When teenagers are uploading clips to YouTube that look nearly as polished as those that appear on your local television news Web site, you have to ask just how sophisticated your equipment needs to be to produce quality video for your own site.
There’s no denying that high-definition equipment has raised the bar for image quality, but amateur video sites have largely conditioned the online video audience to forgive a less-than-perfect picture so long as the content is compelling.
Owing to constant technological innovations, most cameras boast enough features and specifications to fill the entire front page of a typical newspaper. This report will focus only on those features that will directly impact the video needs of a typical newspaper.
With that in mind, here’s what your newspaper should have in its arsenal to bring the sights and sounds of your neighborhood to life online.
Crafting Your Online Video Strategy
In this age of newsroom cutbacks and shrinking profit margins, funds to invest in video equipment are likely to be clipped, double underlined and highlighted by your accounting department. That’s because newspapers do not need top-of-the-line television broadcast-quality video cameras, lights and microphones to bring captivating video to the Web.
However, before you can purchase anything, there must be an online video strategy. The best way to do this is to gather editors and bean counters together to provides answers to the following key questions:
Who do you expect to record this video?
Are you planning to hand out cameras to print and/or online reporters so they can record some quick Q&As with local politicians or police during their normal fact-gathering activities, or will one or two dedicated “videographers” be doing the honors? Some newspapers do both.
How are you going to monetize your video?
If you’re expecting readers to sit through a 30-second commercial before watching your video, it better be a pretty compelling segment that’s worth waiting for. However, if you expect feature and spot-news videos to boost overall Web traffic, you can get away with less polished, “opportunistic” segments captured by reporters of such events as fires, traffic accidents and short slice-of-life pieces.
What is your video budget?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready to purchase the real nuts-and-bolts: equipment.
The Camera
However high the dollar amounts might seem, video equipment costs have plummeted tremendously in the last two or three years. (See box below.) Although television broadcasting standards require sizeable investments to ensure professional-grade results, the compression technologies used to stream video online combined with the small sizes at which most people view the finished product make the Internet video format pretty forgiving.
While you can still pick up older analog cameras such as those that record video on tapes similar to those used to watch movies on VCRs, you should concentrate your search instead on digital cameras because of the ease and speed with which you can edit and upload video electronically.
It’s difficult to say how long any one model will last. Frequently they are dropped, jarred, lost or stolen. One gauge for overall camera reliability is the Annual Product Reliability Survey of digital camcorders by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The most recent asked 30,060 readers of Consumer Reports magazine if they had experienced a serious problem with or sought repairs for their camcorders purchased between 2003 and 2006. The survey found Sony and Panasonic models to have experienced the least problems; Canon, Samsung and JVC models, the most.
High-Definition (HD) Cameras
High-definition, or HD, the most expensive camera variety, employs several technologies to capture and display greater details in the footage, making for sharper video. This spring, 38.8 percent of newspapers that responded to NAA’s survey on online video said their newspaper staff shoots and produces HD video.
Newspaper sites such as washingtonpost.com equip dedicated videographers on their staff with HD cameras for putting together longer feature packages for stories where the picture is of primary importance. For example, about six months ago a Post reporter went to Florida to write a story about spring break marketing, says Chet Rhodes, assistant managing editor for news video. The Web site sent a videographer along with the reporter, “so we had this great documentary on this crazy marketing on the beach,” he says. “This took it up to a whole other level.”
Washingtonpost.com has seven Sony HDR-CX7 high-definition cameras, which can be found for about $900. (Note: prices in this section are averages found online at press time.) However, what Rhodes really wants is a model that includes a headphone jack so that reporters can gauge the quality of audio they’re recording.
Freep.com, the Web site of the Detroit Free Press, has about 10 video cameras, all of them HD, says Kathy Kieliszewski, deputy director of photo and video. These include a Sony HVR-A1U ($2,200) that’s outfitted with a shotgun mike, works well in low-light situations, and even boasts a night-vision mode, she says. It stores video to MiniDV tapes. The company also owns a Canon XH-A1 ($3,000), another MiniDV unit with similar specifications.
Both cameras use a format called HDV, which is employed by many lower-cost HD cameras. It is of particular interest to cost-conscious users because it uses MPEG-2 compression technology to pack high-definition video onto the same inexpensive (about $10) MiniDV cassette tapes that are used to store standard-definition video. The downside is that HDV video is slightly of a lower quality than that captured by higher-end HD cameras that store video on memory cards.
The Free Press’ real powerhouse is the Panasonic AG-HVX200 ($4,500), which records video in the DVC-PRO HD format and stores it on Panasonic’s P2 electronic storage cards. Because this format doesn’t use extensive compression, its video quality is sharper and truer in color than that recorded by HDV-format cameras. Unfortunately, each P2 card holds only about 20 minutes of video. Free Press videographers are issued with two cards, guaranteeing about an hour’s worth of total footage, Kieliszewski says. Each card costs about $1,200, compared to $10 MiniDV tapes. Videographers also tote around external hard drives on which to “dump” video to free up room on the cards for additional footage. Yet, if you’re covering a trial or council meeting, you don’t want to be forced to transfer video while the event is going on, she points out, potentially missing that an all important shot.
Like the Free Press, the Naples (Fla.) Daily News’ Web site staff has three Panasonic AG-HVX200s. The output is of such a high-quality, frame grabs have been used as still photos for both online and print editions – the latter running as large as five columns, says Jonathan Utz, managing editor for digital. However, if videographers are shooting in HD with the intention of using frame grabs for newspaper or Web site stills, proper lighting quickly becomes a necessity, Utz says. “You probably won’t be able to get much quality in a lot of high school gymnasium.”
At RecordOnline.com, the Web site of The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., Multimedia Editor John Pertel uses a MiniDV-based Panasonic DVX100B ($3,000). Pertel, who worked as a video journalist for ABC-TV affiliate WMTW in Portland, Maine, for 14 years, says the DVX100B produces video that, when compressed and displayed on a computer screen, nearly rivals the broadcast-quality equipment he used at the TV station.
Yet, “I could take a $500 camera and get as many good angles” at a football game or whatever else he’s filming, he says. “It won’t look as good overall, but I don’t think most people in front of their computers will notice the difference.” Someone sent footage of a local recycling plant fire to the site that was taken on a camera phone, for example, and the segment received 3,000 page views.
Standard-Definition Cameras
HD cameras are all the rage among techie types, but they are by no means a necessity for bringing video to your Web site.
As director of digital publishing for GateHouse Media, Howard Owens oversees video operations for 101 daily newspapers and more than 250 weeklies, including choosing the cameras and other equipment that many of them use. He also is a member of NAA's Digital Media Federation board of directors.
“I always say there’s a lot of crappy video on the Web, and I’m responsible for a lot of it,” Owens says.
What he really means is that his department is more concerned with getting low-end, standard resolution cameras in the hands of reporters, resulting in less polished video than professional videographers might bring back, but more video segments overall. “What works best is knowing what’s interesting to people,” he says.
Owens often sidesteps dedicated video cameras entirely, favoring smaller, less expensive, point-and-shoot digital still cameras that include a movie mode. Be warned, But be careful when purchasing still cameras for this, as some point-and-shoots boast a movie mode but lack a microphone of any kind, he says.
The model GateHouse Media favors is the Casio EXILIM ($200), which includes a built-in microphone and stores images and video on a memory card. Although its movie recording time is capped at 10 minutes, reporters in the field really don’t need to be bringing back much more, Owens says. It all comes down to simple arithmetic. Four minutes of video usually requires 30 minutes of editing. “You’re just not going to produce video to justify hours of editing time,” he says. “What drives page views is the quality of the content.”
One of the most attractive aspects of point-and-shoot cameras is their small size, he adds. “The bigger the camera, the less likely [reporters are] going to use it. You don’t want to get in the way of a reporter doing what a reporter needs to do.” When videographers are shooting with professional-quality models, they often perch them atop tripods, setup lavaliere (or lapel) mics, and test their settings, he says. Reporters often haven’t the time to engage in such activities.
Washingtonpost.com also is investing in four inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras, the memory-card based Canon POWERSHOT A570iS ($160), and moving away from the site’s stable of older Panasonic PV-GS35s, Rhodes says. The fact that the Panasonics were tape-based made getting footage back to editors “logistically tough” [see the “Things to Remember” box]. While the Canon’s memory card storage solves this problem, it lacks support for an external microphone. “For video of a fire it’s good enough, but for an interview with a councilman you’ve really got to get close” to pick up clear audio, he says.
RecordOnline.com reporters use four MiniDV-tape based Sony DCR-HC-46 ($350) camcorders, one at each of the newspaper’s bureaus. The sports department uses a (Panasonic PV-GS500 MiniDV camcorder ($800), which has an input for an external mic. This can be a lifesaver as the internal mic “can be a real problem if it’s at all windy or loud” at the scene, Pertel says.
He also has requested two Sanyo XACTI E1 ($400) still/video cameras for the site’s photographers.
The main selling point of this unit is that it’s compact enough to slide easily into a coat pocket. The camera’s small footprint was of particular interest to Pertel because photographers are already hauling around two camera bodies, he says. To give them another bulky camera to lug around “is a little unfair.”
Hard-Drive Cameras
There is a third option: cameras that record video on a tiny internal hard drive (ranging from about 60 GB to 120 GB in capacity) similar to the one in your personal computer. These models can quickly transfer video to a computer via FireWire connections. Videographers will not have to bring along spare video tapes or memory cards, though some models can accept external memory cards when hard-drive space runs out. Some popular high-definition models, such as the Sony HDR-SR12 and the Panasonic HDC-HS9, cost $1,000 or more.
For those not using extra memory cards, this all-in-one design imposes limitations on any operation that shares its video equipment among several news gatherers. Since video is stored on an internal drive, the entire camera must be returned to the newsroom long enough to transfer the data, whereas MiniDV tapes and flash-memory cards can be ejected and ferried back to the office, leaving the videographer free to continue shooting at the scene. Downloading video to a DVD-burning laptop in the field is a good workaround if budgets allow, but the camera operator must still wait for all of the camera’s video to be downloaded before room for more can be made. This can take several minutes and increases the chances of missing that all important shot.
While hard drives in general have made great strides in their reliability and overall longevity since their introduction many years ago, they still fail. If you encounter a bad MiniDV tape or memory card, you can quickly swap it out for a spare and avoid missing a key shot. If the hard drive in your video camera goes bad, back to the store it must go, and odds are that you will not recover the video footage quickly if at all.
PART 1 | CONTINUE: PART 2 - Peripherals