People who make their own videos...

[indecks]

Be it for youtube, your VidPodcast, or whatever, what kind of camera do you use?

I want to start recording myself playing the drums and possibly opening myself up for ridicule by posting 'drum covers' on you tube. Ive only started in the last couple days and so far I'm using my iPad to record the vids, but they are huge. 3 minutes for a song (maybe 4 for me to get set up, queue the song, etc) and they are almost a gig in size! I can easily make them smaller with something as simple as Windows movie maker, but the transfer from the ipad to my PC is really long.

I don't know much about cameras so I'm wondering what a good idea would be - while keeping it relatively inexpensive. I don't need to be recording 1080p, maybe at most 720p, and hopefully one that has a decent microphone.

Ive tried recording myself with my phones camera which isn't too bad, it's an 8mp camera, but the mic just gets MURDERED when I hit the cymbals on my kit.

I found one of these on amazon but I don't know if it's very good or not.

[Nintendork666]

I found one of these on amazon but I don't know if it's very good or not.

That probably won't have good enough of a mic for something as loud as you're planning to record. But I'm no expert, certainly.

I personally use a Canon Vixia HF M31 - http://www.amazon.com/Canon-HF-M31-Camc ... B00322OP4K
Not sure if that's what you're looking for though. It does have an external mic port, which might come in handy if you have any sort of mics around which you usually record with. The built-in mic is pretty good, but I still use a sound guy most of the time.

In general, I'd try to get a camera/camcorder with an external mic port - I take it you don't really wanna have to deal with a "sound guy" for something like this.

[indecks]

Eh, I'm sure that's a nice one but it's WAY outta my price range! lol

[Nintendork666]

Eh, I'm sure that's a nice one but it's WAY outta my price range! lol

That's understandable.

I would just suggest recording the sound separately from the video one way or the other no matter what you decide. I don't think many cheaper cameras can handle the sound of drums well with the mics they have built in.

[indecks]

I may have to do that. I noticed something when I finally uploaded one to youtube. NachoDrummer is what I'm gonna call the channel. It's me, wearing a Nacho Libre mask, lol.

Anyway, the first half of the video looks and syncs up pretty great. There's several screwups (since I'm not all that great) but for the most part, it's synced up pretty well. But at about half way, i'm like a quarter of a second late on every single hit. It wasn't like that before when I was making the vid on MovieMaker. I recorded the video with an iPad 3, and you can see that whenever I hit the cymbal directly in front of me, the camera shakes a bit. I wonder if this might have something to do with it? Granted, in the 2nd half of the vid I DO admittedly 'stray from the path' if you will, and I mess up a bit more but it still should have been in time with the song. I don't think I'm THAT sloppy.

This happened with every vid I tried to make. I tried 3 others with 3 different songs, and they all did the same thing about halfway in. I just don't get it.

[Key-Glyph]

I've had syncing problems after uploading to YouTube, although not as pronounced as yours.

When I noticed the problem in one of my recent videos, I actually set the audio backwards a bit -- meaning I started it a few frames before the visuals kicked in. This kept the last quarter of the video from seeming too sped-up towards the end after uploading. There was still a teeny tiny difference there, whether anybody noticed or not, but the alteration made the published internet product come out closer to the source material than the unaltered source material itself came out after being published!

I don't know if it would help you to move your audio track back. But I do know that not all upload instances on YouTube are equal. I used to publish fanvids there, and I would occasionally have to upload them several times before they came out to my liking. Little things would go wrong, and differently each time. Maybe try re-uploading with the video set to "private" to see if it works out better from that alone? Then you can make it public when you're satisfied.

Also, if it makes you feel any better, I'm not very critical of synching problems on YouTube as a viewer. I accept it as inevitable sometimes, and I presume others do too. It's super frustrating from an uploader's perspective, though.

[jay_red]

recording drums without real equipment can be tricky, but I have found that the USB mic that comes with Rock Band can do a pretty decent job. When I first got together with my band I wanted to get some sort of recording to listen to and learn the songs, and thats all I had. Surprisingly, the audio was pretty decent, and not blown out like I thought it would be, I just made sure to point the mic away from the drum set. You could record the audio this way and sync it with the video later, this may give you some useable results on the cheap. I use Audacity to record the audio, its a open source audio editor that works pretty damn well for free.

EDIT:
Watched the vid you posted, I would turn down the song a bit, its hard to tell your drumming from the song playing, it *looks* like you are playing along to it well, but I cant tell what your kit sounds like, or the quality of the recording in general.

[fastbilly1]

I was going to suggest a HD FlipCamera, but for $6 more you can get that Sony Bloggie Touch, which is a slightly better camera (well worth the $6 jump). Are you planning on just shooting drum videos? If so you can just have a setup studio and work around that. Moving blankets are good at damping sound if you cant afford proper foam.

I personally use a hacked Lumix GH1 when I do shoots with my gear. Or a D800 with my little brother (he actually uses 2), or a Panasonic P2 (like the HPX500) if I am renting. I am planning on a GH3 or AF100 once the price drops on either to around 1k. Granted I dont do much for youtube, mostly nightplaying.

[indecks]

Thanks for the suggestions fellas. As for the recording volume, I purposely mixed the music a little louder than the drums, as my kit doesn't sound all that great. But I'll work on that. I think another reason I mixed it like that is because I was already seeing the vid go out of sync before even saving it down. I dont know what happened.

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

I know I've seen several folks doing this with separate camera & a professional studio quality mic.
Then have a good fun time syncing the video with audio.