Recording a Show

[congo5]

We want to start recording shows professionally.

 

Can anyone suggest a decent camera for the job, we also want to feed a live output from the desk into this camera.

 

Any Idea's

 

Many thanks in Advance

[Pete McCrea]

Budget? You can spend £400 to £40,000 on a camera.....

 

Do you want STandard Def (SD) or High Definition (HD)? Do want to record to tape or storage media. Interchangeable lenses or fixed, balanced audio I/O or unballanced.......

 

Give us some more to go on then we can give options specific to your requirements.

[paulears]

You also have to decide on what to edit the tapes with too. Can be a very expensive thing to do properly. Even things like tripods and heads - if you need smooth movement, then these are also rather expensive. Teeny viewfinders are also a great way to aches and pains because you often get squashed into tiny spaces, and getting comfy for an hour and a half is difficult.

[kerry davies]

I am not a Vidiot and have limited experience but please believe me when I say that the only cost-effective way to get decent quality ("professional") show videos is to get an outside company/film network group in to do it.

 

Decent cameras with trained operators, an editting suite, sound mastering etc are pretty specialist and very expensive set-ups for occasional projects. Not to mention the costs and time involved in training operators etc who will presumably be leaving college necessitating continuous training budgets.

 

Contractors can come in, do the show, edit the material and provide the finished product for a reasonable and fixed sum. It is all well and good buying the kit but unless you invest heavily in the total package on an ongoing basis the results will look extremely amateurish and, probably, very embarrassing. Been there, done that!

[paulears]

Kerry is so right! On another forum I inhabit (a video one) we have a lad who has been doing just this kind of thing. In his case, it's a play and he put up his effort for comment. The quality wasn't actually that bad - a bottom end, budget camera, but all the problem identified with it all needed serious dosh to solve. I suspect we really are in this case trying to put you off. As you're taking a desk feed, you've worked out that sound is important, but sticking a desk feed into the camera is dangerous - mainly because you are either going to get the main mix output - which will be balanced for what the live event needs, and could have very odd balance for a video. On top of that, you're trusting a stranger to get it right for you, and if he wrecks the recording - who gets the blame. Most people use the desk feed and record the room sound too. Cheap cameras may not even have a mic input socket. Those that do are often mono. So you might need to record the desk audio separately. Basic camcorders also have problems with stage lighting, in that they average the brightness levels. We tend to light people, and have lots of shadow, especially when follow spots get used, and you end up with lots of burnt out highlights. Manual aperture control is important, but again - one of the features getting put onto the more expensive ones.

 

Before we go to far, let us have your budget and we'll try to spend it wisely for you - or tell you to forget it.

 

Recording shows is frankly, a pain. It takes 3 or 4 of us to do one, takes a long time to complete and rarely makes much real money. Video software - proper stuff, not the home kind that is very feature limited is amazingly expensive. I just upgraded mine and it was very expensive. The promised extra features required a new video card, and upgraded power supply, so that's a grand gone in one upgrade. Cameras depreciate at a daft pace. At least they now last longer now that we've dumped tape. Second hand tape based camcorders are generally now a waste of money. DVD and Hard drive ones unreliable and delicate. Memory cards certainly seem the way forward, but come with their own set of problems.