i have used my shotgun mic a couple times and had no problem. but the last video i captured only had audio playing on my left speaker. i uploaded it to premeire and then to pinnacle, both had the problem. any way i can get the sound to both speakers in pinnacle studio??? or will this problem not occur once put on dvd?

Duplicate the channel.

PremPro (in Audio Effects panel) has the "Fill Left" & "Fill Right" options. Pick the appropriate one. I'm sure PinnStudio has something similar.

Are you sure your shotgun is not mono?

You should be able to duplicate the left channel and play it through the right as well.

EDIT: Good ol' Zen beat me to the punch :D

1/8th inch mono female to 18th inch stereo male adapter...we like GOLD! Gives you audio on both channels which leaves one channel as a back up in case of problems. Or a y splitter to run 2 mics.

yea my mic is mono so ill need to copy the left channel and play it through the right as well, but im using pinnacle studio and have no idea how to do this. can anyone help me?

Try this.
http://home.netcom.com/~jhewes/StereoPan.html

1: download StereoPan.DLL
2: move to VST plug-ins folder
C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Studio 9\Plugins\VST


Launch Studio. Open your video in Studio and add it to the timeline.
Select the video, open the audio toolbox, and locate and add the
StereoPan plugin.

In the StereoPan settings, mute (via the "Mute" button) the left
track. Move the right slider to center.

Done. (Theoretically). Play back your project and see if the audio
comes out of center.

I am using this in Pinnacle Studio 9. I suppose it would work with other programs as well.

rkjlt