I was chatting with my pal Craig Syverson about video podcasting. During our conversation, he recounted a story for me about a client who wanted help selecting a video camera for his video podcast. Instead of answering the client's question with a run-down of the latest and greatest HD video cameras, Craig informed the client that he should be paying attention to the audio first, and then the video.
If you watch a bunch of home-grown video podcasts, you'll see why the audio is so important. More times than not, the audio in these podcasts simply sucks.
No matter how good your camera is, no matter how pretty you are, no matter how great your script, it's the audio that will make or break your video podcast. We can suffer through bad lighting, a poorly scripted joke, an ugly background, etc. But if we can't hear or understand you, you're podcast is going in the trash.
So when you select a camera, look for one that offers professional sound capability. Usually this means working with a camera that either has XLR mic inputs or that can be easily modified to accept XLR mic inputs via an adapter. In a worst-case scenario, you can make an XLR mic adapter if you're handy with a pencil soldering iron and live near a Radio Shack. To make your own, you'll need one three-conductor female "XLR" type connector (RS #274-011), 15-20' of two-conductor shielded microphone cable, and one 1/8" shielded stereo mini-plug (RS #274-858). You should be able to figure out the rest from there.
If you can't afford a video camera with XLR audio inputs and don't want to make your own, try to find a video camera that offers a shotgun mounted mic. Depending on the distance from your camera to subject and the level of ambient noise, you may be able to get an acceptable quality audio track using this method. Another low-cost method of getting decent audio for your podcast is to use a tie-clip (lavaliere) mic.
Whatever you do, don't just rely on your camcorder's built-in mic to handle the audio. You'll be sorry.
Also make sure your video camera offers a way to separately monitor the audio coming into the camera via a headphone jack. Believe it or not, many of the lower-end camcorders and digital video cameras don't have headphone jacks. You really need to be able to listen to the sound you're recording onto your video camera. This can be supplemented by meters on the higher-end cameras that often allow not only audio, but visual feedback relating to the audio you record.
Some cameras even go so far as to allow you to record more than one track of audio. But that won't be necessary for most podcasters, since you're probably going to drop the video into some editing software where you can add additional audio tracks.
Lastly, make sure that you buy a video camera capable of recording 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sound. Some of the low-end cameras capture sound at 12-bits. Some offer a choice between 12-bits and 16-bits. If you're buying a camera that offers a choice, set it at 16-bits and forget it. This is necessary if you want to burn a DVD, and that's the minimum quality specification that I am comfortable with when making a video podcast with great audio.
Remember, video podcasts are only as good as they sound.
For more on podcasting, visit my sites PodcastingTricks.com and PodcastGearGuy.com
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