Hi, I'm brand new to the list. Located in Brisbane, Australia. For the past few years I've been a podcaster and I produce a few podcasts on various topics. I also have recorded a few public gatherings for web sharing....
While I used to deploy slideshows and digital presentations in my blogs as well as sharing a selected range of videos grabbed from all over, it was only very recently I switched to video mode in my out and about. While I'm waiting for my mini dv camera to come back from the shop, my main tool has been an Olympus FE-270 digital camera. I stuck a bit of windsock to the inbuilt mic to suppress wind turbulence and started shooting. The irony is that despite all the drawbacks I rather appreciate the ease of this little digital camera as I could plug in into any usb port to upload the files.(I half think I should have got one of those digital camera hybrids like the Canon Powershot!) So I'm still interested in video shot on digital cameras. I'm also interested in sound recording options using minidisc recorders. I see where there has been some exchanges on that matter here. Already , out and about, I'm starting to run my Minidisc recorder at the same time as I shoot video so that I get a separate audio AND a visual record of the event(which I can podcast two --either/both -- ways)*. But I'm hoping to use the MD as a unit between my microphones and the mini dv camera when I get the thing back from repairs. But there's one thing that strikes me vis a vis video podcasting/blogging and audio podcasting/blogging: editing video is so much easier to do (and do well) than editing audio because there's these easy to follow visual markers. I find it a bit amazing actually: video editing is a breeze compared to all the reviewing you have to do with audio tracts alone. Video is another language of course and you need less in the way of orchestrated inputs to 'set the scene' or advance the narrative. Now I thought that audio podcasting covered a lot of options in way of themes -- from the personal monologue, to interviews, to whatever really. I'm not too keen on the audio podcasts that package the views of one person talking as so often they don't have much of value to say unless it is carefully pitched to explore a set topic. But video -- vlogging -- is strangely intimate, and so much more engaging than one voice over the web. It's a very different type of communication -- different again from what you are exposed to on television. (And if you want to get into this topic, what stimulated me the most was the work of Iranian film director, Abbas Kiarostami, whose "10" changed my perception of video completely). It is a very personal medium and I find it much easier to relax in front of a video camera than I can with a microphone stuck under my nose recording just audio. I also never thought that video would take off on the web the way it has. The side effect of that, it seems to me, is that there is still a lot of respect paid to being succinct and to the point -- if only to keep file size down. The other difference is that video lasts longer -- has a longer shelf life -- on the web -- than audio. This is partly due to the fact that video is easier to locate, but it is also a medium than is not treated as something esoteric, maybe even archaic, as audio seems to often be. While I may respect audio and radio especially as a medium it doesn't mean that everyone is going to want to listen as I do to 'x' number of podcasts each and every week. So I'm in the process of moving from podcasting & blogging -- text plus audio -- to a setup where I utilize more vlogging ad I reckon there is magical wisdom in the multimedia mix. dave riley *I run the audio recoding all the time and select what I want to shoot.
