As a longtime admirer of various peeps here and elsewhere who have recorded videos of their home studio jams and whatnot and posted them to Youtube, I’ve started researching options for a working person’s video cam. These are the options I’ve come up with so far:
My iPhone camera w/ Roland Go Mixer Pro to record the audio. The little Roland has a fair number of audio inputs for recording each of my lovely toys (Octatrack, OP-1, etc.) to its own track.
Those seem like good options, but keep in mind that the audio and video can be captured at the same time to separate devices and synced up afterwards in something like iMovie pretty easily. So the number of inputs doesn’t need to be limited by what’s attached to the camera.
I need to try this out. I keep toying with the idea of making a sort of music video. Or, at least, adding more artistic video to my jams vs. the static shot of gear in the frame.
At the moment, I’m basically using the OP’s option A. iPhone with Roland go:mixer. I have trouble getting the recording level right with the go:mixer (usually too low, sometimes too hot), but part of that is probably user error. Fortunately, when it clips, it doesn’t sound awful.
Until I learned about the Go Mixer Pro, as opposed to the original Go Mixer, I too thought that recording video and audio separately would have to be done, as well as syncing the two. The Roland is cheap enough that I’d be willing to pay for the convenience of having video and multiple audio tracks recorded in sync already, in just one take. “Cheap” in the sense that I feel like it would be worth the monetary investment to save the time I’d have to take to sync video and audio every time, before uploading the finished video to Youtube.
Consider that making something with a “cinematic value” you may want/need to edit your video in a software like premiere or after effects (adding complex transitions, fx, manipulating video in general) By the time you get there, having the audio as a separately is actually more convenient, or syncing it actually is just a piece of cake. There is no workaround the time it takes to produce nice video. Consider few different view points/cameras. Phone works well but it’s poor in low light. Lighting is a whole other layer of complexity. Start from basics - if you show gear, make it in a simple, pleasing way - the typical tabletop view actually works well when its done with attention. With that you’ll have the source to do something more artistic - duplicate / crop / distort or whatever.
That Zoom Q2N seems like a cool (and useful) piece of gear. It would be great to use that along with iPhone for A/B cameras. Could open up some creative avenues.
One selling point of the Zoom Q2N is that I can use it for recording band practices. The 2hr battery life is a concern, but I’ll look into alternative means of powering it.
The trick is to convince the bandmates that I won’t post video anywhere, and I’d have to offer to extract audio from the video file for them, which should be easy enough w/ Quicktime Player on my iMac.
If you’re just doing this for YT, I would recommend a camera that has a flip screen so you can monitor the shot without having to guess it every time. Also make sure the shot is well lit with a consistent light source.
Nothing too fancy. Basically a music-making video like this - but it’ll be my own music, and probably a different style of music.
Another example of the type of video i"ll be making, and probably more of these than the other type, as I’m a regular participant in backing track/jam track challenge threads. Except I’d focus the camera more on the guitar than my face. No, that’s not me playing the guitar - my skill level is nowhere near that of his.
3 main methods, all will need some use and familiarity with a video editor, I’m going to mention Sony Vegas here as it’s rather good as Adobe Premiere has got somewhat overly complex, however still one of the best.
OK, you want to make a video, the simple answer is therefore to use a Video Camera… !
I don’t know why more people don’t recommend them as, well, they are used to make videos!
Decent resolutions, you wont need to go above 1080p 30, a mental zoom range and a host of useful features depending on the model. Available very cheaply second hand.
Secondly and by far the best quality is to use any SLR type camera with a bright lens. I use a Samsung NX series (APS-C) with an F2 lens. The video is stunning if not cinematic so somewhat overkill. You’ll have to stitch the audio separately (programs available to do this) and is by far the ‘Ultimate’ and fine in low light.
However the most common method is to use a modern phone. There’s a whole plethora of gimbles and lens attachments and even decent apps (I use Filmic Pro) and despite earlier comments any ‘modern’ phone (I use a Pixel 2) is absolutely fine even in poor lighting. Don’t expect miracles and expect some noise in low light so invest in some basic lighting or just shoot in the day in a well lit room.
Oh, one huge advantage of using a video camera is DOF (Depth Of Field) can be deep and altho’ not ‘fashionable’ is rather useful when setting up a single handed presentation, far better however to have someone else working the camera.
I guess you’ll be going with option 3 as 99% of folk already have a ‘modern’ phone.
Good luck on your journey to fame!
I’ll be posting some vids (made with video camera) up on my channel to advertise my ShortWave Radio Transmitters, most useful for broadcasting your music 1000’s of miles!
This is a useful and timely thread for me… having just played my first gig in years I was thinking to video some live performances at home that I can use to hopefully get interests from folk that might want to play gigs.
My plan is to use two mobile phones for two angles. The camera on my current phone is pretty decent (as far as these things go) and I’m due an upgrade on my contract. I’ll record the audio separately and then was thinking of using Lightwave to stitch it all together… i was also thinking of cutting in or blending in freeware video (e.g. from the Prelinger archive) to make it a little more interesting for people who are not so fussed about gear.
Best laid plans of mice and men and all that but we’ll see how it goes…
this has been discussed before on the forum, so you should also find useful infos in older topics. I would advise the OP to try it with the phone and a simple class comliant audio interface first. cheapest stereo option is behringer uca 222 or 202, can also be powered only by phone and has monitoring. maybe get a little clamp to use phone with tripod. filmic pro app can record the sound and video together, so the video is ready for upload after shooting. if you enjoy it you can upgrade your video gear later…
regarding the zoom video audio cameras: i tried one of the older ones and was not happy with the video quality/wide angel lens and the lack of manual exposure options etc. and returned it… guess modern phones are superior
If you guys want to make movies with phone camera sensor, which is tiny, you would need a lot of light in the room. So think about the additional lightning, it’s very important and will give you good results with small sensors.
You need a decent camera and lens. I use a mirrorless camera, sony a6000. They’re not too expensive ($300-350) and they have fantastic quality. Unfortunately, it’s not 4k, but it’s still very professional. You will also need a tripod or gimbal.
For audio recording, you can find something between $100-$200. Or however you record your OT and Op-1, just use that audio. You’ll just need to sync it all up after in post production. (Just Clap your hands in front of the camera).
Good luck
P.S. Why don’t you try to make a couple videos with just your Iphone… Get comfortable with it and then you can make a serious purchase. (But, record the audio seperately, so you can practice syncing in post).
Yes, I’ve made videos with my iPhone, using a consumer grade tripod, but not for music. That’s why I’m considering a Go Mixer Pro as one option, to use it w/ the iPhone to record video and audio simultaneously; then maybe later get a camera like you mention.
