Need some GoPro answers

Moondoggy51 wrote:

II was looking at the Canon Vixia HF R800 Full HD camera as a possible solution as it's in a price range that I can afford. If anyone has any feedback on the suitability of this camera instead of a GoPro let me know.

I was going to suggest the R800 as I was reading through the other posts.  I used two to make outdoor YouTube videos for 6 years.  It is priced right and has several advantages.  Battery life is very good, and it has an external audio input jack.  It also uses SD cards and has a good HDMI out jack (that you won't need for now).  It also has some manual controls.

You can try it without an external audio input but I would spend your budget on a Zoom H1n placed on the podium near the preacher's stationary mic.  You can start the recording of both the video and audio at the same time and leave them running through the service if needed.  Both will easily record an hour service without running out of battery or card space.

Someone will need to match up the audio with the video in post and cut out the non-sermon portions of the service, generate the synced and edited file, and upload it to YouTube, might take 30 minutes, then charge the batteries and check space on the cards and get ready for next week's service.

You could try a long extension cord from the recorder output to the camera audio input and see how that works but I always just use the camera audio for reference and the audio recorder for the audio track.

It should be easy to test your setup and adjust early Sunday morning or during the week.  After that, it will be easy and quick and you can show someone else how to start/stop the camera and recorder if you need a backup operator some time.

Hope this helps,

Joe