Camera & Hardware Options

There are numerous ways of shoot your web video. If you've a video camera you can easily transfer footage to your PC with a suitable connection or capture device.

You may own a webcams which allow you capture video footage. Alternatively if you have a digital camera it may come with a video capture mode which can be handy for shooting short sequences.

We'll look at these 3 in turn.

Option 1 - Use a video camera

Video cameras obviously are dedicated to shooting video films and make getting great results easy.

However as well as shooting video to keep on tape, transferring your footage to PC file can be done relatively easy

Here's a brief soundless example shot on the our JVC camcorder and subsequently prepared for the web

Franz Josef glacier film wmv (89k)

Cameras can vary hugely in cost, tape format & features (such as optical zoom, night vision etc.). We don't really have the time or expertise to give you advice on what you need however here are some pointers

Essentially most domestic video cameras can be bracketed into analogue or digital cameras.

Analogue cameras use older technology and record pictures in a non-digital format (i.e. analogue - think of music cassette v CD). The quality is supposedly less than their digital cousins & tapes copy less well but quality may well be more than adequate for most users. Digital camera footage is usually easier to transfer to your PC. However analogue cameras are considerably cheaper (£300GBP would by you an analogue camera from a most leading manufacturers like this canon model). (image courtesy of canon UK)

You will need an analogue video capture device to change the analogue signal into a digital one in order to load movies into your computer. A range of PC peripherals ranging from dedicated PCI/graphic card to USB devices exist. You can easily pick up a USB converter with video editing software for around £50 GBP (3)

Digital video cameras are becoming more prevalent with prices under £500 not uncommon like our JVC GRDVX507

Most digital cameras now have a Digital Video (DV) out or DV in & out socket.

This allows you to connect the camera to your PC via a highspeed firewire (IEEE 1394) connection. Many modern PC have these connections fitted as standard and if not firewire cards can be bought for as little as £20-30GBP (often with free video editing software). There is no need to convert the image into digital signal but software will be required to edit and store pictures on your PC

Some older more basic cameras do not have DV connection and will need to be connected via analogue inputs as above. Some use slower USB connection.

The major problem in creating web video is the size of files. One hour of raw DV footage will occupy a whopping 10+Gb of your hard drive. These cameras are shooting to fill a TV screen at a high fps (frames per second rate), not some 120 x 90 pixel sized space at 10 fps. Most software will help you convert raw video files into much smaller web video files.

Option 2- Use A web Cam

Many of you will already own a webcam. You can pick up a basic USB webcam for around £20-30GBP

These feature a cheap basic version of the CCD (Charge Coupling Device) photo sensors found in digital cameras and digital camcorders and are intended for use for video conferences etc. on the net.

However they can record the images they see as short low resolution videos clips via the software bundled with camera straight into one or more common video file format. Here are some we shot

mouse.avi 67 Kb (better quality)
mouse.wma 9Kb
mouse2.mov 1.4Kb

Often very little editing is needed as webcams are comparatively low resolution e.g. 240 X 120 and provided software may cause compression allowing you to make small web clips

However these cameras are usually tethered by their USB cable and will take low quality footage

The more expensive the webcam usually either equals better image quality, built in mic, software etc.. The latter is important as for example our cam only allows us to save .avi files (although we use other software to reduce size and/or change them into .mov etc. files)

Option 3 - Digital Cameras

In recent years digital cameras have become more and more popular. As well as taking still many Digital cameras like this Canon IXUS V2 have a movie capture facility.

(Image courtesy of canon UK)

They usually shot short (10-30 secs) video files. Usually they film at a resolution below still shots (e.g. our Olympus C120 camera takes video footage at 320x240 pixels not its usual 1600 x1200 (~2megapixels).

Inspite of this files can be large 4 Mb for a 15 sec film. Software with the camera may help tweak the size down for the web or you may need addition software.

Here is just a 5 second burst shot on a Olympus C120. The original 4Mb quick time file was tweaked to reduce size

in quick time (.mov) format (196Kb)
in windows media format (.wmv) (42Kb)

Digital cameras are portable. Sharpness and image quality is often good. Some models can record sound and newer cameras with large storage media can now shoot short DV quality videos . Obviously the more you spend the better facilities for video you get (sound, length of clip, resolution, choice of file formats) but even some basic cameras in the sub £40 GBP bracket have movie modes

A digital camera may be a useful solution if you want lots of stills and only the odd brief lo-res video for your site