Paul Houle wrote:
Sound is the most important variable to control;
people
will 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 flash
memory; 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.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se