I’ve started a new hobby in the past few days - making videos and uploading them to YouTube.    I’ve been wanting a camcorder for years but the cost has constantly put me off.   I haven’t been earning a great salary up to now so any money that I have been making has been going to other more important things - such as paying the rent and eating.   However I decided a month or two back that I was now going to get the camcorder, that if I didn’t get it now, I would never get it.

I initially bought a second hand one from my girlfriend’s father but it broke soon afterwards (the perils of buying second hand I guess) so I went to a local electronics store and bought a nice JVC camcorder for 120 Euros.    I also got a Firewire software card which allows you to transfer the video from the camcorder to the computer as an “avi” file.

But I soon realised there’s a big difference between buying the camcorder and getting your ass in front of it and pressing the “record” button.   It really is nervewracking to record yourself!    So I began by using an invite which I received from a friend for a web service called 12 seconds.   This is where you can record webcam clips 12 seconds long.    I figured this would be a good way to ease myself into the whole recording thing.   Take a look :

Mark’s first 12 second video on 12seconds.tv

OK, a bit basic but 12 seconds isn’t much to work with!    But doing a few of those finally gave me the confidence to sit myself in front of the camcorder and film my first YouTube video.   I was nervous as hell but I got through it :

Yeah, it’s nothing spectacular but you’ve got to start somewhere right? Walk before you can run? Plus it was fun and something different. Expect to see video / YouTube related posts coming up…

Adding video to posts adds a lot of value because you’re adding a human face to your blog posts. So I think I’ll be doing a lot of that from now on…

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