mettelus

joeb1cannoli
 
With little time to learn how to use it and to small of a memory card (Best Buy employee recommendation), I ended up with a bit dark and a bit grainy video.

+1 on the experimenting (and have fun with the learning). Test takes are as important as with doing audio to check picture quality and performance. Lighting may be the main issue with "dark" but when you mentioned "grainy" it may also be affected some by resolution (lower quality). When you mentioned "memory card," I wanted to throw out that high quality video consumes massive amounts of memory quickly (1GB or so per minute +/-) ... definitely puts audio consumption to shame. The best recording method for highest quality is to stream the video/audio from the camera to a computer (and possibly a separate computer from the one capturing audio, depending on performance). Streaming not to process, but simply write to disk.
 
The memory card is useful for "on the fly" portable scenarios, but if you can stream to disk, it will allow you to capture the highest possible quality and then "dither it down" as you do post-production (chop it up into songs, adjust resolution, etc.)
 
When testing, try maxing out resolution in a good lighting situation (brightest lights behind the camera focused on the subject), and note the memory consumption. Can be short-and-sweet (like 15 seconds) and then look at that in Movie Studio. Note the memory usage and use that as a thumb rule for planning your setup going forward.
 
Note: For audio, the camera mic is often captured, but the "real audio" comes from a second source (good mic), which is where the "obvious hand claps" are useful for aligning the mic audio to the video audio (then deleting the video audio track).

patm300e

Brian Walton
Many DSLRs have a ~10min record time limitation which is brutal for shooting a live band.  

My relatively cheap (~250$ US) Bridge Camera Panasonic Lumix FZ200 does not have that limit, it is limited by the size of the SD card.  It IS HD, but not 4K.
 
I agree that they are less forgiving than a dedicated camera, but I have gotten fairly good results with it. 
+1 on experimentation  If possible try to get there early and set up some tests with different lighting.  Fluorescents can cause issues if that is the lighting!
 

joeb1cannoli

mettelus

joeb1cannoli
 
With little time to learn how to use it and to small of a memory card (Best Buy employee recommendation), I ended up with a bit dark and a bit grainy video.

+1 on the experimenting (and have fun with the learning). Test takes are as important as with doing audio to check picture quality and performance. Lighting may be the main issue with "dark" but when you mentioned "grainy" it may also be affected some by resolution (lower quality). When you mentioned "memory card," I wanted to throw out that high quality video consumes massive amounts of memory quickly (1GB or so per minute +/-) ... definitely puts audio consumption to shame. The best recording method for highest quality is to stream the video/audio from the camera to a computer (and possibly a separate computer from the one capturing audio, depending on performance). Streaming not to process, but simply write to disk.
 
The memory card is useful for "on the fly" portable scenarios, but if you can stream to disk, it will allow you to capture the highest possible quality and then "dither it down" as you do post-production (chop it up into songs, adjust resolution, etc.)
 
When testing, try maxing out resolution in a good lighting situation (brightest lights behind the camera focused on the subject), and note the memory consumption. Can be short-and-sweet (like 15 seconds) and then look at that in Movie Studio. Note the memory usage and use that as a thumb rule for planning your setup going forward.
 
Note: For audio, the camera mic is often captured, but the "real audio" comes from a second source (good mic), which is where the "obvious hand claps" are useful for aligning the mic audio to the video audio (then deleting the video audio track).

Thanks
What do i need to stream video to a PC, a USB video capture device?
 

joeb1cannoli

mettelus

joeb1cannoli
 
With little time to learn how to use it and to small of a memory card (Best Buy employee recommendation), I ended up with a bit dark and a bit grainy video.

+1 on the experimenting (and have fun with the learning). Test takes are as important as with doing audio to check picture quality and performance. Lighting may be the main issue with "dark" but when you mentioned "grainy" it may also be affected some by resolution (lower quality). When you mentioned "memory card," I wanted to throw out that high quality video consumes massive amounts of memory quickly (1GB or so per minute +/-) ... definitely puts audio consumption to shame. The best recording method for highest quality is to stream the video/audio from the camera to a computer (and possibly a separate computer from the one capturing audio, depending on performance). Streaming not to process, but simply write to disk.
 
The memory card is useful for "on the fly" portable scenarios, but if you can stream to disk, it will allow you to capture the highest possible quality and then "dither it down" as you do post-production (chop it up into songs, adjust resolution, etc.)
 
When testing, try maxing out resolution in a good lighting situation (brightest lights behind the camera focused on the subject), and note the memory consumption. Can be short-and-sweet (like 15 seconds) and then look at that in Movie Studio. Note the memory usage and use that as a thumb rule for planning your setup going forward.
 
Note: For audio, the camera mic is often captured, but the "real audio" comes from a second source (good mic), which is where the "obvious hand claps" are useful for aligning the mic audio to the video audio (then deleting the video audio track).

Thanks
What do i need to stream video to a PC, a USB video capture device?
 

Brian Walton
The Panasonic Lumix FZ200 isn't actually a DSLR though.