Electronic Music 411 - Cheap but excellent vid-audio recorder?

10/06/08 + molasar

My brother kindly gave me a Fujifilm a920 digital camera to record my performances close up (just to do the usual demo vid for local promoters/Utube, etc).
Sadly though it has no external mic input (shame as its picture recording is really nice for the money).
I am basically trying to find the cheapest digital camera/video cam with a stereo mic input, to record sessions.
I have scoured the net and only can find ones way over my budget of Ł200.

Any tips ?

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10/06/08 + jp

i never bother with recording video and audio with the same device. i use a cheap hdd-cam and a good flash-recorder.

Recent blogs: Yma Sumac, speakingObject, institute for transacoustic research live video

edited: Oct 06 2008 + spaceagesnd

get an mp3 player that can record, then edit together the video and the audio on ur computer.. should just be a matter of getting the start point right, yes?

*edit*

what jp said.

edited: Oct 06 2008 + molasar

Yeah but I just cant be bothered syncing up the sound later and utilising time is paramount (work a shit real corporate job too) thanks so far though guys.

Recent blogs: martyn ware - new project

10/06/08 + spaceagesnd

dont forget. . .money == time

a cheap solution that takes 10 minutes is better than working 10 hours to pay for a solution that takes 5 minutes

10/06/08 + molasar

I will not sync up later, get it?

Thanks again

Recent blogs: martyn ware - new project

10/06/08 + jp

just find a sync point like a handclap or other spike. it is easy to sync audio to video especially if you record audio with the camera too. you just have to match the two audio signals in a video editing program. it doesn't have to be too precise as the time-resolution for the video is just 1/25 seconds. don't forget to disable the sound from the camera after matching the two tracks. i do that all the time.

Recent blogs: Yma Sumac, speakingObject, institute for transacoustic research live video

10/06/08 + fakeBlooper

unless you use some kind of time-code, you'll get drift. even though the action clap lines up, later you'll notice they don't synch up. makes no sense but i guess it's slight differences in codecs for audio/video.

...or maybe it's the key to time travel.

i think the canons are the only cheaper ones to offer a line-in mic. i've been eyeing this flash camcorderr for a while link

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10/06/08 + molasar

Wow. Thanks for the link fakeBlooper.
That baby is really worth the money. Does not have a recording level control onboard but that I can live without as the stereo in will do me nicely.
After a bit of diggging on this and similair models I see that truncating the bits of guff off the start and ends of a live recording is not supported in Windows Movie maker as it is the new AVCHD format. It comes bundled with Pixela ImageMixer 3 but I am hearing horror stories about Windows Vista and Pixela having problems, particularly with re-importing it back in and especially with RAM below 4gb. I wanted to just use my 2 gb Acer lappie for the trimming/uploading.
I still really fancy the FS100 though. Do you have any other tips about good software for it (I read a bunch of good stuff about Nero 8 and AVCHD...what do you think?).

Recent blogs: martyn ware - new project

10/06/08 + dkarma

sync matters? that's a laugh...it's just going on youtube anyway right?
none of their videos (or most streaming videos for that matter) sync correctly anyway.
just approximate it...your groupies won't know the difference.

in all seriousness though, cannon's are nice gear.

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10/06/08 + fakeBlooper

if ur serious about video get vegas PRO 8 @ b&h photo. link

this is the FULL oem version (minus dvd architecht) for way way way less than retail. they're the only one who sell this and its legit with sony. i love vegas pro - it used to be an audio app so you have full use of vsts and the timeline is very daw-like. you might even start using it as an audio sequencer like me ;)

"super" is an open-source conversion app for windows that'll let you make junky movie files play nicer with most editing apps.

Recent blogs: ableton microtonal oscillator utility, awesome, mobo alert sequencer

10/06/08 + jp

i think digital drift is negligible. i never noticed it with my vids. i guess it's rather a problem of using the wrong samplerate and then playing it back with 48khz.

Recent blogs: Yma Sumac, speakingObject, institute for transacoustic research live video

10/07/08 + jogn

drift on a zoom h4/h2 is really noticeable. It's not a sample rate issue either. You can even use them as a soundcard.

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10/07/08 + fakeBlooper

true. something screwy goes on during the a/d d/a conversion on cheap gear. i bounced individual tracks off a zoom pocket recording into the built-in line-in on a buddy's macbook pro into tracktion... 1 track at a time (actually 2 tracks... mono recordings hard left/right). the beginning of the set sounded spot on and about 5 minutes in things started getting out of wack. it actually resulted in some funky offtimeness swing that inspired me to remix to that timing.

Recent blogs: ableton microtonal oscillator utility, awesome, mobo alert sequencer