A good, cheap camcorder to record my bass covers?

[FBS1996]

I'm saving up to buy a new camera for my bass covers on youtube. I need one that will pick up the sound of the bass well, but has a good quality picture. At the moment, I just use my iPhone, which picks up the sound quite well, but the video is bad, and sometimes goes out of sync with the audio:

YouTube - ‪Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales of San Francisco Bass Cover‬‏

[waleross]

When it comes to camcorders good is not cheap and cheap is not good. You can get a decent unit made for music vid by Zoom for under $400. Its the Q3 and its similar to the audio zoomHD4n. Q3 Handy Video Recorder

[hover]

Find a refurb flip camera...they blow them out all the time on Woot. I use the Sony "Webbie" HD. Super good video quality too up to 1080i. 95 bucks.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Webbie-MH...ata/B001QWKI8K

[Kwesi]

Ok, as an aspiring Youtube bassist myself the absolute most important thing in a Youtube video is AUDIO QUALITY. Even if you're not serious about it and just doing it for fun don't put up vids that sounds like crap because who wants to listen to that? No one. You can get away with 'meh' video but the audio should be first and foremost in a video. That said there are VERY few video recorders that have mics that are any good. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is the Zoom Q3 that Waleross pointed out. I seriously wouldn't look anywhere else if you want an all-in-one solution.

That said, the best solution, from a quality standpoint, would be to record the video and audio separately. Video through any decent camcorder and the audio through a decent audio recorder or straight into your computer (which is what I do). It'll turn out much better and actually could end up being cheaper than the Q3. You can pick up a Kodak Zi8 (1080p @30fps) camcorder for around $100 and a Zoom H2 for around $100 as well. Listen to the song through headphones and then combine the actual mp3 and your recorded bass track with Audacity (or some software).

I guess that may sound like overkilll but if you're putting you're stuff on Youtube you obviously want people to see you, right? If not you could just leave them on your computer. So, with that in mind, put out the best quality product you can. Those few hundred dollars can mean the difference between someones saying you suck or saying that you're really good.

[Skitch it!]

I'd go with Kwesi and say the Kodak Zi8, the advantage being it has an external mic socket, that's a bonus for positioning if you want to do the whole thing in one. I bought a cheap Zi6 just as an introduction to youtubing bit's and pieces, quality is 'O.K' but it's easy to overdrive and compress it's internal mic and a bit of a pain to arrange speakers around it. I'd start syncing but I just like the idea of putting it all down at the same time, plus I'm not exactly a computer literate guy, I've only owned one for the last 7 years I think, I avoided it for the longest time

[Absentia]

First Gen flip video, cheap and the sound quality is amazing, first gen skiny one though the fatty second gen ones suck.

[markbmbass]

Originally Posted by Kwesi

Ok, as an aspiring Youtube bassist myself the absolute most important thing in a Youtube video is AUDIO QUALITY. Even if you're not serious about it and just doing it for fun don't put up vids that sounds like crap because who wants to listen to that? No one. You can get away with 'meh' video but the audio should be first and foremost in a video. That said there are VERY few video recorders that have mics that are any good. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is the Zoom Q3 that Waleross pointed out. I seriously wouldn't look anywhere else if you want an all-in-one solution.

That said, the best solution, from a quality standpoint, would be to record the video and audio separately. Video through any decent camcorder and the audio through a decent audio recorder or straight into your computer (which is what I do). It'll turn out much better and actually could end up being cheaper than the Q3. You can pick up a Kodak Zi8 (1080p @30fps) camcorder for around $100 and a Zoom H2 for around $100 as well. Listen to the song through headphones and then combine the actual mp3 and your recorded bass track with Audacity (or some software).

I guess that may sound like overkilll but if you're putting you're stuff on Youtube you obviously want people to see you, right? If not you could just leave them on your computer. So, with that in mind, put out the best quality product you can. Those few hundred dollars can mean the difference between someones saying you suck or saying that you're really good.

Hi Kwesi, couple of questions for you, if you don't mind answering them:

I have figured out how to record bass along with an imported mp3 in audacity. One thing that I noticed is that when I do record (using a zoom b3 via USB and headphones), the bass parts that I am playing seem a bit out of sync when I do the post-recording playback. I know I could be a bit off timing-wise when I play/record, but it seems like too much.

My next question is, after recording the bass along with the mp3, how do I match it up with video? Is there some other equipment that I need, or can I use any video camera, or i pad, then import the video to some kind of video editor?

I really want to start making bass covers for youtube, but I want to do it the right way, like you have explained your post.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

You should be able to simply import both the audio and video into an editor and line them up.

+1 on using a seperate audio source.

Never done much in the way of video, but a lot of digital cameras have fairly good video function to them these days.

[OneCuteManBand]

As already mentioned, the way to go is recording audio and video separately. That's what I do. I use Audacity for sound editing and mixing and Kdenlive for video editing. Here's a bit of what I can do with these tools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wny1fgoYvhg

If you've got any questions about how I've done something in the audio/video, please ask!

[Jim Nazium]

OK, I have a question along these lines. I have a Zoom Q3 HD, and I do my Youtube vids 'live'. That is, I plug my bass into an audio interface, use Band in a Box or something for backing tracks, and run the headphone output from the interface into the line-in jack on the Q3. The quality of both audio and video is good, but the only thing I don't like is that I can't change the relative levels of the tracks, or apply EQ or compression to my bass, once it is done. It would be great to record all the audio in a DAW and shoot the video on the Q3. Here's the question: if I do that, how do I sync the video and audio?

[droo46]

The way that I've been doing it is recording video with a camcorder while doing the audio in GarageBand. I dump both into iMovie and sync the two. It's a little more work than just recording with the camera but I think the results are worth it.

Here's my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/alcatraz...e?feature=mhee

[DwaynieAD]

a decent digital camera will do the job.