A few weeks ago, my General Manger, Dan Brodnitz, asked me to create a new feature for our Digital Media site. He showed me a sample video of an online editor chatting about recent topics his site was covering. Dan wanted something like that for O'Reilly Digital Media.
"But," he said, "I don't want you to spend a lot of time on it." This is the tightwire we walk everyday in online publishing. How do you create useful, compelling content as quickly as possible? So, I took some time to figure out a system that would enable me to produce the Weekly Report every Monday along with my other responsibilities.
I know that post production time would be a deal breaker here. I would need a system that allowed me to record on one take and quickly publish. I tried a variety of recording directly to hard disk methods, but didn't find anything I liked. Sometimes, even on a powerful computer, the audio and video would be slightly out of sync. Ack!
So I decided to go back to using the DV camcorder, recording to tape, then transferring to hard disk. Even though it was an extra step, There was the advantage of having a backup copy on tape, which is easy to archive for the future. I used an external Audio Technica stereo mic on a stand just off camera, set up a couple lights, and was ready to shoot.
A few of the advantages of using a quality camcorder (Canon Optura in this case) is that I have nice features such as custom white balance, external micophone jack, manual audio control, reversible flip screen, remote control, and good glass. When I'm in town, I'll shoot the segments in my podcasting studio in Santa Rosa. It only takes me a few minutes to set everything up and record. On the road, well, who knows where these will be captured.
I then transfer the video to iMovie, trim the ends, add the web site url graphic, and output as uncompressed video. I then convert it to a Flash video file using Visual Hub, and post it on the O'Reilly server. I hang on to the uncompressed video as my processed backup, knowing that I can use it as a master if I need to compress a version in a different format.
I figure this project will run about an hour a week. I hope I've struck a good balance between quality and speed. You can watch the Weekly Report on our Digital Media home page.
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Thanks, Derrick. I really like these behind-the-scenes glimpses, especially learning about approaches that failed.
One of the slickest one-shot video tours I've seen is Introducing Snapper, which uses a webcam to put the narrator right on the screen he's describing. In the webcam context, he can also get away with a headset mic, which gives a more intimate sound than a room mic.
I don't know if this technique would work with your tiny playback window, but it might be a good option on the road.