Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How much would I need to spend for a 1080p video camera for YouTube videos?

Cromulent

Cromulent

macrumors 604
Original poster
Oct 2, 2006
6,821
1,103
The Land of Hope and Glory
It's been ages since I have even looked into video cameras so I'm totally lost as to what to get. I'd like to make a few YouTube videos and was thinking about buying a 1080p video camera to do all my recording.

Back in the day when I kinda knew a bit about video cameras the ones that used MiniDV tapes were meant to be better quality than AVCHD video cameras. Is that still the case? Or is there a better type of video camera available these days than AVCHD based ones?

I'm looking for the best value for money really so if an AVCHD video camera is the best bang for the buck then I guess I might as well get one. Has anyone else done YouTube videos and what do you use if you have?

Thanks for any help.
 
mini-dv has never been better than avchd, as avchd (meaning h.264) is the far superior codec. yes, there are better codecs out there, or at least codecs with a higher bitrate, but that's already in the realm of professionals. the cheapest way to get a better codec, afaik, would be to buy a blackmagic hyperdeck shutle for $300 (witout ssd) that records via hdmi or sdi in prores. or get a canon dslr and use magic lantern for higher bitrates.

but, having said that, as long as you are not color-grading your footage, you should be fine with avchd. even semi-professional cameras like canon's c100 uses that codec. or you could get a panasonic gh4, that offers higher bitrates and 4k for a relatively midest price. (or a used gh3 which still has a 72mbps codec)
 
I'm presently capturing MiniDV tapes to my iMac. I think I have an idea on where you going with this.
(I could be wrong though)
Simple answer : is use your iPhone ;^) Sorry.
But I suspect you're looking for a camcorder like an old MiniDV unit with zoom etc, but captures at 1080p to solid state storage, like a SD card.
Am I close?
 
What budget do you have?
What do you want to shoot? Indoors, outdoors, static or moving or fast moving scenes? Do you have light available if indoors?
 
Sounds like you want to do some fun stuff with YouTube and see where that might lead. There are lots of factors beyond codecs that contribute to video "quality," including audio. Mirrorless cameras seem to provide good bang for the buck, have good glass (removable or not) and are reasonably priced. Most of the newer ones don't have restrictions on recording length. But the audio in nearly all of the "dslr" style cameras is awful - something to consider. For the price, you really can't go wrong with a purpose-built device, ilke the Vixia series from Canon - a pretty good all-around compromise.
 
Right. Let me try and answer all the points and questions. Thanks for all the feedback by the way :).

Unami said:
mini-dv has never been better than avchd, as avchd (meaning h.264) is the far superior codec. yes, there are better codecs out there, or at least codecs with a higher bitrate, but that's already in the realm of professionals. the cheapest way to get a better codec, afaik, would be to buy a blackmagic hyperdeck shutle for $300 (witout ssd) that records via hdmi or sdi in prores. or get a canon dslr and use magic lantern for higher bitrates.

but, having said that, as long as you are not color-grading your footage, you should be fine with avchd. even semi-professional cameras like canon's c100 uses that codec. or you could get a panasonic gh4, that offers higher bitrates and 4k for a relatively midest price. (or a used gh3 which still has a 72mbps codec)
Click to expand...

OK. Sounds like AVCHD is the right way to go for me based on that.

Flynnstone said:
I'm presently capturing MiniDV tapes to my iMac. I think I have an idea on where you going with this.
(I could be wrong though)
Simple answer : is use your iPhone ;^) Sorry.
But I suspect you're looking for a camcorder like an old MiniDV unit with zoom etc, but captures at 1080p to solid state storage, like a SD card.
Am I close?
Click to expand...

Yeah pretty close. I realised just after I posted this that I'd also want a tripod as well since I want to do unboxings and what have you as well as doing product reviews so much of the content will be me standing still in front of the camera speaking.

Gwendolini said:
What budget do you have?
What do you want to shoot? Indoors, outdoors, static or moving or fast moving scenes? Do you have light available if indoors?
Click to expand...

Well I don't have all that much money available to be honest. I just want a "getting started kit". I haven't even launched my YouTube channel yet and haven't done and video recording since I did some at my sisters wedding.

All shooting will be done inside with the camera on tripod in a static position. No I don't have any lighting other than what is available in the room with the ceiling light.

As for budget I'd like to keep things at or around £500. I could probably go up to £650 if need really required me to but £500 would be the sweet spot.

kohlson said:
Sounds like you want to do some fun stuff with YouTube and see where that might lead. There are lots of factors beyond codecs that contribute to video "quality," including audio. Mirrorless cameras seem to provide good bang for the buck, have good glass (removable or not) and are reasonably priced. Most of the newer ones don't have restrictions on recording length. But the audio in nearly all of the "dslr" style cameras is awful - something to consider. For the price, you really can't go wrong with a purpose-built device, ilke the Vixia series from Canon - a pretty good all-around compromise.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Yeah the Canon Vixia series looks good. I also found the Canon LEGRIA HF G25 which looked but was at the upper end of my budget. 32GBs of memory does seem really low to me for recording 1080p video.
 
Cromulent said:
It's been ages since I have even looked into video cameras so I'm totally lost as to what to get. I'd like to make a few YouTube videos and was thinking about buying a 1080p video camera to do all my recording.

Back in the day when I kinda knew a bit about video cameras the ones that used MiniDV tapes were meant to be better quality than AVCHD video cameras. Is that still the case? Or is there a better type of video camera available these days than AVCHD based ones?

I'm looking for the best value for money really so if an AVCHD video camera is the best bang for the buck then I guess I might as well get one. Has anyone else done YouTube videos and what do you use if you have?

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...
I just purchased three of these for streaming:
http://shop.panasonic.com/cameras-and-camcorders/camcorders/HC-X920K.html

I'm capturing the signal with a Blackmagic Recorder and sending it through OBS to three ZenBookPro's 4k or my MBPr when I'm recording. I definitely recommend the camera, not so much the Blackmagic Recorder as it only does 720p60, it will do 1080p30 or 1080i60 ( although I cannot get the camera to spit out those last two, yet. Only have spent about one hour on it since this is for a project 4 months down the road ).
 
Jump on Amazon and do a search for cheap 1080p camcorder. There's lots of 'em for well below your budget... and many high ratings. There's also cameras and phones that can shoot 1080p too so check what you might already own and see if it might have a 1080p video mode. For example, your iPad 3 can shoot 1080p, so consider using it (there's even tripod mounts for iPads). And, since 1080p has been in play for many years now, refurbished and used could be a way to cut the price even more.

Now "best value" is not necessarily "cheapest price", so the other alternative is to jump on review sites and look for highly-rated 1080p-capable hardware and see what you can find. With that sized-budget, you can likely get a highly-rated camera. As for tripod, used tends to be as good as new so try pawn shops & flea markets if you want to save some money there.
 
good sound and light are probably more important to what you are doing than the "best" camera. i'd recommend to get least an external mic (lavalier) for this. if you've got an iphone 4s or newer, and you don't need a zoom lens (which you won't, when the camera is sitting static on a tripod) i'd start with that - or the ipad 3. for more manual controls buy an app like filmic pro. get a tripod mount like the glif and a fairly cheap tripod or gorillapod.

there's adapters for using ordinary external mics with the headphone-port of an ios device. you can get all of this probably for around £100-£150. if you realize then, that this won't be enough, you can always get a "proper" camcorder later. if it does suffice, you can spend the rest of your budget on a small light.
 
Unami said:
good sound and light are probably more important to what you are doing than the "best" camera. i'd recommend to get least an external mic (lavalier) for this. if you've got an iphone 4s or newer, and you don't need a zoom lens (which you won't, when the camera is sitting static on a tripod) i'd start with that - or the ipad 3. for more manual controls buy an app like filmic pro. get a tripod mount like the glif and a fairly cheap tripod or gorillapod.

there's adapters for using ordinary external mics with the headphone-port of an ios device. you can get all of this probably for around £100-£150. if you realize then, that this won't be enough, you can always get a "proper" camcorder later. if it does suffice, you can spend the rest of your budget on a small light.
Click to expand...

Cool. Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately I don't have any iOS devices. I have a Nexus 4 as my phone and a Nexus 10 as my tablet. Not sure how well that would work out. I'm definitely getting a new phone in the autumn so that might be worth waiting for. I'll have to see.

Yeah a mic does sound like a good idea. One of the things I hate the most about some YouTube videos is poor audio quality on the speech so I definitely don't want to fall into that trap.
 
Cromulent said:
32GBs of memory does seem really low to me for recording 1080p video.
Click to expand...

A couple of things on this. 32GB is plenty -- easily a couple of hours of 1080p recording. It's very unlikely you will need more than that - mostly because I presume no single episode will be that long. But if it is, just get a bigger SD card. They are relatively inexpensive. Also, consider recording at 1080 but publishing at 720p. Many laptops/phones can't get to 1080. While YouTube is ready for 4K (and this will be reinforced when you set up your channel) most viewers are not.
 
kohlson said:
A couple of things on this. 32GB is plenty -- easily a couple of hours of 1080p recording. It's very unlikely you will need more than that - mostly because I presume no single episode will be that long. But if it is, just get a bigger SD card. They are relatively inexpensive. Also, consider recording at 1080 but publishing at 720p. Many laptops/phones can't get to 1080. While YouTube is ready for 4K (and this will be reinforced when you set up your channel) most viewers are not.
Click to expand...

Yeah good points. I'll certainly consider publishing at 720p but I think my target audience will have pretty powerful computers on the whole so I doubt that would be much of a problem.
 
i don't know if the nexus supports an external mic while recording video. if you get a camera, make sure that it has a microphone port - something where you can control the audio levels as well would be nice, but for speech, auto levels usually works good enough.

i would not publish in 720p. youtube scales the video down anyway on slow connections or smaller devices. 4k doesn't make much sense either, unless you want the option to reframe/crop your image in an 1080p timeline when editing - that gives you more options but is also more work (and usually needs more storage space and a faster computer).

but you can upscale a 1080p video to 4k before uploading it on youtube. 4k videos get encoded in a higher bitrate than 1080p videos on youtube, so you get a better quality when viewed in "4k" - even if the original content was only 1080p. i hope that makes sense...
 
Unami said:
i don't know if the nexus supports an external mic while recording video. if you get a camera, make sure that it has a microphone port - something where you can control the audio levels as well would be nice, but for speech, auto levels usually works good enough.

i would not publish in 720p. youtube scales the video down anyway on slow connections or smaller devices. 4k doesn't make much sense either, unless you want the option to reframe/crop your image in an 1080p timeline when editing - that gives you more options but is also more work (and usually needs more storage space and a faster computer).

but you can upscale a 1080p video to 4k before uploading it on youtube. 4k videos get encoded in a higher bitrate than 1080p videos on youtube, so you get a better quality when viewed in "4k" - even if the original content was only 1080p. i hope that makes sense...
Click to expand...

Ah OK I'll look into upscaling video to 4k. The higher bit rate is important because this is primarily a music video based idea so I need the best quality audio I can get.

I don't actually use a Mac for all of this. I have a PC with Linux installed at the moment so I'm not entirely sure what the best software option for me would be. I guess for audio Audacity would be the best choice but for actually editing the video I'm still undecided. Of course I could get a second hand Mac and buy Final Cut Pro X which would offer everything I need. Or I could get some Windows software for video editing as I have that configured in dual boot.

Is Firewire still popular for video cameras? I think my computer has a Firewire 400 port on it. Otherwise its just USB 3 or USB 2 as the available options.
 
Cromulent said:
Is Firewire still popular for video cameras? I think my computer has a Firewire 400 port on it. Otherwise its just USB 3 or USB 2 as the available options.
Click to expand...
Firewire is old school, a USB 3 is MUCH faster. All of my stream kits use Thunderbolt connections for the highest capture rate.
 
Cromulent said:
I don't actually use a Mac for all of this. I have a PC with Linux installed at the moment so I'm not entirely sure what the best software option for me would be. I guess for audio Audacity would be the best choice but for actually editing the video I'm still undecided. Of course I could get a second hand Mac and buy Final Cut Pro X which would offer everything I need. Or I could get some Windows software for video editing as I have that configured in dual boot.
Click to expand...

Lightworks could be of interest for you: https://www.lwks.com
 
To be completely honest, I have a YouTube channel as well, and I have always used iPhones. It began with my iPhone 5S, and then iPhone 6 Plus.

The reason I chose the iPhone 6 Plus is because of it's stabilization features, as well as a microphone that is more than adequate for what I need it to do. Also, it has connectivity, which means I can perform a quick edit with iMovie and Garageband for iPhone, both of which are powerful tools if used effectively, and then upload straight to YouTube....without even touching a computer.

For what I do, the iPhone is definitely my number 1 choice :)
 
AppleRocks2011 said:
To be completely honest, I have a YouTube channel as well, and I have always used iPhones. It began with my iPhone 5S, and then iPhone 6 Plus.

The reason I chose the iPhone 6 Plus is because of it's stabilization features, as well as a microphone that is more than adequate for what I need it to do. Also, it has connectivity, which means I can perform a quick edit with iMovie and Garageband for iPhone, both of which are powerful tools if used effectively, and then upload straight to YouTube....without even touching a computer.

For what I do, the iPhone is definitely my number 1 choice :)
Click to expand...

I don't think my phone has anywhere near the quality of the iPhone 6 Plus when it comes to video. I have the Nexus 4 at the moment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back