidelity and unnecessary compression of the acoustics due to the gain being set so high. (Sorry I know it's a bit technical but I am musician and can't help it.)

99% of people would never notice the difference in quality, but regardless the practical impact right now is that the iPhone cannot know it's microphone is occluded and so it starts with the usual minimal gain and uses it's algorithm to adapt, which takes ten seconds to get to peak with an occluded microphone.

The funny thing is, not only does cleaning the grill properly result in video with proper audio from the start, but the fidelity of that audio will be greatly enhanced, as will likely the speaker in the same location. You may hear a noticeably clearer quality of audio coming through on calls (especially VOIP like Facetime Audio, WhatsApp and so on) and when on speakerphone your listeners will be able to understand and hear you in more dynamic settings.

The activity of cleaning the grill should be included in the basic user guide for the iPhone and Apple needs to address it directly. God only knows how much money has been wasted on hardware replacements, not to mention each poor user's time and effort lost on a restore.

While this response is impressive and likely contains factual data, the issue is that the camera audio works fine using the rear facing camera and when using the selfie camera, the audio isn't muffled, it's recording volume is really low and you can hear it gaining volume. The issue existed in iOS 13 and remained after upgrading to 14. This is on a iPhone 11 pro . Recording in other app like Marco Polo while using the front facing camera, has no audio issues.

easy fix

settings-camera-turn off record stereo sound.

this worked for me immediately after hours of searching for help and cleaning my speakers.

all my apps would record perfect audio except my camera and this was the solution.

thank you.

I had the same issue using the rear camera, and after restarting, updating, resetting to factory.... the issue was still there. The only way I could get a a decent volume from the beginning of the video was turning off the Record Stereo Sound setting. I got support from Apple and we tried a lot of stuff. Now before taking it to a tech support store, I did a final test removing the protective case and that was the issue. It was not the case itself, I had this metal plate that you use with magnetic holders, so using the case without the metal plate it is ok, but as soon I place back the metal in between the case and the back side of the phone (I never glue it), the issue comes back