Topic: video advice needed

[Pan]

Hi all.

A Finnish blues festival has asked me to provide a YouTube video of my playing.  So I guess it's high time to drag myself to this century.

Since several members have done great YouTube videos, maybe you could give me some basic advice as how to approach all this?

What would be an easy to use and good enough camera? How do you transfer the data to the computer? Is the sound quality of the camera good enough, or do you record the sound separately (I have some condenser mics + a sound card with phantom power)? If so, how do you merge and sync it later on?

I believe the image / sound quality of YouTube isn't very good, so I'm hoping I won't need a very expensive camera and equipment. 

Any advice is much appreciated

Thanks

Pan

[Prof Scratchy]

Hi Pan - I'm new to this too, and a bit of a technophobe, so I was surprised how easy it all was (as Frankie had said it would be)! First buy a camera - doesn't have to be expensive, and I found the simpler the better, though I did check that the built in microphones were decent. Your camera will come with some software that you'll need to instal on your computer - this is to provide a mechanism for your videos to be transferred from the camera to your computer. Then just point the camera at yourself and play a tune. When you're done, switch the camera from record mode to playback mode  and attach it to your computer with the supplied USB cable. At this point the software you installed earlier should kick in and you can preview your video on screen before deciding whether to import it. If you so decide, click the import button that'll appear somewhere in your software control panel on screen. Your video will then transfer to your computer, usually stored automatically in 'My Videos' section of 'My Documents'. Now to upload to youtube. First go to youtube and create an account (it tells you how to do it). Then on the youtube home page click on Upload video' - it'll ask you to specify a file on your computer. Select the file from the 'My Videos' directory and double click it. The upload will start, and whilst it uploads, you can annotate the video by filling out the forms on screen. Once the video has uploaded successfully, you'll be notified by a 'success' message. Depending on the format your camera uses, the video will then be processed by youtube to convert it to their .flv (flash player) format. This takes a bit of time as well, so you won't instantly be able to view you video until this processing has finished. It takes different times depending on the format your camera uses, but usually no longer than about five minutes. Hope this helps get you started - can't wait to see you in action!
Prof S

[Pan]

Thank You Professor! 

Great info! So on my checklist I now have:

- check for good mics
- USB connection
- software for the computer

Can you edit the videos on your computer or camera, after shooting?

I might also add that Prof Scratchys' YouTube channel is a must see, if you haven't visited already.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfScratchy

[Prof Scratchy]

Hi again Pan - in order to edit videos you need a video editing programme (for some reason they call them 'suites')!! The one I've used is called Blaze Media Pro. But check your computer out, you might already have one that came bundled with it - programmes like Windows Movie Maker. The good thing about Blaze is that you can edit both sound and video recordings, and convert from one video or sound format to another.

[Richard]

Yes, I have Blaze as well it is good.

Now, as the Prof has said and not that I am great Micro$oft fan, but do have a play with Windows Movie Maker as it's good to start with and surprising good at reducing file sizes and the like.

[Mike Brosnan]

Hi Pan,
The good Professor has provided excellent answers already, but I figured I'd chime in anyway...
I'm super lazy and technophobic about these things, so I went for the simplest route I could find.  I compared audio quality on a few friends' cameras and decided the Casio Exilim met my moderate standards.  I paid less than $150US for mine.  Here are some comparable cameras: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp;jsessionid=WKPN4JALJXJDDKC4D3IVAHI?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=casio+exilim&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960
I just shoot the vid, stick the soundcard in my computer, drag files to my desktop, a quick browse while uploading to youtube... Done. 
The camera's not ideal, but it works for me.  I can elaborate later, but I gotta go to work.  Just wanted to throw my super low tech experience in the mix.
Lookin' forward to your vids!
Mike

[Pan]

Thanks again, guys.

I checked and actually found Windows Movie Maker on my computer, so I guess I'm just one video camera short of becoming the next Clint Eastwood or something 

I will investigate Blaze Media.

Mike, you do an absolutely great job with the "low tech" Casio, so thanks for the heads up.

[frankie]

Hi pan - if you're new to video editing, I think you'll find that Windows Movie Maker is fine for right now and gives you a lot of flexibility, most of which you probably won't need at first.

One thing I've found helpful is to use an flv encoder, as it'll give you a little more control over the end product that uploading wmv files directly to youtube.  If you're not on Vista, Riva Encoder does the job and is easy to use.

[Pan]

Hi Frankie, as you guessed I'm a complete beginner with the video editing stuff, so I'll take your advice and start out with the Windows Movie Maker help manual while I'm looking for a camera. 

The rest of your information obviously goes a bit over my head, at least for the time being, but I'll check in for these later.

I've been trying to avoid Vista like a plague, but I guess my cheapo laptop with the Windows XP will eventually die, sooner or later. Usually these kinds of things happen when you have completely neglected doing any back-up files.

Thank you, and my compliments again on your great videos.

Pan

[onewent]

Hi Pan..good advice above, keep it simple (meaning cheap) until you get further into it, and your needs grow. 
I'm a lot like brosna and a few others, I just use my point and shoot Canon S1IS in video mode, then dump to my laptop (vista), edit and add a quick title in movie maker, then upload to my youtube channel. 
I want to try frankie's advice about the flv encoder, didn't know that would help..

Seems daunting at first, but, like anything, gets smoother the more you do it. 

Here's what we've been doing w/ the vintagebluesguitars channel, where you can see the basic titles I've done, and you can judge the sound quality of a p&s camera mike:
http://www.youtube.com/user/vintagebluesguitars

..once you have the camera, it should be smooth sailing..good luck, Tom

[Stuart]

...I've been trying to avoid Vista like a plague, but I guess my cheapo laptop with the Windows XP will eventually die, sooner or later. Usually these kinds of things happen when you have completely neglected doing any back-up files. ...

Pan:

Get yourself a copy of Acronis True Image and an external hard drive, and then create a backup (image) of the laptop's internal hard drive. That way if the laptop's hard drive fails, you can always get a new internal hard drive, clone it using the image Acronis created on the external hard drive, and replace the failed drive with the new one--which beats getting sucked into the Vista vortex, as well as having to buy a new computer.

http://www.acronis.com.sg/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

This product has saved my sorry ass on at least one occasion.

I live in Washington State, just north of Seattle, and some of the people I know who work at Microsoft won't even use Vista. Most are waiting for Windows 7 to be whipped into release shape.

I don't know how the computer market is in Finland, but in the U.S. there are both laptops and desktops still being sold with XP Pro installed. The business customers demand it. You can get one for a little under $500 USD--even less. Another route that people take is to buy a new Vista machine, replace the hard drive, and then load XP Pro (either an OEM version, or a full retail version--both are still available.)

Just my two cents drawn from my own experience, but it may be worth following up on.

[Rivers]

Well I think Vista is a much better OS than XP ever was. Provided you buy it preloaded on an HP or similar platform that can take it. I wouldn't mess with it otherwise. My current Vista setup is more stable than any Windows environment I've ever used. PCs still suck however, but I'm an IBM iSeries programmer so you could expect me to have a different perspective on this whole debate.

Don't go the Sony route if you want a higher end camera. They lock you into a proprietary format, and their software, as it always has, totally sucks. Go open format, something that dumps an open standard format to an SD / flash card / hard drive / CDRW sounds real good, if you have a card reader or USB port on the camera it'll just come up as a drive with clickable folders and files.

If you want that kind of compatibility the key phrase to look for is "class compliant device", i.e. it hooks up to the host PC using USB or Firewire, and looks like a hard drive w/folders and files, with no bullshit proprietary godawful excuse for a software package required to read, play and edit the files (see "Sony").

[uncle bud]

Though I'm not a Youtuber, I'll second frankie's suggestion of Riva Encoder to convert to the flv format used for the Tube. It's been pretty simple to use when I've used it, and it's free. Frank, does converting to flv oneself before uploading avoid the sync problems you see on some YouTube videos?

[frankie]

Frank, does converting to flv oneself before uploading avoid the sync problems you see on some YouTube videos?

It definitely reduces the likelihood that a video will be out of sync with the audio.  I think the problem can still occur based on some file incompatibilities on the system that does the encoding, but in most cases where friends were having that problem, doing the encoding on their own cleared up the issue.  Encoding the video yourself also reduces the size of the file that you have to upload to yt, so that takes a little less time, and yt also prepares encoded files a little quicker, which is nice.

[Stuart]

Well I think Vista is a much better OS than XP ever was. Provided you buy it preloaded on an HP or similar platform that can take it...

Therein lies the crux of the problem...

Like almost everything else, it depends on the specific hardware, software and what you're using it for. I should put you in touch with my ol' college roomate who works for Teradata for an alternative view.

If you have the coin for the hardware, Ultimate and have direct a line to the folks at Redmond to solve the problems as they arise, it certainly will do things that XP Pro never did. But Rivers, you're playing in the pros and not with consumer toys, as these products are referred to in your world.

Good advice re: Sony. What I've heard from people who have went the Sony route strongly supports you sage advice.