Advice for newbie recording a live concert

[jm9843]

Hello all,

I'm considering picking up (at the last minute) an HV20 to record a famed band next week. Although technically inclined, I have pretty much zero camcorder experience and am looking for tips. It will be indoors at a relatively small club (1200 capacity), approx. 3 hours long, and will feature rock show type lighting (strobes, etc). I'd like to record in 1080i with audio not being a high priority. While I'd like to hear any audio-based recommendations; I may not have time to act on them before the show.

- Am I barking up the wrong tree with the HV20? If so, any other camcorder recommendations?
- How many and of what type extra batteries will I need?
- Are there any miniDV tapes that reliably record over 60 minutes? Ideally none of the songs will get cut.
- 24 fps mode in this environment?
- Should I look into zoom lenses or will the built-in optical zoom suffice?
- Anything else I'm forgetting?

I hope that I'm not getting in over my head with this but I'd really like to document the performance. Btw, the band has an open taping policy so being stealthy isn't an issue. Thanks for reading!

- j.

P.S. 10 points if you can guess the band. :hv20-smilie09:

[Erik Bien]

Three hours is a LOOOOONG time to hand-hold a camcorder: I'd really want a tripod, a monopod, or one of the various (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=details&kw=OMPB&is=REG&Q=&O=productlist&sku=485054) beanbag thingies (http://www.thepod.ca/store/).

There's no avoiding a tape change, but if you have your tapes already unwrapped you should be able to change them pretty quickly: about 40 minutes into each tape, I'd be ready to swap cassettes as soon as they finish a song, you'll just miss some of the thunderous applause, tuning up, telling jokes, etc.

In a small venue a wide-angle adapter might be nice; I wouldn't think you'd need a tele-extender. You will probably be hard-up for light, but I seriously doubt the band and/or club will let you add any. This is where 24fps is your friend. Read up on the "controlling exposure" stickies on the forum, and equip your HV20 with an SD card, so you can tell what it's doing in terms of aperture and shutter speed. Try not to let the camera add too much gain.

Hopefully others will be able to address the HV20's battery life when shooting continuously, but I'm pretty sure a single battery of the type Canon includes with the camera won't cut it; some of the larger-capacity models might.

As has been said here many times before, the HV20's mic is pretty pitiful even by palmcorder standards; imagine curling up in front of your 42-inch HD screen and watching beautiful high-definition footage of the band rocking the house down, but the audio track sounds as if someone was holding their cell phone up to the tape deck in their car flying down the highway with the windows down. Yuck.

A self-powered stereo mic with an eighth-inch ouput like the Rode Stereo VideoMic (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/450170-REG/Rode_SVM_Stereo_VideoMic_Camera.html) is probably the easiest way to improve the situation. If your plan is to marry your footage with someone else's audio after the fact, don't underestimate the time and effort it will take to ingest it, get it in synch and dub it back to tape or DVD for your viewing enjoyment.

-- e