Newbie to taking video and sharing - Soccer

[woodat]

Hello Forum Members.
Thank you for having a site such as this with a collection of people to take time away from their daily lives to help people like me who don't have a bit of knowledge to start this process.

I'm a High School soccer coach trying to figure out how I can shoot good quality video, edit, then share on youtube to my players.

1. Camcorder - I'm looking for good 4K quality camcorder to record 3.5 hours of game video. Budget $1500. Inclusive of memory card and extra batteries.
2. Computer to take the video, add a game clock and score, then load up to youtube or some other website to share the videos with my players. Budget $1000.

Budget would be interchangeable between 2 categories.

Any suggestions recommendations would so greatly be appreciated. With black Friday coming up, I'd like to try and purchase around this time frame.

One other thing. Is there a camcorder that would take the video straight to youtube. Would eliminate the need of a computer.

[johnmeyer]

I've recorded hundreds of hours of sports footage. I have created year-end highlights for teams and also produced DVDs for athletes to use when applying for college athletic scholarships. I am not current with the latest cameras, but here are the features you need to get.

1. 60p. The camera should be capable of taking video in 60p. This may not be possible in 4K, and if so, you'll have to decide if its worth spending a lot of money to get both 4K and the fluidity (which is important for sports) of 60p.

2. Zoom. While football coaches often want the "22 view" which takes a wide shot of all the players at once, some will also try to zoom in on the action once a play is underway. The same is true in soccer. For this, you will need to have a pretty decent optical zoom.

3. Second camera. Depending on how much time you want to spend in post production, having a second camera can completely change the quality of your shoot. In this arrangement you set up one camera on a tripod, fixed. You use it to get that wide view I just described. Then you have the second camera which you actually operate, pan, zoom, etc. during the action. In post production you use a two-camera software editing program that lets you easily switch between both views.

4. Fluid head tripod. This is really important. If you hand-hold, the results will look awful. Also, it is tough to hand-hold a camera for an entire match. If you don't get a fluid head, your video will jerk as the head sticks while panning.

5. Manual focus. Make sure your camera lets you turn off auto-focus. One of the most annoying aspects of amateur video of sporting events is to have the auto focus popping in and out as the camera attempts to focus on objects that are moving at the far end of its range. You want to turn off auto focus and manually focus at mid-field.

As for video that can go straight to YouTube, pretty much any video you get out of a modern camera can be uploaded directly to YouTube. The bigger issue will be whether you can upload it in a reasonable time. The issue is that a 4K camera running at 60p is going to generate some really large files for an entire game. If you are going to cut those files, then you can reduce the size. However, if your editing program doesn't provide lossless cutting, then you'll have to re-encode, at which point you can choose to lose a little quality in order to make the files upload faster.

For 90 minutes of 4K video, I expect the files coming out of the camcorder will be much larger than 10 GB. With my relatively slow upload speed, that would take a good part of an afternoon to upload.

[woodat]

Thank you johnmeyer for the indepth response.

1. I cannot find a camcorder that does 4K at 60P. At least not in my price range.
2. I don't think I'll be zooming much. But I'm not sure where this journey of videos will take me.
3. Another camera is a great idea. I'll have to start off with one 1st and see how that goes.
4. Tripod. Didn't even think of that.
5. Focus - I don't think the kids taking video will be able to maneuver the camera but it will be a learning process.

So, after hours of research.
I'm going with Canon XA11 bundle package for $1599.
With the MacBook Pro $2310.
Will edit videos with Final Cut pro.

Hope the boosters approve this deal...way over budget.