An overview of video equipment and meeting your video needs.
Equipment - introduction
If you have a specific video in mind to use in your course and can’t find one that already exists on the Internet, making your own video may be the best option. Let’s start with what types of cameras are available and what their options are and that may help to answer what type of equipment will meet your goals.
The webcam
The webcam is the very basic model of video recording technology, a webcam can cost from $15 to $90. And the camera for the most part will stay attached to your computer, even though there are some webcams that can be taken with you. Most webcams today are in the $15 to $20 range and are using a very low resolution for viewing the video and a fixed viewing screen of 320 x 240 pixels, which is a minimal screen size on average. The options are extremely limited if any, for the low level webcam to change the resolution or size of the video output. The upside is that it is very easy to use and produce small video files for the purpose of getting information out to the students in a timely fashion.
The high end webcam has the same ability as the low end webcam but, the webcam has options for a better quality screen resolution and some options for the size of the viewing screen. One webcam had a screen size range up to 960 x 720 pixels (for most of us that would fill our entire screen), had face tracking options and was able to take still shots and the webcam could be taken from the computer area as a hand held video camera. The downside of this is you have more editing features to learn and the file sizes will increase in size as the quality of the production grows.
The handheld video recorder
The next option is the handheld video recorder and they run $100 and up. The first video camera to consider is in the $100 - $150 range. There are several video cameras on the market that are available in this price range and will serve as a segue from the webcam to the full blown handheld video recorder. The FlipVideo style is a small handheld recorder that is the size of an Iphone or Treo style phone. The FlipStyle video recorder is very limited in the options it has but, is more flexible than the webcam. The FlipVideo stlye is made to travel and can easily upload your video to your computer with no addition cables or software. The FlipVideo style has a usb connection built into the camera. Unlike the webcam, the FlipVideo has a hard drive in the camera so you can record many videos and save them until you are ready to upload wherever to a computer. The software is loaded on the video cameras hard drive so you won’t have to install the application on every computer you use.
Again a great portable recording device that can produce videos on the fly without having to carry extras cables or editing software to upload, and the ability to view your videos for a reasonable price that won’t break the bank.The next handheld video recorder you may want to consider for the more polished production is a video recorder that has more memory built in and can produce a better quality video. There are plenty of competitors vying for your dollars but, a little information allows you to eliminate most the cameras in this field. Since most of us are on a budget of some sort, it is best to have a price range in mind to help initially pare the range of possible models. Then decide on the types of projects you will be doing and visualize the end product so that your camera can meet the needs but, also that you don’t spend money on options that you will never use.
