Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

[gathompson56]

My father just mentioned to me that he has started recording videos of his personal on his XP computer. I want to continue this process but using my iPad/Mac.

I do not have any experience with iMovie. Is it a suitable app / software for such a task?

[ttl]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

iMovie is a nice application for taking video clips and joining them, trimming them, adding transitions between them, adding titles and credits and to some extent other text, and adding background music, and then exporting your results as a contiguous video file.

[gathompson56]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

Thanks Tim.

Since my first post I have watched a few videos about iMovie on YouTube. It looks like good software for all of those editing tasks.

What I should have really asked was:

"How do you record your video interviews."
- using the camera on your iPad
- using the camera on you Mac
- using a video camera

[ttl]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

I have a high quality video camera but find that I get very good and very convenient results with my iPhone. The camera on the older iPads wasn't great, but the newer ones also yield good results. I tend to stay away from the computer camera because of the constraints in aiming and the limitation of the built in microphone, but you may find it works for you.

Whatever you use, I suggest you set up your camera on a steady support so you can focus your attention on the interview instead of holding the camera (and get a steady picture in the bargain). I use a small Gorillapod tripod for my iPhone.

Also, triple check that your camera is recording before you start the interview. It's extremely frustrating to get to the end of an informative discussion only to learn that the recording didn't actually start when you thought you hit the record button.

I'd also caution that a person shouldn't let lack of perfection get in the way of obtaining a video... the worst of recordings is infinitely better than no recording at all.

[ttl]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

Also, for what it's worth, I wouldn't use iMovie for real time capture of the video... I just import previously recorded clips afterwards.

[gathompson56]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

Thanks Tim:

How large are video files of ~20 minute duration?

Yes, when I tried filming in iMovie it actually kicked me to the Apple camera app. Have you tried any alternate video apps?

[ttl]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

I hesitate to estimate file sizes because it can depend so much on format and compression setting, but I'd expect in most cases you'd be up in the hundreds of MB (I could be wrong on this). I'd recommend you take a five minute video and check out the size and you can calculate a rough MB/minute figure for your setup.

One of the things I use iMovie for is to do the video compression... it does a decent job of making things smaller when I do the Save/Share/Export.

I sometimes use an app called VideoCamera on my iPhone because it allows me to choose the capture resolution for the video. The default Apple Camera app records video at full 1080p HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), which is much higher than I need for an interview, and results in enormous file sizes. VideoCamera lets me capture at 720p or 480p which really reduces storage requirements. It's a little cumbersome to transfer videos from the VideoCamera library to my Photos library, but not difficult.

[gathompson56]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

Tim:

Thanks for your input. I have some testing to do over the next few days.

Grant

[Derrick]

Re: Video Interviews - Seeking Advice

Thanks Tim.

Since my first post I have watched a few videos about iMovie on YouTube. It looks like good software for all of those editing tasks.

What I should have really asked was:

"How do you record your video interviews."
- using the camera on your iPad
- using the camera on you Mac
- using a video camera

All you really need is Quicktime, which comes free with Mac. I know that it says "Player," but it can take movies and capture screencasts. Open it up, go to "File," and choose "New Movie Recording," and it'll start using your built in camera. It's the easiest way to capture video. Then, edit it later in iMovie if you want. This probably would be less mobile than a smartphone, though.