Good camcorder for audio

[DCW]

Hi

I'm a musician and I want to do produce some high quality sound and vision of myself playing. The idea is that I would set the camcorder up on a tripod and record my peformance. Then I would transfer the result to my computer (Mac) to edit sound and vision.

I have some profedssional qualtiy mics, so I am looking for a camcorder with an external mic input.

I don't necessarilly need a lot of fancy gimmicks (I would sooner pay for better recording quality than gimmicks I probably wouldn't use).

Price range up to about £750, but obviously I want something as inexpensive as possible provided it can produce high quality results in a user-freindly way.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[big country]

do you want to make music video
do tell what you want to ultimately accomplish

750.00 euro seems tight for a camera
ever thought of hiring some one ?
might be your best choice for your budget
the video world is whole different form of gear GAS

if your on a budget try a local college , lots o film students
lots of students wanting to build a reel


might be able to get a cannon XL2
for that money

never used one , but I know they have XLR's on them
they seem to be pretty popular

cannon XL2 - Google Product Search

pay real close attention to what you get when looking to purchase
a camera,
you can find they are really cheap , but don't have lenses
and other needed stuff

[rackdude]

The lowest I would go is a cannon XL2, but I would pick a cannon Xh-a1. Great great great cameras. I love their color. The Xh-a1 can record in standerd deffinition too... and a lot better than a standerd deffinition camera will. Other than that... your good choices are the DVX's from Panasonic or the FX's from Sony. I know JVC has some too but I hated their color on every camcorder of theirs I layed hands on. Go with cannon first. You can ebay an Xh-a1 for $2000. Maybe a bit out of the price range, but its worth the grab. One of the best HD cameras I can find, can make great movies with that cam. The thing about HD too is that the audio is A LOT LESS COMPRESSED, HD atleast records audio in 24 bit resolution at 44.1 and not so lossy. SD is 16 bit and usually for DV cams its in some really lossy form. So, that will help a lot in itself. All of the cameras I have mentioned have XLR imputs, though I would advise using a pre infront because the gain is not very clean on these *I just stick a DMP3 infront and then its professional audio with my schoeps*.

I would say just going with a consumer camera is a POS. It's not worth it. Most of them you have to use the on camera mic, and if not, theres the miniplug with crap gain. I guess you can use a naiant mic into a cheap Sony or Cannon and that would be decent, but its hard to say. What are you trying to do? If its just guitar, buy a naiant X-T and a miniplug and get a good little Cannon or Sony; the next best thing is what I mentioned above. No matter what camera you buy though, the onboard mics will always suck, and somewhat the same with the preamps.

Or, just use a consumer camera and record at the same time, then dub the recorded sounds onto the video in Nuendo or w/e you use and that would sound good. For this I would recommend one of the Sony FX's because although the cheaper ones do not have XLR in's, they do record HD with great color *though not cannon's quality* and have 3 CCDs *to keep low light grain away and just have a more quality look*, so you would get great sight out of these, but not so great sound *but if you just overdub the sound, there you go*.

[theblue1]

As rackdude suggests, you can get pretty good results recording video and audio separately, depending on your gear and environment.

My Nikon digital still cam has a reasonably good 640x480 30 fps mode -- but utterly awful, virtually unusable sound.

So I use the cam for visual while recording onto the computer (for YouTube folkie stuff, I just record straight into an audio track in my NLE (Vegas Plebian Deluxe, I think it is ). The cam's USB1 so I use a memcard reader instead of cable for transfer to the PC. Say I'm recording a guitar duo with myself, I shoot and record both parts one after the other and then dump the video into Vegas. (I also have a portable MD and stereo mic I can use for field work. The MD li-ion batteries die fast and charge long, though. It's an older unit and I guess the li-ion thing was just in its infancy.)

A "clapper" of some kind is ideal for lining up video and audio. (I've used finger picking to line up visuals and, while it works, some kind of clapper makes it a lot easier. I've even used two video-cassette boxes as a clapper. Worked.)

Of course, no two crystal clocks run at precisely the same time, so over the course of a long video clip, there could be some drift.

If there's substantial timing drift, a clapper at beginning and end can let you stretch or shrink the video or audio so that they match.


BTW... I've worked hard trying to get good quality vids up in YouTube's new higher rez video format and, lemme tell you, it's damn hard to keep any quality in the vid once the YT algorithms start chewing it down to size...

[rackdude]

Try a canon HV10. I just started looking around and I guess Sony dropped the FX line awhile ago, but an FX7 would work too if you could find one. The HV10 DOES NOT have xlr ins though, you have to break out of your price range for that. But, as I said before, sound replacement is probably your best bet.

[DCW]

Thanks very much for the replies guys -- and I immediatey realize how little I know about this visual stuff (thought I know a fair bit about the audio recording side).

I play just acoustic guitar and vocal. Some of the most enjoyable music videos I have are of famous singer-songwriters sat in front of a film camera playing their songs. I'd like to do the same for my own songs to a reasonably high sound and vision quality.

So we are talking about capturing a sound and vision performance simultaneously, with no overdubs.

Thinking about what theblue1 is saying, would it be possible to hook up an external camera to my iMac and record simultaneous sound and vision? -- with the sound going directly in to the iMac to be processed at some stage in my Logic Pro program?

So, in effect, I'd be using my iMac as a camcorder, but with a no-frills but good quality external camera.

Or am I just dreaming ...

[rackdude]

I don't know of a program that would simaltaniously record sound and video from 2 DIFFERENT PLACES, though Adobe has OnSite or something like that, and so does Canon, and I think DV rack does this too, that records the video directly to the computer. But just like DAW's, they really only work off of one source, so that would not work very well. You would have to record the video feed to the camera, and the sound to the computer, and then use Logic to put the video on the sound. Maybe Logic has a video recorder thing that and Logic can source from multiple places *like ASIO drives, I know it can do that*, but I'm guessing not, I'm guessing it can just edit like Nuendo.

[rackdude]

Or even I just thought of something else, you can use the HV10 and have a mini-plug to XLR adapter. Wouldn't be the best quality, but put a nice clean preamp there, and it should sound good enough. I mean, the conversion will suck... but hey, its a good cheap fix.

[big country]

not saying its impossible to do it on your own
but I would think about going to a studio
sounds like allot of hats your trying to wear



Welcome to Sound Matrix Studios!

if any thing you could always edit your own video
and let the studio do the camera work and audio

you have to realize its very expensive to get good results

you could easily blow your budget in lighting alone
not counting track , cameras , takes a lot a stuff to make a quality production

[rackdude]

What do you plan on editing it in? If you really want to make it look professional, in order to pull it off you will probubly need some sort of color correction at a minimum, so I'd suggest Vegas or Final Cut Pro, though idk if Vegas goes on Macs *but I love Vegas, thats my number one*. Plus, you will need lighting. It's all about color correction and lighting that makes the difference between a cheap camera and an expensive look. I've seen some great shots on these small HD cams before because some people know how to set the color and use lights. Remember to always use a white paper at the beggining and set up the white balance, thats a little easy move that will make you at least not look like a home video. Record in 24 fps to have the fluid movie look and spend time setting the color and lighting just right. Once again, Canon HV10 or 20 *depending on tape or hard disk* can pull it off if you do it right.

[DCW]

The studio production option is really not for me -- I have about two hours of material and it would work out hugely expensive. I already get very good audio results at home -- I just need to add in the vision. And, of the two, the quality of the audio is more important to me than the visual.

I haven't really thought about the editing side yet, although I do have some editing software on the Mac.

[rackdude]

Alright, then I'd say get the Canon, get some worklights from home depot, and get an xlr to miniplug adapter. Use your pres into the xlr. The worklights will be a bit yellow but you can white balance on the Canon to make it seem white, and then it has basic color correction tools on there for you to fool around with. Once you have it lit up right, make it look right, then make it sound right, and there you go. That's as cheap as you can get and still end up decent. I'd suggest getting 3 lights though. One for the front side right, one kind of side left off center a bit more, and flood the last one. Look up 3 point lighting. You can make a flood light just by using a very reflective material like aluminnum and facing the light away from the direction you want the light and reflecting it onto the aluminum and letting it scatter. This way should look pretty decent. It's how I lit my first few student films.

Almost no editing required.

[moma]

Get a used Canon HV20 with a good external mic. Should fit your budget. Doesn`t look pro...but the quality is great. Of course the A1 is better especially at lowlight (we got the both) but many of our "inserts" done with the HV20 went into the final jobs in for very demanding clients and if it work for them it works for anybody - my Theory.
Stay away from the HV30..they changed the audio inputs to reduce drive noises...but they aplied the chages to the external audio input too...what makes it useless.

cheers markus

[rackdude]

Actually I forgot to mention something. You can even use this technique to multi mic drums and such. Just as long as you are using a mixer, just let the mixer outs go to the xlr-miniplug adapter. You will only record a two track sound, so not much post editing can be done, but as long as you eq it right on the way in, its all good.

[DCW]

Thanks rackdude -- I like the "almost no editing required" once I've got the lighting right. Never even heard of 3 point lighting, but it's great to learn -- thanks.

When the data is transferred to my iMac, will I then be able to process the audio in my Logic Pro?

[rackdude]

Only the two track data that is recorded to the camera, because remember, doing it that way would only record a stereo track. Or you can do a mixture of the two ways where you do the lighting and such and record that video, while you record the sound sepperately, and then put them back together using logic. You would have to make sure you have the video perfect first because you won't be able to change what you could see this way, and there might be a SMALL amount of jitter, bit it would really be minimal.



Three Point Lighting

Theres a little three point lighting tutorial. This is the key thing that makes the difference between the 2D home videos and the realistic looking movies.

[vernier]

I was jamming in this guy's garage ..he set up a little Sony cam he bought that day ...later we watched it in his livingroom w/ a good sound system ..sounded amazing. I'd like to find out which model it was.
'

[DCW]

I've just been looking around and the Sony Handycam HDR-SR11 is about the same price new and has got very good reviews -- would that be another option or is the Canon the better choice?

[rackdude]

I can't say which of those would be better, I have used a sony handicam and it was nice, but that was just for a day... and it was my friend's. I do have a lot of experience with the higher Canon gear like the XL2 and the Xh-A1, and those are incredable and I know those beat out the Sony's in that range. So, I would assume the Canons would be better in both ranges... but I couldn't say for sure. It's just educated speculation.

[DCW]

Been reading up a bit and the tape format seem to be much better for editing than hard drive format -- so the Canon would win in this regard -- and it costs less.

[rackdude]

Tape format is better? I wouldn't say that at all...

I mean, analog tape is good, but the Canon is DV tape, which is digital tape, no difference between that and hard disk except where its stored, and hard disk has the advantage of having less jitter mistakes and such. I don't know what the difference in editing would be, except if your program does not accept the video file that is recorded onto the hard disk version.

[jowillie]

I've done Cable TV ads with the Canon HV20 and HV30. Just ad something like this:
Audio Box


VO Mic Test

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by rackdude

I don't know of a program that would simaltaniously record sound and video from 2 DIFFERENT PLACES, though Adobe has OnSite or something like that, and so does Canon, and I think DV rack does this too, that records the video directly to the computer. But just like DAW's, they really only work off of one source, so that would not work very well. You would have to record the video feed to the camera, and the sound to the computer, and then use Logic to put the video on the sound. Maybe Logic has a video recorder thing that and Logic can source from multiple places *like ASIO drives, I know it can do that*, but I'm guessing not, I'm guessing it can just edit like Nuendo.

[bold added -- and I may be misunderstanding this... I'm thinking rackdude is not talking about software to record two video streams and two audio streams. above, but rather software that can record video from one source and audio from another. If we are talking two simultaneous video streams, never mind...]


Surely this isn't true on the Mac, is it?

I've only worked with low end Windows NLE's, but certainly Vegas Plebian, er, Platinum (not the $600 'Pro' version), allows one to use any valid camera source or audio source. I have a choice of any of my three audio interfaces, for instance. (Unfortunately my only webcam-ready cameras -- including a cheap webcam and several antique digital cams that can double as webcams via USB1 -- all have terrible quality. Which is why I use my Nikon and transfer via SD sneaker-net.)


On an OS where one can aggregate multiple audio interfaces into one big interface (which always strikes me as so cool), it's hard for me to imagine that you can't select a different audio stream [from that of the camera] to record in your Mac NLE/video software. I mean, that just seems so basic. I mean, what happens when one uses a webcam -- can't you record the audio from any valid source?

[riffster]

Pansonic DVC-80 on ebay. A great 720 x 480 60i camera. Almost identical to the DVX100 minus the progressive frames. They go for about 1000.00 USD.

[DCW]

Originally Posted by rackdude

Tape format is better? I wouldn't say that at all...

I mean, analog tape is good, but the Canon is DV tape, which is digital tape, no difference between that and hard disk except where its stored, and hard disk has the advantage of having less jitter mistakes and such. I don't know what the difference in editing would be, except if your program does not accept the video file that is recorded onto the hard disk version.

Sorry rackdude, I thought I read that for some reason DV tape had some sort of editing advantage over hard disk.

[rackdude]

Originally Posted by theblue1

[bold added -- and I may be misunderstanding this... I'm thinking rackdude is not talking about software to record two video streams and two audio streams. above, but rather software that can record video from one source and audio from another. If we are talking two simultaneous video streams, never mind...]


Surely this isn't true on the Mac, is it?

I've only worked with low end Windows NLE's, but certainly Vegas Plebian, er, Platinum (not the $600 'Pro' version), allows one to use any valid camera source or audio source. I have a choice of any of my three audio interfaces, for instance. (Unfortunately my only webcam-ready cameras -- including a cheap webcam and several antique digital cams that can double as webcams via USB1 -- all have terrible quality. Which is why I use my Nikon and transfer via SD sneaker-net.)


On an OS where one can aggregate multiple audio interfaces into one big interface (which always strikes me as so cool), it's hard for me to imagine that you can't select a different audio stream [from that of the camera] to record in your Mac NLE/video software. I mean, that just seems so basic. I mean, what happens when one uses a webcam -- can't you record the audio from any valid source?

I tried extensively on Adobe OnLocation *thats the name of it, sorry for not having it earlier* and Vegas and it didn't work, checked online, and it cant. It depends on the card used. I mean, there are those direct to disk video cards that handle multiple video streams and a few audio streams or whatever, some stuff I never had money to buy, so I guess there is a way from what I heard. I'm not talking about editing, but capturing. Yes you can edit in many programs multiple cameras, but can you capture multiple sources? If you find a way, please tell me, because I tried and tried and tried, and failed. Maybe its just a PC... but I could not find out how. In fact, people online told me it wasn't possible. It's like trying to use two different audio interfaces, for some reason you can only capture from one *unless you use logic... or asio4all*. If you can get a live capture going from one audio source in vegas and a different source for video, please post because I've been searching. But then again, if Logic can do it for audio interfaces... maybe PCs just can't for some reason.

[tsvisser]

Originally Posted by DCW

Sorry rackdude, I thought I read that for some reason DV tape had some sort of editing advantage over hard disk.

what you might be referring to is the difference between HDV and AVCHD (for high definition applications). Almost all HDD based HD cameras us AVCHD. I think JVC was the first to break this mold with their new cameras where the HDD models actually support an MPEG2 format. AVCHD uses a more efficient MPEG4 based compression method that was up until recently, not widely supported. If you are using tools like iMovie or Final Cut Express / Studio, AVCHD is no longer a dirty word and is well supported for most camera models. DV is much more widely supported. Some camera's can be ok... any of the Panasonic, Canon, or Sony models that have XLR balanced inputs are a good start, but is still not a match for a decent dedicated audio recorder of some sort. Your main issue is using a recorder with time code support, if your shots are sort of long. If you just putting together a bunch of shorter shots, just manually sync it with a slate or some sort of clapper, an you can manually align in post. Without TC, however, you will probably experience drift in longer shots, or if it is just a single shot event, you will definitely want to record audio on the camera itself or use a recorder with TC.

One thing to be aware of, DV and AVCHD shares its available bandwidth with both audio and video. As dynamic range increases on the audio track, it reduces the available data for the video portion, and compression ratios will pump up/down appropriately. This may or may not be a visible artifact on playback - but something to keep in mind... I'm not too worried about it, but I have run into the odd director once who demanded no audio be laid down to tape.

Another aspect to be aware of, different cameras may support different max data rates depending on the format. Those cameras that write direct to a recordable DVD, have smaller bandwidth capabilities that tape or HDD units. Generally, a HDD or flash memory based unit performs comparably to a tape based unit.

[moma]

About tape vs. HD. We do a lot of filming (arround 400h/year) and still prefer (HDV)tape. Reason: a. you record on a ok priced longlasting archive media (we keep originals in case we need them) b. you need to make decisions while logging the tape - not just drag and drop everything (incl. the trash)

cheers markus

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by rackdude

Plus, you will need lighting. It's all about color correction and lighting that makes the difference between a cheap camera and an expensive look. I've seen some great shots on these small HD cams before because some people know how to set the color and use lights. Remember to always use a white paper at the beggining and set up the white balance, thats a little easy move that will make you at least not look like a home video. Record in 24 fps to have the fluid movie look and spend time setting the color and lighting just right.

The above advice is good. It takes a long time to really learn how to light properly though. I'm still learning after over a decade. I really prefer working with and manipulating natural light. YMMV

You could maybe rent an AG-HVX200 1/3" 3-CCD 16:9 HD/DVCPRO/DV Cinema P2 Camera. If you do that, you can shoot in 24 frames per second @ full progressive. This looks very good for video. Still not even close to film though...



But I do think it's best to leave this stuff to people who specialize in this sort of thing...

[bit mangler]

Originally Posted by moma

Stay away from the HV30..they changed the audio inputs to reduce drive noises...but they aplied the chages to the external audio input too...what makes it useless.

cheers markus

can you tell me more?I have the HV30.Anything I should do/not do?

BTW the HV20 & 30 are great cameras.Just like with audio gear,talent/technique trumps over gear.There are guys who have done phenomenal HD shoots with the camera.Check the website vimeo.com and search for hv20 or hv30