How do you guys record your own videos?

[Centaur]

How do you guys record your own videos for tutorials and stuff?  Webcam?  Digital camera with good video capture?

I'm thinking of purchasing a webcam, but I don't like the idea that it would be tethered to my computer (it's a desktop). 

[hgordon]

If you own a Mac, just get a digital video camera with Firewire, and the process for transferring from camera to computer is extremely simple.  From there, you can do some basic editing and then upload the file to YouTube. 

If you don't have a Mac, you have my sympathy - the process then is anything but simple.  You can probably patch something together on a PC by adding a Firewire interface.  None of my Linux boxes have Firewire, so I don't know what the challenges there would be.

[ScorpIon]

Eh, it is extremely simple on Windows too. Just hook the camera up to the PC with USB and transfer the files to your harddrive. Well, that's what I've always done.

[airman00]

What I do is use a webcam and just record it using the software on the PC.

Then I just use Movie Maker to fix it up, add stuff, etc.

[hgordon]

Eh, it is extremely simple on Windows too. Just hook the camera up to the PC with USB and transfer the files to your harddrive. Well, that's what I've always done.

That's true if you have a still camera with video capability.  But is that also true for a true video camcorder ?  My video camera only has Firewire, optical and analog outputs.

[ScorpIon]

I need a special cable that connects to the little port on the camera that can be plugged in on the PC through USB. My video camera records to DVD-RW, so there it's easier.

[Admin]

I use a Sony digital camera . . . got a 4GB card for it too. Takes just a few minutes to download all 4GB by USB2.

Make sure that whatever you get has low light capabilities - you will be filming your robots inside a lot. Most webcams suck for low light, so be careful before you buy.

[hgordon]

Glad to hear that the newer video cameras with USB2.0 have good PC support.  I have an older Sony digital video camera with excellent picture quality, but it only supports Firewire, so capturing to a PC is a nightmare.

[Admin]

Yea my old Sony had a 2:1 transfer speed . . . an hour of video took ~30 min to transfer . . . my new cam would take like 3 min to transfer . . .

My last two dell laptops came with firewire, so if I needed it, it wouldn't have had a problem.

[TrickyNekro]

A old good 1Mpixel camera from Creative... It's fine with me!!!
I use the Movie Maker, but there are many programs out there... Have a look!!!

[ed1380]

i use my digicam in movie mode. even my camera from like 01 had video mode, but no sound.
and i use WMM

[Centaur]

I'm leaning towards a good digital camera that has video capture.  It works out well since I have no camera's at all (except for my cell phone).  I'm guessing the camera would be more expensive but also better video quality and more mobile than a webcam since I have a desktop, and better still pictures for documentation.

I was considering the webcam because I'm moving and it would make my gf happy.  I'll probably end up with both anyways.  I actually already have some video equipment like a video capture card (hgordon, you can use one of these to get video from analog outputs to your pc - dazzle dvc 80 ~$50) that I used back in my videogaming days to make montages.  Now I use it to turn VHS into DVD's. 

Something else I could consider as a factor, can you do image processing with webcams?  Like could I build a platform to track my face while I'm using a webcam?  Has anyone ever mounted a webcam (or digital camera i guess) to a robot and used it with image processing?  Or would that be rediculous since you would have to have the usb hookups and webcam software and stuff on your microcontroller.

[airman00]

PC based webcam processing - http://roborealm.com
Microcontroller based webcam processing - I haven't seen direct USB webcam to MC processing but I have seen wireless USB webcam which sends info to PC which does processing and then sends processed data back to robot's MC.