In my continuing effort to produce better quality in my videos, I have focused previously on the audio, and very successfully (from my perspective) resolved much of the concerns with an upgrade to a dedicated audio recorder (the Zoom H1 audio recorder to be exact). This device works very well, has a strong pickup, and very solid sound quality, and with a minimal memory card, can easily hold the length of recordings I need.
On the video quality side however, I am still struggling. Admittedly, my camera solution is about as cheap as you can get, since my budget restricted me severely. Technically, it does record 1080p, but only at 15 fps (and even that is questionable, it seems to be more of 14.9 fps, which makes syncing problematic). Worse, the detail level even at 1080p is very rough, and I suspect a limitation of the camera itself. My video subjects are not very complicated, I am not recording high-speed or detailed shots (normally just a gaming board which doesn’t move much), but it is difficult to see the detail with any quality.
To resolve this, I am going to use my wife’s DSLR camera (the Nikon D3200 specifically), which offers 1080p in 60fps, and the option to record audio directly from the H1 onto the video (so no syncing issues after). Hopefully, the detail will be much improved as well, since the cost of the hardware is roughly 10x, I would expect at least some improvement in quality.
If so, then I likely will use this for all future video efforts, at least whenever the wife is not using it for the intended photo purpose it was purchased for.
