Paul Houle wrote:
Sound is the most important variable to control; peoplewill tolerate bad video if the sound is good, but will tune out if they can't hear what's being said.
I agree. This was my first reaction to the Wikimania presentations. But when you have an external microphone, perhaps more than one, you also get the problem that you might have connected the wrong one, or forgot to switch it on. How do you make sure the mike is on, before 3 minutes of the presentation have already been lost? Soundcheck, testing, testing.
Don't screw around with low-end cameras based on flashmemory; the best bet you'll get on the cheap end is a camera that uses miniDV tapes; tmost miniDV cameras have firewire ports that you can use to read the video into a computer for editing. You can certainly get something OK for under $1000, but there are some panasonic cameras around $3000 that are quite a bit better, particularly if you're shooting under low light conditions.
This is easy to say, but doesn't play well with the massive collaboration of Wikipedia. We want hundreds of volunteers to take photos of flowers and buildings, and they can do this with very cheap digital cameras. For birds, folk dances and vehicles we should encourage video. But if it requires an investment of $3000, it will not become a mass movement. This is the equation we have to solve.