An Ask Anandtech question: In the tradition of ask Slashdot. . .

[episodic]

I'm an instructor that wants to beef things up for my students. I already have a website for them to get information from - but I want to go a step farther and record a series of video seminars of me teaching the material - in case they are absent, are not catching on, or whatever.

Where I live, many ppl still use dial up - although broadband saturation is I would guess 50%.


I don't have a camcorder of any kind. I want to record my lecture and convert it to a web friendly format.

OR

Should I just convert to DVD and charge a buck a disk for my time?



What would I need camcorder wise? I NEED cheap. . .preferably one that I can download via USB2 to the computer directly as a file. . .

 

[Viper GTS]

First, Firewire is the standard for DV. Firewire cards are $20, don't bother selecting a camera solely for USB support.

Second, $1 a disc almost certainly won't cover media, shipping, packaging, etc. let alone your time. $5 a disc would be quite reasonable. Perhaps more.

As for actual camera/audio advice I know nothing.

I'll shut up now.

Viper GTS

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
First, Firewire is the standard for DV. Firewire cards are $20, don't bother selecting a camera solely for USB support.

Second, $1 a disc almost certainly won't cover media, shipping, packaging, etc. let alone your time. $5 a disc would be quite reasonable. Perhaps more.

As for actual camera/audio advice I know nothing.

I'll shut up now.

Viper GTS

They are students - and they are from very poor areas. I spend about .40 cents a disk - as long as I got that back plus some pencil money - i'd be content.

 

[GoingUp]

If they have a home computer, what you could do is embed the video in a flash file, and then burn that flash file to disk. That way it would always play and you could just burn the stuff on regular CD. Plus CDs are cheap.

 

[Caesar]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
First, Firewire is the standard for DV. Firewire cards are $20, don't bother selecting a camera solely for USB support.

Second, $1 a disc almost certainly won't cover media, shipping, packaging, etc. let alone your time. $5 a disc would be quite reasonable. Perhaps more.

As for actual camera/audio advice I know nothing.

I'll shut up now.

Viper GTS

They are students - and they are from very poor areas. I spend about .40 cents a disk - as long as I got that back plus some pencil money - i'd be content.

Don't have answers for your questions but here is :thumbsup: for the kind of teacher you are.

 

[RandomFool]

Web friendly videos on dialup is like postage stamp size and doesn't look very good. I'd go with a cd, they're pretty cheap and the quality would be tons better.

Camera's aren't my thing so i don't know.

-Ryan

 

[Riceball]

You can always encode your lessons to divx and burn them to cdrs, that should help your students on a budget.

 

[CyraKrin]

also, you could spend a little time, and a little money, pick up an all in wonder ATI card, get a cheap analog camcorder, record it, use the ATI card to bring it across, convert to mpeg (try doom9's site for guides on how to convert videos to VCD format) most DVD players will play it, and it'll use 80min CDs.. a cheap alternative; with a semi-expensive startup cost.

 

[olds]

I am betting that you're not an English instructor.

 

[bleuiko]

May I recommend starting with just uploading powerpoints to the website and see how it works? It will be the most cost efficient and you can get feedbacks from the students to see if they actually want online material. If they are in poor areas, I highly doubt they would want video feeds or DVDs...