Video on a budget
You don’t need a big budget to learn multimedia. There are plenty of low-cost tools to get you started.
Watch Kirk Mastin’s test of a $3,300 Canon XH A1 camcorder vs. a $120 Flip Camcorder (he also used a an iPod nano with a mic to record audio for the Flip video). Mastin is in the University of Washington’s masters program for digital media. Compare the footage between the two cameras. (He syncs Flip video and iPod audio with a hand clap in front of the camera and then match the audio spike in a video editing program.)
Mastin’s comparison has been making the rounds as of late, even though it was posted back in February. (There’s also a three-part Mexican Wrestling video shot with a Canon Powershot SD800 by Max Morse of ESPN.)
Also, lots of people are posting training tips lately:
- David Nolan at Multimedia Evangelist has posted several reports from a $2,000 training he’s attending on how to shoot video. Quick tips: shots are at least 10 seconds with no pans or zooms, get lots of b-roll and shoot many angles of the subject to help compress time for the viewer. (Thanks to NewsVideographer for the heads up.)
- Video for newspapers, by Mindy McAdams. This is an incredibly useful list of links, including shooting video for editing, what makes a good video and examples of video you have to see (like the Spokesman Review’s video of a paraplegic dog).
- 17 video tips, by Sue Robinson, guest blogger on Mindy’s Teaching Online Journalism.
August 21st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Capturing audio with an ipod and a mic isn’t something I would have thought about but it is a great idea since most, if not all, cameras in and around the Flip price range don’t have a mic input. Needless to say, the built-in mics are horrible. I’d be interested to know if there if the audio captured on the iPod slips out of sync with the video. My understanding is that some of the digital audio recorders record at a different “frame rate” than most cameras. Regardless, it is a great, innovative way to produce video content on the cheap.