When you attach an external microphone to your camcorder, you're going to have to change some settings on the camcorder to tell it to ignore its internal microphone and record from the external. You'll also have to set gain controls to make sure that

It generally only takes a video shoot or two before you realize that the weakest link on your camcorder is the microphone. Don't worry: It's not you, or really your camcorder for that matter, just the simple fact of life that all onboard microphon

I had my own opinions on the matter of which lighting technique to use for streaming. However, I wanted confirmation, so I contacted Roger Chang, who produces two shows for Ziff Davis Media — DL.TV with Patrick Norton and Robert Heron and Cr

As mentioned above, the interviews with local band No Speed Limit were primarily to create a DVD to send to festival promoters along with a couple of songs from a concert I shot on New Year's Eve. The group also wanted to upload the interviews to

After speaking with Chang, I was eager to try his idea of using one key light behind the camera because this would save transporting another light on portable shoots and would guarantee absolute even lighting across the face. Rather than using the

The dramatic shadows created by three-point lighting have been a staple of movies and television production since their inception, and three-point lighting remains highly touted in most tutorials, articles, and books on video lighting. However, a

Our tasks are arguably a bit out of sequence here, because when I apply compression I typically do it before normalization or other amplification. But for discussion purposes, it’s better placed here. To apply Soundbooth’s Advanced Co

Although AVCHD first appeared in consumer camcorders, a variation—AVC-Intra—will soon show up in broadcast cameras from Panasonic. Given that the MPEG-4 technology that fuels AVCHD is roughly twice as efficient as the MPEG-2 technology used in HDV, the new Sony-Panasonic standard will likely supplant HDV in the prosumer space. For this reason, it’s a standard you need to know about, …

Writing is a lot like video editing, in that you tend to fool yourself about how long a column, article, or wedding edit will take to complete. “I’ll do that in 20 hours,” you confidently claim to yourself, and then six weeks lat

So, little Suzie had her big recital, and you brought the new camcorder and tripod, enduring “Who does this guy think he is, Spielberg?” stares from other parents (and likely your spouse). Now it’s time for your big reward: You get to show the world the gorgeous new video of your future American Idol winner. You finish up the basic video …