5-24-03 Rev 2: Video Camera and Card
After I first wrote this entry on 5/21, the feedback I got indicated that I
had underconstrained the problem. Many people wrote that I should capture both
the screen and the live video all the time, and "just edit them together." The difficulty
is that I am talking about recording a lot of material here -- many hours worth, for
example to capture all the lectures in a 5-day seminar. The time and effort necessary to go
back and patch everything together would be prohibitive, and make the production of
such videos unfeasible.
To succeed, I'll need to be able to choose which input is being recorded
(human waving hands and talking, or computer screen) on the fly, so the result will be almost
ready to go right after recording. The only editing should be the removal of flubs and glitches.
That's why I imagined some kind of switching system, so that a person -- even the speaker
themselves -- could just hit the switch while saying "let's see what that looks like" to go to
the code, slides, demo, etc. on the computer screen. To me it would be ideal if there was one
camera that could handle an external input, and easily genlock away from its own lens input to
the external input, and back. But I also realize this may not be feasible, and I may need to
do something like have two cameras, a switch and a digital tape deck or eqivalent, and switch
back and forth between a camera on me and a camera pointed at a flat-panel screen.
Several readers
have reported that using a camera with a flat panel screen produces good results without the
"roll bars" that appear with tube monitors, since there's no scanning with a flat panel. But now
I wonder whether this produces markedly superior results vs. using the S-Video output from a good
graphics card.
And yes, I understand the issues with lighting and sound. I'm considering just setting up
my office with the proper lighting built in, so that I can easily record at any time.
Back at what seemed like the beginning of OOP, when C++ was on the rise,
Borland hired me to go with a small group around the US, Europe, Australia and
Japan and introduce the concepts of C++. Zack Urlocker talked about Object
Pascal (later Delphi) and David Intersimone talked about OOP management
concepts. We did this at least twice, and called it the "OOP World Tour." It
felt a bit like a touring rock group, without the groupies.
After the first tour, they asked me to create a video training tape called
The World of C++. I wrote this and was involved in the production, while
David did the actual presentations. Later they videotaped me doing a
presentation at one of the early Borland conferences and created Beyond The
World of C++ from that. Both of these have long been out of print but you
might be able to find them used on Amazon or on E-Bay, and there you will see a
younger, more innocent version of myself.
I got a fair amount of feedback about those videos from people who said that
they helped. Since then, I have made numerous failed attempts to create my own
video training material, and I'm ready to try again. My perception has been that
it's an equipment problem (of course this might have been an excuse), but once
again I find myself stymied at the breadth of choices. The last time I was in
Fry's, there were all kinds of digital video cameras, including one that
appeared to be a studio-quality camera (that is, it was big and said that it was
for studio work). This might be exactly what I need (and years ago, such cameras cost
vastly more than the $3K+ that this one was) since I'm not planning on doing home
videos, but I have no idea what the market is like and what the best choice
would be.
In addition, I know that many of the new video cards that go in the computer
put out an S-Video signal that could be used to capture the computer screen into
the video stream, so that (for example) we could switch back and forth between
me talking and waving my hands (during a live presentation) and working on the
computer so that the viewer could easily see both.
So here's what I think I'm looking for:
A good digital video camera, and I'm happy to go with a "studio" camera
as described above.
The video card with the best quality S-Video output.
A way to switch back and forth between video camera input and S-Video
output from the card. Perhaps the camera will be able to do that itself, but a
switch might be necessary. I seem to remember that this part caused problems
before. The ideal setup would allow both to go directly into a single recorder,
and if that could be the recorder built into the camera itself that would
probably make it easiest.
If you have researched any of the above and would be willing to share your
insights, please
send a message.
Thanks!
Good resources:
