Whats the best camera (or cheap video camera/camcorder) I can use to youtube my bands acoustic music?

Question

We just wanna record, edit and upload music to youtube quickly and easily. We have a good camcorder but it uses digital tapes and it takes ages to copy it to the computer. I'm worried that any camera we'd buy would have crappy sound. Any advice would be great.

Answer 1

OK..if you don't need to be too mobile, you could go for a live capture from the camera directly to hard drive of a PC or laptop through most of the video editing software out there. You'll just need a long Firewire lead maybe. You would still have to encode it to one of the formats for uploading to YouTube though but that shouldn't take too long.

As for the sound...get a camera that has a socket for an external microphone and use a decent mic. You can even get around that and use the camera you have but selecting a different source for the audio part of the direct recording and use a mic/mics/mixer plugged into the computer.

The answer to your question lies in software I think...if you're happy with the video you're getting and just want to short-circuit the procedure. This is all possible on the likes of Adobe Premiere etc anyway. You'll also have the video recording backed up on tape too if you run the record function on the camera.

And as Nu'uanu says on all his posts

"DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER. The video quality for editing is terrible." and he's absolutely right!! (keep it up Nu'uanu)

Answer 2

If your band's music is loud, you will need to have a way to control the mic gain into the camera. If you do not have a way to control the mic gain on the camera, the auto-audio-level circuit in the camera will not be able to deal with the loud music and the audio will be muddy and not usable.

The CHEAPEST way to do it is to find out which Sony camcorder has an audio level selection in the menu. "Normal" and "Low". This "Low" gain setting it for loud audio. Sony DCR-HC28, DCR-HC96. The downside with these camcorders is they do not have an external mic connection.

The BEST way is to have manual audio control. The least expensive camcorders with manual audio control and mic-in jack are the Canon HV20, HV30, Sony HDR-HD7 and HDR-HC9.

DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER. They are the worst quality video for editing, the and disks are a pain.

MiniDV tape provides the best available video quality because DV (and HDV) do not compress as much as the other media (like internal hard drive and flash memory)... DVD camcorders are even WORSE than HDD and flash memory.

Yes, I have recorded LOUD (screamer, metal, rock, etc.) bands and the audio sounds great because I use a camcorder with manual audio control and external mics (Sony HDR-HC1, Audio Technica AT-825, BeachTek DXA-6).