That is gospel right there. Learn how to use your manual focus, iris, all that stuff. It will dramatically improve your quality. Practice extensively before hitting the woods because in the moment of truth, everyone gets rattled. I find myself almost more nervous behind the camera than behind the bow. Buttons are tough to find when you are really jacked up. Definitely practice, especially on moving targets to maintain crisp focus.
ORIGINAL: lungbuster12point06
If you want to shoot quality footage the best advice you can get is to learn to use all of the manual functions of your camera,you cannot rely on the cameras auto functions while shooting video in the outdoors,there are too many variables to contend with, and the best equipment in the world will not cover a camera operators inability to use his cameras setting correctly.
That being said always use some sort of stabilizer, whether it be a tree arm, or a tripod make sure to match the weight of the camera to the support device and always use a fluid head(also matched to the cameras weight). Audio is just as important as stated earlier, A quality shotgun mic. is a must pick one that uses a good suspension system and you won't have any motor noise or handling noise problems. Varizoom makes a quality rocker remote control that plugs into the LANC port and controls zoom and focus functions to keep handling of the camera to a minimum, but I would not say it is a must have.
Again the biggest thing is to intamately learn all your camera functions...........the XH A1 is not a beginners camera and will take some time to learn.
Good luck!