I'm going to be taping older people in their living rooms for video
biographies for them. I've done so much research, but am still so
confused. Can someone please give me some guidance?

* Do I really need a 3ccd to get a professional enough quality for this
type of filming? I want it to look great (maybe even for a documentary
eventually), but want to do it as inexpensively as possible because I'm
just starting out.

* As for lighting in the living room and microphones, what do I really
need? The camera, other than zooming from mid-shot to closeup, will be
completely static and the person still.

* If I do some shots of him/her walking around showing items in the
home, do I need an additional type of microphone?

* I have Vegas 5.0 and Vegas Movie Studio. Are these good enough for
rendering professional final versions? The only effects I'm going to
need are some fades, titles, and music overlays.

* Hardware. This is most confusing of all. I have a P4 1.5 Ghz with 256
RAM, 64 NVIDIA Geforce2 MX400 GP and 40 G 7m Ultra ATA Hard drive. Is
it worth just buying additional components (e.g., RAID, DVD burner) or
am I better off getting a new system entirely.

If new system, any recommendations (please in simple language! :) ) or
if just need additional components, can you please advise?

* I heard that some DVD players will not play these burned DVDs. Is
this true? If so, is there software to burn that will always work?

* Finally, besides all of the above, is there anything else I need?
Thanks for your help.

Susan

If you want it to look really good, you need good lighting.  The best
camera in the world won't help if your lighting stinks.

You need to know what you're doing to set up lighting well, but it
doesn't have to cost a lot.  Rather than give you misinformation I think
I'll let an expert answer, or suggest that you read a book.

It will help.  Conventional wisdom is that your video can look pretty
poor and viewers won't care that much, but the slightest deficiencies
in the audio will be noticed.

Why don't you worry about getting the interviews on tape first, and deal
with postproduction afterwards.

Well, making dvd's without a burner will be difficult.  40gb of disk
space may not be enough to edit the interviews either.  Aside from
that, your machine is powerful enough.

It's not a question of software.  One observation is DVD-R (DVD minus R)
discs seem to be playable on more DVD players than DVD+R.  The RW formats
(whether + or -) are worst of all.

Thanks Paul. Your feedback was really helpful. Will be sure to get the
right discs.
And am relieved that I can just add to my computer to start out.

Susan

a wireless microphone that can be worn by the person interviewed will
help keep the noise to a minimum.   If they are sitting in one place
then a wired external mike is OK.

You will need the following:
video capture to transfer video to PC.
video editing software
DVD compilation software (to create professional looking DVD with menus
for specific scenes)

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