Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

After a "quick" checkout of the setup I need to make my video camera useful, I have that much more appreciation for the compactness of other folks' camcorders.

It's a good thing I checked things out; I would have forgotten parts otherwise, and there would have been no sound. I need a power strip to plug the VCR, the mixer, and the power supply for the camera into. There's a special cable (four-pin XLR) from the power supply to the camera, then a cable with a BNC connector on the camera end and an phono (aka RCA) connector on the VCR end for video, an XLR cable from the microphone to the mixer because I don't have the right adaptors to go directly from the mics I have to the VCR and thus don't know whether the signal level is compatible or not (I'm pretty sure it isn't) so I'm using the mixer mainly to do level conversion, and a phono cable from the mixer to the audio input on the VCR. Another video cable will let me put the monitor before or after the VCR, and I'll run an audio line back to the mixer again so I can plug in headphones (if I remember where they are) to sanity-check the audio level going to the VCR from the VCR's point of view, since the monitor doesn't have audio. If I remember all the parts, it's not as difficult as it sounds. But if I forget any piece, the complexity bites me in the arse. Sticking an itty bitty camcorder atop a tripod after making sure the battery is charged seems so much simpler, especially since neither of my tripods is really as sturdy as my video camera ought to have.

Consider this an observation but not a complaint. While I might use video more often if it were more convenient, so far I don't do so often enough to make the comparative hassle important enough to complain about. And the camera was a gift -- before my brother gave it to me, I had no way to shoot video at all, so this is definitely an improvement over nothing.