Starting video production ministry

[AKMinistries]

Our ministry would like to purchase a camcorder and macbook. After researching our options, I'm a little overwhelmed.

Can you recommend a camcorder which would give us professional results and which macbook would you recommend?

I read that macbooks come with sufficient memory, software, and dvd burning capabilities.

I am absolutely clueless about what amount of memory (gb's) we need. I also am unfamiliar with the software needed, nor do I know how to identify whether or not a particular macbook has a dvd burner.

Any suggestions for a newbie in the church video media field would be very appreciated.

We've looked for someone in our rural community with some knowledge in this field and haven't found that person, so, I'm stepping up to plate and I'm happy to serve the Lord in this way.

Newbie in Oregon
God bless~

[petereit]

Any MacBook Pro will work, since they all have DVD burners. iMovie comes free with the Mac OS and works great for simple editing.

As far as camera's producing "professional results" that's where you're going to run into a lot of subjective opinions, and here's mine: if you want professional results, buy a professional camera.

You can probably find a great deal on a used or remanufactured JVC GY-HD110U, or JVC GY-HD250U. We used a 110U for the first two years of our video ministry, jacked directly into the FireWire port of a MacBook Pro with spectacular results. A 250U would cost more than a 110U but would give you an HD-SDI output for when you add a switcher with multiple cameras in the future.

We still have our original 110U that we still use, jacked via FireWire into a MacBook Pro, to produce our pre-service announcement videos. As you can see in this video, it still does a great job!

[AKMinistries]

Thank you Mark. This was helpful. One more question. I'm confused about Hd verses Sd. Some recommend an Hd camera because "everything's switching to it." And others Sd.

If we use an Hd camera, can the dvd's be watched on a standard video player?

Just trying to figure it out.

Thanks for your help.
Pamela

[petereit]

If you burn a DVD from iMovie, it will automatically down-convert the video to SD.

We don't do DVDs at all. It takes too much time to master DVDs, costs too much for a DVD duplicator and there is practically no demand. We post all of our videos to Vimeo and publish them on our web site.

[Gracetech]

...and now for another school of thought.

Professional can't be bought but it can be learned. I can make a $750 DSLR produce better results than most can with a $30,000 "Professional" rig. I would say skill to gear ratio is 3:1. In other words it takes 3 times the gear to make up for lack in skill. So the first thing i always tell people to do is learn all they can. You would be surprised at all the information for free out there on the web.

DSLR rigs are not for the faint of heart though and i don't recomend them for the ameature. You'll want a base minimum of 1/3" imager with xlr connections. Be ready to start around 4K and scale up fast. Any thing under 4k will take alot of skill to compensate for.

Invest in good lighting. Learn all you can about lighting for video. Video especially cheaper imagers can not handle dynamic range in lighting like your eye can. You'll find that CMOS censors are better with dynamic range than CCD sensors. Of course each technology comes with trade offs.

As for editing you will find that just about anything will do. Heck i use Premiere Elements more than i use any other program. I rather use Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas Pro but to each their own. If you got tons of money lying around you can alway invest in a Apple setup. I currently have a FCP setup but it see's far less usage than anything else.

If you are buying a new computer i would suggest a desktop with dual monitors. Editing on a laptop is to painfully slow for me. It's bad enough i have to wait for a 3GHz, 8 core computer with 8 gigs of ram. You reduce the processing speed, cores and ram more than that and it get's painful. Ofcourse if you don't move very fast on a computer then you can get away with less. I would not suggest less than 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram for HD editing.

On the thought of HD vs. SD. Which do you think will have more longevity?

crt

BTW welcome to CMN!

[tdangelo]

AKMinistries;

You did not speak much as to what you and leadership are really trying to accomplish. Can you expand on that a bit?

Thanks.

- Tom

[sempei13]

You probably want firewire as an option (if not your main way of capturing). That's why I bought the MacBook Pro over the MacBook or the MacBook Air.

There's a canon prosumer camera (whose name escapes me now) that sells for about $2000 that would do a great job.

If you're just doing shorter videos (not recording more than 12 minutes at a time), you can't beat the value of a T3i (or T2i if you don't need the flip out screen). That's what I use for my business. In fact, I shot a promo video for a small college on it a week ago today and love the look.