(ISF) In search of equipment recommendations: audio and audio-visual recordings

Dear ISF Colleagues,

I'm looking for recommendations on behalf of a nonprofit client that
wants to get started in making simple audio and audio-visual
recordings in digital format. (Baby's first podcast!)

They can spend perhaps as much as $500.00 for a digital recorder and
as much as $1,000.00 for a digital video camera.

Some priorities:

1) Ease of use in the field, portability, ease in uploading
recordings to their web site

2) Reasonably good recording quality

3) Low or easy maintenance (i.e., the equipment should not have to be
sent thousands of miles away for servicing when broken, and
replacement parts should not be obscenely expensive)

What do you recommend?

Many thanks and best regards from Deborah

Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Cyber-Yenta
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
deborah_elizabeth_finn%40post.harvard.edu">deborah_elizabeth_finnpost.harvard.edu
www.cyber-yenta.org

Recommended reading:
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights"
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights>;

Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic

.

You might want to check out www.camcorderinfo.com - they do a pretty
good job reviewing and rating cameras and such.

I just bought for my personal use a Canon HV20, which was under $1000
at the time I bought it. It's high definition, and after reviewing
test footage between it and the very high-end Panasonic standard
definition camera my organization owns, I'm hard pressed to see the
difference. The HV 20 is also *tiny* - I was absolutely shocked at
how small it really is.

Of course, buying a camera gets you into the realm of HD vs. SD, and
MiniDV vs. hard drive vs. DVD recording. The trend in the camera
world is definitely toward HD, and folks are debating whether or not
the MiniDV tape is also on the way out. I personally like Mini DV
tapes, both for archiving and recording quality - however, if you do
get a Mini DV tape camera, it would also be worth it to spend the
extra $ on a tape rewinder, as rewinding tapes in the camera can lead
to early wear and tear on the tape heads.

Another factor to consider is how you're going to edit your audio and
video - this will require software, which can also add expense to
your project. I do some DJ and music mixing work as a hobby, and I
use Sound Studio Pro 3 (Mac) for audio edits - it's relatively
straightforward and easy to use. For multitrack work, which I can't
imagine simple Podcasting would require, I use Soundtrack Pro (which
is part of the Final Cut Pro suite).

For video editing, you have a few choices - most Apple computers ship
with some form of iMovie, which does basic editing very well. Final
Cut Express is also an excellent option, especially if you're not
going to require the "professional&quot; features it leaves out (and a
great many folks don't).

Video editing is somewhat CPU intensive, more so for HD footage, but
it can also wear out your hard drive pretty quickly if you do all
your importing, rendering and editing from the same hard drive.
There's a bunch of strategies you can find with Google searching that
folks propose to minimize hard drive wear when doing video work.

Lastly, you might want to consider how your projects are going to be
stored and archived, and the duration of which you want to keep them.

Messages in this topic (0) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic

.