getting started on a budget for instructional video?

[PaulStoffregen]

I could really use some advise about what equipment to buy, and maybe some insights about how I might best go about putting it to good use... Hopefully this is an appropriate forum to ask?

My goal is to make instructional videos regarding electronics and electrical engineering. Most will likely be viewed via YouTube, probably in the small embedded format. Many will feature a lot of macro shots of electronic stuff, showing how to connect wires, measure voltages, and so on. Quite a bit of material will also be screencasts and diagrams. A few might have an interview format, but in the vast majority the only person appearing will be me. Even then, I'll probably only appear briefly to introduce the topic and most footage will be tech stuff with voiceover.

A crew, or even one other person to help, is a luxury I'll probably never have. I need to be able to operate everything (with my limited knowledge of videography) and act/speak too. I suppose that means any mic on a boom is completely out of the question?!

So far, I have a cheap flip camera (actually a Kodac knock-off), a solid tripod, and a couple 90 watt CFL lights on stands with umbrellas (cheap ebay ones), and a mac with iMovie.

Clear, pleasant, easy-to-understand audio is a big concern. So far, my mac's built-in mic (voiceover recording in iMovie) and the flip cam leave a lot to be desired. I've looked at a lot of different lav mics, ranging from cheap to $600. But so far I really don't have any good feeling for if I really need a spendy one? But one thing is for sure... electronics can be a pretty damn dry topic even if you're interested, and the poor sound quality quickly turns "dry" into "painful". I'm really hoping to invest in good audio, even if it's not cheap.

My little flip cam actually shoots ok images. But it has at least 2 huge problems. #1: it's can't focus close up. It has a macro mode that focuses within about 6 inches, but otherwise it has to be a bout 4 feet away to focus, and often I need to be closer, but not 6 inch macro close. #2: the screen is on the back side, so if I sit in front of the camera (remember, I have zero crew to help), I have no idea how the picture is framed. It has an A/V output, but when I tried connecting a screen, it's only active for playback but not recording.

Another minor but annoying problem is Kodak seems to hate Apple, so I have to copy the files manually and convert with Mpeg Streamclip before iMovie can import them. Whatever camera replace it will hopefully play nice with iMovie?

Maybe I need other stuff too? I've read that a lot of consumer camcorders have noisy preamps, if they have a mic jack at all. Will I need an external sound recorder? From what I've read, I'm probably limited to a lav mic, since nobody will be there to hold a boom pole? Or are there other options?

Editing is probably by biggest concern. I can understand iMovie, though I've already hit a few limitations, like the crop doesn't let you select less than 50%. That's great for keeping a home video tying to "zoom" too much, but when I do screencasts, I can't just capture the whole screen and then show a small portion when demonstrating how to use some software feature. I borrowed a machine with Final Cut Express 4 and bought a book, and while I went through several chapters, it all was far too cumbersome for my pretty simple needs. But maybe the new Final Cut Pro X will work better? I saw some screenshots and videos and it sure looks a lot like iMovie, only $300 more.

So, this rambling question really comes down to what I should buy? I've got a budget of about $1500 max, though it'd sure be nice to spend less. On the other hand, I really do want to achieve pretty good results, especially with excellent audio, well focused close-up video where you can really see small features, and editing to keep the final product short (unlike this question) and hopefully ease to watch and understand.

Any advise about what I ought to buy or how to apply it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-Paul

 

[Anim8]

It sounds like you dont need more than a handy cam... Look at the Canon Vixia series. I have a HF200 that served me well for a couple of years for small things like this. You'll want a line/mic in on the camera to use an external microphone. I assume most shots will be of the project on the bench correct? You can get away with using a mic stand in place of your "crew".

Good luck.

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Thanks for the input. Since writing this post, I've read and researched quite a bit more, including about a dozen pages of history in this forum. In hindsight, I really should have done that beforehand. "What to buy" seems to have been asked and answered here over and over!!

"Rent, don't buy" (and hire a skilled boom operator) seems to be the common answer theme. That makes complete sense for shooting a feature length or short movie with a cast of actors over the course of a limited number of days or weeks. My project will be ongoing, and sadly not nearly such a focused effort. I spend most of my time running a tiny business (product development, sales, shipping, customer service, tech support, etc...) selling the electronic parts and materials which these videos will demonstrate. I'm hoping to get about two 4-5 hour sessions a week to work on these video tutorials, but it's very much a part time and long-term ongoing effort. Owning the gear, having it on-hand and ready-to-go (when I can squeeze in some time to work on this rather than day-to-day business operation), and building skills using the same gear every time seems like a good plan.

My main question so far is which of mic to buy? Many pages back in this forum, I found a link to this excellent article.

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/lavs_brockett.html

In this article, the author suggests:

I suggest that if you want a fair evaluation of the clips, you need to obtain playback these samples on a decent quality, somewhat accurate playback system. If you do not have access to a decent quality playback system, listen to the samples on decent headphones. The signal will not be accurate but you will at least be able to hear the differences between the mics, the low frequency differences and the room tone and air tone, ambient sound differences. I tested these samples on my laptop speakers and on some cheap computer speakers and trust me, all of the mics sound the almost the same on lousy speakers.

I listened with Sony MDR-V6 headphones. I'm not sure if those quality as "decent", but they're the best I've got. I definitely could hear differences between the many clips, but I can't describe what exactly is different. They all sound excellent to me. Maybe that shows how little I really know?

Virtually all of my audience will be listening with PC speakers or consumer headphones, so maybe even the cheapest of these mics (Sony ECM-44B & Audio-Technica AT899) will be far more than I need? Audio-Technica also has a AT803 which seems similar (but $140 vs $200), but in a larger size like the Sony ECM-44B.

Or maybe a lav is a bad idea? You mentioned putting the mic on a stand.... would that be a cardioid condensor type? All my shoots will be indoors in a small, fairly quiet room. I really don't know much about these mics, and searching is turning up huge volumes of information. A lot of the info seems to be copy-n-paste of specs and marketing info, sometimes even photos that don't match the specified connector type.

How to get the audio from the mic to camera is yet another question? I saw Alcove recommended this impedance matching transformer a couple times in old messages. All these lavs can run from a AA battery, so they don't need phantom power.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/589872-REG/Pearstone_8111240_LMT100_Low_to.html

I also found quite a bit of info about JuicedLink products, including reviews of the Audio-Technica AT803.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4oz6W5sAyE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDt4BELS0ZU

Do the more expensive JuicedLink products make any difference? Some seem to have a headphone out for monitoring. Or maybe I should record the mic with a Tascam DR-100 or Zoom H4n, or maybe even one of the cheaper ones without XLR using the transformer? So many choices!!!

I'm imagining before recording I'll do a trial run, listening to myself through headphones (Sony MDR-V6) via the camera to check the levels and noise. Obviously I can't monitor during the actual shoot, since I have no crew.

My quality goal is "good enough for consumer headphones or better-than-average PC speakers via YouTube" but subtle differences that can only be heard via high end headphones or theater sound systems don't matter. My budget is "financed by sales of cheap electronic parts", so a few hundred dollars is easy, a few thousand is pretty hard to justify. But I'm looking for a quality result (as good as quality gets via YouTube anyway), and if that means spending a bit more, I certainly can and will.

Thanks for bearing with me on yet another "what to buy" topic. I really am lost in a sea of mic details. On a personal level, making these instructional videos goes far beyond just a simple sales tool. Helping people learn electronics has been a passion of mine for many years, and I'm really excited about the possibilities of video demonstrations (to quickly introduce concepts) together with regular html (for the real details).

I now realize this is somewhat off-topic, not being an actual movie or film, but I could really use some good advice.

 

[SiCurious]

I'm no expert on mics and things, but I'd hate to see your post slip by the wayside since you've actually put in a lot of detail about what you want (something that rarely happens around these parts!) Perhaps this bump will draw the attention of someone more knowledgeable.

It sounds like you want a mic to record mainly voice-overs and maybe occasionally whilst appearing in shot? Since it's always going to on YouTube, you probably don't need to spend a ton of cash on prosumer mics and recorders like the DR-100, which is not really designed for what you'll be using it for. I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe a USB mic would be better for your needs, the sort of thing people use to record podcasts? I've heard of people using the Samson Meteor and C01U in this capacity with okay results. But maybe wait for someone with more experience to reply before you go out and buy!

If you want pro-sounding audio, you'll probably have to break your budget, considering you'll need a recorder of some kind or a decent sound interface into your computer (plus accessories: stand, shock mount, pop filter, not to mention a nice soundproof room). If you want just-about-prosumer gear, you'll end up spending maybe half your budget, and to make YouTube videos it just seems such a waste. If it were me, I'd just get something cheap, but better than camera onboards, cardioid condenser, USB, straight into the laptop. Shock mount, mic stand, pop filter. Hang some duvets on the wall.

Just my 2 cents, but probably someone with more studio/VO knowledge will come along and send me to the back of the class (again)

Good luck

 

[Alcove Audio]

I'll keep it as simple as possible.

You don't mention which camera, so I have no clue as to its audio capabilities, so I will assume that it has no audio connectivity.

You should use a lav and an external recorder. I would recommend the Audio Technica Pro-88 wireless system for you lav, around $150 at B&H. Since you are doing instructional work it doesn't matter if the lav is seen, so on your shirt at about the third button below the collar button is just fine. (You may also want to consider a headset mic.) When shooting make sure that you keep the receiver as close to the transmitter (which is on your belt) as possible. You can use the Alesis PalmTrack or the Tascam DR-05 recorder, about $100. Use the shortest minipin cable possible (12" or less) to connect the receiver to the recorder.

You will have to play around for a while to find optimal levels, and your control function with both units are minimal, so be patient. There may be other problems if you are working around equipment that generate electronic fields.

(Note to filmmakers - I don't recommend the above set-up for narrative work, which is much more demanding than instructional or "corporate" work.)

If you want to do VO rather than on-set explanations you can get a USB mic like the Blue Snowball, around $100. Or you can get just about any budget LDC (Large Diaphragm Condenser) mic like the Audio-Technica AT2020 (about $80) and a USB adapter like the Blue Icicle (about $40). You'll also need a small desk mic stand and a cable.


Good luck.

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Thanks for all the input. It really helps!

After some soul-searching, I decided to stick with only voice over for now.... at least until I've built up some experience. I want to do much more, but learning gradually seems like a better plan. Likewise, I'm trying to resist the urge to buy a better camera until I've made at least a few more attempts with my cheap flip cam (actually a Kodak ZI8).

After a LOT of searching, and listening to many videos people made, I ordered a Shure PG42-USB. I almost got the USB version of the AT2020 before I discovered the Shure one. It was more than I wanted to spend, but still reasonable. I also got a small desktop stand and a pop filter.

I was swayed to the PG42-USB mostly because it has an preamp gain knob and also little LED level indicator that blinks different colors depending on the level relative to the internal A/D, with red when it clips. None of the others had that. I guess you're supposed to monitor the level on the computer?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[GuerrillaAngel]

BTW, the cheap mike and adapter plug in for older iMacs (then available at Apples Stores) sound embarrassingly good for the price. Of course you'd have to import the track into your editing software.

I'd recommend Final Cut Express - around $299. You can do a heck of a lot of stuff to make your low budget project look top shelf.

Scan documents and or images and import them if your camera isn't up to the job.

Good luck.

 

[SiCurious]

Sounds good, man. You should be able to monitor levels with your recording/editing software... like GuerrillaAngel says, FCE is a great investment. Not too hardcore, not too expensive but a million times better than iMovie (you'll run into iMovie's limitations pretty quickly).

Please let us know how you get on, or hang around and chat. Spending hundreds of dollars feels better when you've got a hundred people telling you you've made a good choice!

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Will definitely follow up to you know how it goes. I ordered from Amazon, since they were a little cheaper and had everything with free shipping. Free shipping is slow, which is fine, but it'll probably be a week or so until I actually get it.

Here is my first attempt, which sounds pretty horrible. This isn't actually part of the instructional series I want to make, but more a quick test to document a little project I did recently. I'm a little embarrassed to post this link, as the sound is so very bad, but here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROEIlym6Dw

I did the editing in iMovie. I'm starting to get more familiar with iMovie, though I spent easily 12+ hours fiddling with the clips, graphics, audio and such. Much of that was just learning iMovie, reading the included docs quite a bit. For comparison, I spent about 7 hours total (including the first attempt that destroyed 2 transistors) building the entire project from start to finish. Hopefully I'll get faster at editing?!?

Looking at the new Final Cut Pro X on Apple's website, it's the same $300 price. Would that be a better choice for me? The screenshots and video demos look a lot like iMovie I've been using.

So far, the one really significant limit I hit in iMovie is the crop tool limit. The minimum crop size is 50% of the original material. Maybe they do that so people won't try to "digital zoom" their home videos too much? In that video where I did the screenshot, I started with a shot of the whole window so you can see the entire program (which should look really familiar to people who's used the Arduino software). But there's no way anyone could read that bit of code I wanted to talk about, which actually controls the 2 transistors. iMovie wouldn't let me crop to just that bit. I had to crop the screenshop in Gimp and bring the cropped image in. Not a big deal, and I need to make separate images with those transparent purple box layers to highlight the parts I was talking about. Maybe there are easier ways which I just don't know?

Eventually I'm hoping to learn how to create animated illustrations, instead of just still stuff like those purple boxes. One use I have in mind is a video about using transistors to control solenoids. I'd like to make use of something like an animated line of dashes or maybe arrow-like symbols moving to illustrate the flow of current along a path in a schematic. Perhaps moving vertical lines (maybe changing in color) would illustrate the change in voltage. When turning a solenoid off, there's a chain of events from the user's code, to the voltage at the pin, to the current flowing into the transistor's base, to the current flowing through the transistor's collector-emitter path, and after the transistor is off, current flow remaining due to the energy stored in the magnetic field in the solenoid. How to properly dissipate that energy, and how different ways impact the actual speed of mechanical release in the solenoid is one of many really important electronics topic that not many people really understand.... and one that could really be illustrated well with animated graphics.

I'm guessing iMovie isn't going to do that stuff? Maybe I'll need to buy the "Motion 5" extra for Final Cut?

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Here's a quick followup.....

The Shure PG42-USB mic (and stand and pop filter screen) *finally* arrived a few days ago. I picked up a Panasonic HDC-TM90 camera in the meantime. I almost bought a Canon T3i camera, but after quite a bit of reading, it really seems like it takes a lot of attention to manual settings... in other words, much more camera than I am photographer! Even if I outgrow this little Panasonic camcorder, hopefully I'll learn a lot along the way.

I wrote a script and rough plan for the first tutorial, which will show up to use a NPN transistor to switch power to a DC motor, and spent much of last night trying to shoot it.

The mic is absolutely amazing. It has a headphone jack, which of course I used for monitoring with those nice Sony headphones. It's incredible how it picks up even the very slightest sound. There was a slight hum in the headphone output, and I spent quite a while trying to get rid of it... I turned off the AC, even shut off breakers to most of the house, and I tried to use it as far away from walls and flat sound-reflecting surfaces as I could. Ultimately, after listening to the recordings, it seems the hum might be a problem with the mic's headphone amp, because that hum is not getting recorded. When I play the recording back from my mac, it's amazingly clean, almost completely silent when I'm not talking. It did pick up, very faintly, an occasional car going by on a street a couple blocks away, but I could usually hear them as I was recording and I just waited and did another reading.

For software, I used Audacity and exported as a 16 bit wav file.

The camera seems to be working, but that little LCD screen is too tiny to really see if the focus has a wide depth of field... when I really wanted for a shot where I'm plugging the parts into a breadboard to show how to connect them. I fiddled with a lot of settings and got the lights only inches away from the breadboard for that shot, there would be enough light.

It's becoming very clear I didn't do as much planning as I should. The whole shooting process was really chaotic, but at least I didn't waste anyone else's time, only my own. I sprinkled my written script with notes about the shots I wanted, but when it came time to shoot each one, I wasn't really prepared for any of them. After a few hours, I think I got them all in. Next time I'm going to make a shot list and get all the items for each shot made in advance!

This morning I bought Final Cut Pro X. So I think my total so far is just over $1k. I started the video import and selected all the analysis options. My poor little mac is only a late 2008 laptop, I think 2.4 Ghz dual core with 8400M graphics. Apparently it takes several hours to do the transcoding and analysis for about 30 minutes of footage! It also takes a LOT of disk space, and my drive has lots of copies of various software projects (I mainly use the mac for software development....) I had to delete a bunch of stuff and restart.

Now I have a lot of FCPX learning to do. So far, it really is a lot like iMovie that I've been using, but with a lot of extra options. I've got a lot more learning to do....

 

[Wombat]

If you have a modicum of DIY skill, the Frugal Filmmaker is an excellent resource for low budget equipment. Obviously, most of what you can build yourself isn't going to be as good as the expensive, industry-used standards, but you just can't beat the cost.

 

[SiCurious]

Thanks for keeping us informed, it's really interesting reading about your experiences!

I don't know much about video editing, but good call upgrading from iMovie

If you wanted to upgrade from Audacity, I've been using a program called Reaper, which you can get free on a 30 day trial ($40 thereafter). It has functionality allowing you to edit your audio, synch it up to a rough cut of your video clip and then mix it down before exporting the audio and bringing it into FCPX. I'd definitely recommend it, there's some good beginner tutorials on YouTube.

Best of luck

 

[a.p]

Alright, I am by no means an expert on anything, but equipment isn't going to be the problem. Check out the book How To Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck by Steve Stockman. It gives you everything you need to shoot anything with any equipment, no matter if it's HD or SD. it's like $15 but it's worth every penny.

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Thanks for keeping us informed, it's really interesting reading about your experiences!

Since just barely starting, I took on a big non-video project. So this sat on the back burning for many months, and I'm still not getting much time for it. But I recently did at least this short little video.

http://youtu.be/BHQPqQ_5ulc?hd=1

I had actually planned another 10-15 scene near the end, showing proximity effect as my finger approaches the metal. The numbers start to show some discernible response from quite some distance. It was in my written script and recorded when I read the voice over. But when I shot the video, trying to do 2 takes for each demo, I forgot the proximity effect both times. I also made tons of little fumbling mistakes and screw-ups in the voice over. Fortunately I ended up with everything I needed, except that 1 scene, to edit into the final video.

One other thing I really wanted to do, but it's still far beyond my editing skills, is an animated graphic overlay. Near the beginning, where I'm talking about how the speed of voltage change, I really wanted to do some sort of animation to depict the charge/current flowing through the resistor and accumulating on the metal and the voltage changing gradually.

Gear-wise, I ended up with a Panasonic HDC-TM90 camcorder. I already had a Manfrotto "magic arm" from doing still photos, and a couple bright CFL lights. I recorded the voice over with a PG42-USB microphone and some Sony headphones, with the thermostat and power to my fridge turned off. That mic is amazing.

I bought FCPX for editing, and I really love it. I had tried to learn FCE4 a couple years ago, and it was terribly frustrating. I'm sure FCP7 is better for pros, but so far FCPX is great for my limited needs. It has so much more than iMovie. I still have a *LOT* to learn, but at least I'm able to get around pretty fluidly in FCPX and do a lot of pretty basic things.

I'm considering getting Motion 5, and Apple's book about using it. Hopefully that will let me do better overlay graphics, like some simple animations to depict current flows and voltage changes? Then again, I really need to make more time for actually doing this stuff. Hopefully after this big project is done, I'll have more time to do video.