digital video recording? how to get great sound?

Question

I'm a pianist and i want to record videos to put online. Do i have to get something like a digital video recorder ($$$$) or can i use something like a webcam and still get decent sound quality? any product recommendations are appreciated! thank you!

Answer 1

sound over a cam will sound terrible cuz it emplys 8 bit sampling only .Using a camcorder with a good plugged in mic would be great .

Answer 2

first of all, just to clear things up, a digital video recorder cant actually record people and things. it can. however, record tv shows. the webcam i have doesnt record sound, and if it did, it would be VERY low quality.

i think the best way for you to do this is to get a minidisc recorder (or something like that) and a camcorder (or webcam). remember that since your playing music, sound is going to be more important than the visual part. however, still try to get something with decent quality. and try to get maybe some footage of your fingers playing, instead of just having the camera point at your side, or your back when your playing (having a willing friend helps with this step).

now onto the supplies. i think the best way to get good quality sound without spending lots of money on a camera with a mic jack is just to get a camera maybe in the $200-400 range (ask around for a decent one). make sure it is miniDV (not miniDVD). get a firewire cable. if you have windows movie maker (on windows xp) use it, if you dont find a friend who does. get a minidisc recorder (around $200 but i think you can find them cheaper). then fairly decent quality shotgun mic (ask someone in circuit city or somewhere like that). also, get two rulers and draw zebra stripes on them.

*Important!* if you get a camera that has a mic port, then dont get a minidisc recorder and skip the instructions on using the rulers and the TO SYNCH section.

ok now here comes the fun part. get a tripod (or have a friend hold the cam). make sure your mic is set up properly and plugged into the minidisc recorder. start recording on the minidisc recorder and the camera, but dont play yet. get your two rulers and clap them together in front of the camera so it is recorded onto the camera, and the mic. (youve probably seen something like this on tv where the director yells action and some one claps the clapboard). after clapping the rulers together (or anything else that is easily distinguishable and makes a sound) start playing. like i said, you could have your friend move the camera around or just put it on a tripod. after you are done, its time to put everything together.

TO SYNCH-plug in your camera via the firewire cable, and open windows movie maker and select import from dv camera. then follow the directions. now you should have your video. now import your audio by first inserting cables in the line port of your computer and using http://www.musicmatch.com/. after this is done, import that audio into windows movie maker. now this is the important part. drag both the video and audio in the TIMELINE view. expand the audio so you see the waveforms, and find the place where it sticks up near the beginning. search through the video and find the exact moment when the rulers touch each other. then line this up with the place in the audio waveform. mute the sound from the video clip (right click) and play it. it should be synched, and if it is slightly off, do fine tuning by repeating the above steps (most of this is trial and error, although zooming in on both the audio and video from the timeline will help.).

TO MAKE VIDEO- so youve synched your video (or if you have a mic port its already done for you) and now you need to make your video. first go to the website you plan to put it on and check their file size limit. the bigger the better. then come back to movie maker and click export movie (or something like that. look around). at a certain screen it should have file size selections, and choose the custom file size option (again, it doesnt necessarily say exactly that). choose the limit as a few MB lower than the website limit. then export. after that, upload to the website. your done!

i hope this helps!

BTW, i play piano too. go pianists!

Answer 3

Aha! i will answer that! I purely have been on condition that very comparable digital camera. undesirable information is that the video recording does no longer have sound. it style of feels stupid to no longer have sound yet i assume they desperate that it become no longer in all probability required. btw. i'm a settlement photographer. before everything i become upset by ability of the generally occurring of the photos coming from this digital camera. After some experimenting, i found that on an identical time as that is perplexing, that is achievable to get good photos from the digital camera.

Answer 4

Your questions begs another. For what purpose?

If it's to promote yourself as a musician, better off having a profesisonal make a DVD demo for you. Potential business opportunities will appreciate the effort. they could also make a few short AVI's for a web site based on the material on the DVD. Remember you have no control over what it gets played back on.

If you are doing this just for fun, buy yourself a reasonable MiniDV Camcorder and a good tripod. The internal mic in my Sony does an incredible job. I also use external wireless mics from time to time, and they work equally well. You'll be able to edit your work on your PC and output it to whatever file format you need for web, DVD, etc.

Answer 5

the sound from the cameras won't work out for you.

if you want great sound what you are going to need to do is.

while you record yourself playing the piano-also have a seperate audio recorder recording your performance. software is cheap but all the other things you'll need to look into.

you could start out with cake walk which does both audio and video editing. you can sync the video to the audio you recorded into cake walk (they call it cake walk for a reason-its that easy to use).

but what you'll need to record your performace (audio wise) into your computer-would be a set up something like this.

a mic
an interface between the comp and the mic

pretty much it. you can get cheap usb devices mic interfaces say at guitar center (or shops like it) for about 100 bucks-m audio makes the majority of them. they are cheap small and pretty good for what you want.

you could also do a mixer to computer set up-but that's more expensive and something i don't think you'd want to do at this point-or do you? contact me if you have more questions.

Answer 6

You can forget about the webcam. A camcorder's on board mic may be acceptable, but I would go for a camcorder that accepts input from an external mic.