From zero to cat video
May 18, 2020 6:12 AM   Subscribe

Asking for a friend: how do I get started making home made cat videos? I have zero knowledge about equipment, procedure, and technique.

My friend in her own words:

My cat is getting on in years and I want to make some high quality recordings of him playing / purring / generally being entertaining so I have them for posterity and maybe also to share with friends and family. I'd also like to use this as an avenue to learn about video capture / editing.

Could you give me some beginner resources or recommendations on
1) equipment - I'm assuming I'll need a camcorder (?), how high quality does it have to be for me to capture sound (i.e purring) with high fidelity? any other equipment? I'm envisioning running the video capture for many hours to capture an abundance of my cat in a natural state. Open to spending some some money (say in the $100-200 range, but let me know if this is totally unreasonable)
2) software - I think I need video editing software, I see from previous questions there are recommendations for good free ones (but would love additional / more recent recommendations. Do I need anything else? I basically want to take footage I capture and then pick out the good bits and splice them together in a reasonable way.
3) guides / tutorials - this is the most important since I have literally zero experience. What youtube / online classes / books / websites / forums would you recommend to a person starting out but interested in doing this more extensively in the future? Paid resources are ok if you think they are worth the price.

TIA!
posted by dragonfruit to Grab Bag (1 answer total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: My main suggestion is that regardless of what camera/camcorder your friend gets (and built in cameras to smartphones can be quite good!), they should get an external microphone, because in most cases, the sound quality will not be great with the built-in mic. I've used lavalier microphones with an mp3 recorder and my laptop to do sound recording and it's been miles better.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:08 AM on May 18, 2020


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