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Slashdot Asks: How To Best Record Remote Video Interviews?
You've probably noticed that Slashdot's been running some video lately. There are a lot of interesting people and projects in the world we'd like to present in video form, but some of them are too far away for the corporate overlords to sponsor travel to shoot footage in person. (Another reason my dream of parachuting to McMurdo Station will probably never manifest.) We've been playing around with several things on both the software and hardware side, but in truth, all of them have some flaws — whether it's flaky sound (my experience with the otherwise pleasing RecordMyDesktop on Linux), sometimes garbled picture (Skype, even on seemingly fast network connections), or video quality in general. (Google Hangouts hasn't looked as good as Skype, for instance. And of the webcams built into any of the laptops we've tried, only Apple's were much worth looking at. Logitech's HD webcams seem to be a decent bargain for their quality.) We've got a motley bunch of Linux, OS X, and Windows systems, and can only control what's on our side of the connection: interviewees may have anything from a low-end laptop with a built-in webcam to elaborate conferencing tools — which means the more universal the tools, the better. (There may not be any free, open source, high-quality, cross-platform video conferencing tools with built-in capture and a great UI, but the closer we can get, the better.) With all that in mind, what tools and workflow would you suggest for capturing internet conversations (with video and sound), and why? Approaches that minimize annoyance to the person on the other end of the connection (like the annoyance of signing up for an obscure conferencing system) are especially valuable. We'd like to hear both sides, so please chime in if you've had especially good or bad experiences with capturing remote video like this.
Whatever you end up doing I would appreciate it if you could include a transcript of the conversation if the video isn't particularly important. I usually end up reading these stories on break or when it is particularly slow, so transcripts make an otherwise worthless video entry useful to me.
I am curious why video is necessary for these interviews.
Maybe because text is so much more efficient to create, transmit, store, analyze, consume, etc.?
Best I've seen so far has been Apple's iChat. It lets you record video chats natively and without hassle, with both parties having to agree.
Works with AIM, Jabber/Google Talk, and (in the Messages beta) iMessage.
Obviously the main flaw is that it doesn't work if the person on the other end doesn't have a Mac. If they do, though, I don't see any reason not to use it. There are even scripts you can use to set it to automatically ask to record each call when it starts.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I've played around a lot with this stuff for more than a decade. Skype can be okay if the remote system is powerful, well configured, has excellent broadband, a good external webcam and good lighting. However, those necessary things will only rarely all be present, particularly internationally. If you want high quality and a high degree of future-proofness for the video assets you are going to so much effort to create, there is a counter-intuitive alternative.
There are truly amazing small consumer camcorders now available for $500-$700 that work great in low light, capture excellent 1080p, auto focus on faces, auto iris, auto WB, etc quite well. I shoot with high-end pro gear and these little consumer cams deliver an unbelievable picture for the price. Ship one of these to your remote location with a small AV clamp that will mount it to the top of the monitor next to the webcam. Do your live interview via Skype through the webcam but have your remote location turn on the HD camcorder after the Skype session begins. The camera will beep when it starts recording and you can use this beep to later sync the Skype recording with the HD camera recording. After the interview, the remote location can plug the camera in as a USB device and Dropbox the recorded file over to you in non-real-time (AVCHD peaks at ~24mbps but is often much smaller). Or if it's not as time sensitive, you can get the file off the SD card when the camera comes back.
This also gives you the advantage of providing a handheld camera to your remote location. Even rank novices can shoot 'B-Roll' type footage of remarkable quality. The handheld image stabilization on these cams is impressive. If you give your remote amateur "crew" a simple shot list and ask them to first watch a ten minute YouTube tutorial on basic camera handling and shot composition, the results can even rival semi-pros. This way you'll have something to intercut with the talking heads to further elevate your production value.
Yes, this implies that you are actually editing your final product. Basic editing will again double your production value over raw webcam recordings. It doesn't have to take too much extra time, particularly if your remote camcorder has it's time-of-day clock set roughly right. Your handy intern can be making a shot list of good/bad clips and restarts on your end during the interview and reference this via TOD + clip offset time during subsequent editing. This saves a lot of hunting around inside the clips. With practice you should be able to do a basic edit with canned intro/outro, standard title overlays, B-roll cutaways and some still graphics (logos, product shots) in about 3X the total running time of your output. Note: that's just active work time, not unmanned background clip downloading or final output encoding, which you can batch up and leave running unattended.
Finally, as we say in TV land, audio is more than half the picture. Sending a basic wired clip-on microphone will do wonders for your production value by reducing machine noise and ambient room echo. If your remote location is in North America you can send them the Radio Shack part number for a decent clip-on mic that they can pick up themselves for $25. Regardless, if sound/video from your end is going to be seen then you should use at least use high quality mic and camera on your end.