web cam?

would a web cam work for recording lesoons for this site? would it do decent sound and video qaulity? you may or may not know that i am on a cheap budget. if it is good enough for video could you do recordings without the video?

I'm no expert but I think most web cams are of very low quality.
I bought a digital camera for about $100 and it's compressed, pixelated and jumpy.
What I ended up having to do was get an A/V input card for my computer off eBay. (audio/video in), then use my old Hitachi 8mm Camcord. (VM-E625LA)
You set it to pause and leave the tape door open so that the camcord doesn't shut off automatically after 5 minutes. Then use Adobe Premiere to record and edit. (I tried a couple of shareware programs and they were really buggy) When you set it up to record you can do it at the frame rate and quality that you want and you can monitor it either from the camcorders built in screen or the computer monitor.
For the audio input I use the output from my mixer, so I can record both guitar and voice using better equipment than the camcorder has.

When you're finished you have to convert the finished file to .flv format which reduces the quality depending on how much you have to reduce it.

The only problem with this kinda setup is you can't use audio software like Cubase and run Adobe Premiere at the same time. So if you want to give a lesson with backup music, you need a second computer. (either that or record the music and guitar part ahead of time, mime the actions later on video and sync it up manually... which is a major pain)

I do a very similar thing to Schmange, recording the audio separately (though at the same time i.e. using the feed from the desk) and then dubbing it into final cut. This is because, (IMHO) the audio quality of the camcorder (which is better than a webcam) sucks.

If you're just playing the guitar alone, with no backup instruments, you can use the output from your mixer to record the guitar simultaneously.
I take just the video output of the camcorder and plug it into the computer.
For the sound part, I take the stereo output of my mixer and plug it into the audio input.
With Premiere, you have to go to the audio controls and select 'rca input' and you're all set. You can play the guitar in stereo straight into the computer and use a decent mic for the instructions.