3 HDV cams to hd switcher to HD storage?

[David Shulkin]

Have you taken a look at the Tricaster TCXD-300? Just a thought. Or have you considered the Panasonic AV-HS450 switcher? You may find both of these in a rental house. Also, while not terribly familiar with them, I know Focus Enhancements has a switcher in that type of small form factor. Rossvideo makes their Crossover switcher and you can find it as a single-form factor in the JVC line of switchers.

Not knowing your budget and if it would be a purchase or a rental, but this might give you a couple of ideas.

One last note, are we sure that the Z1 does a component HD signal out or is it just HD? I can’t remember if it has analog HD out.

[Amit Ghildiyal]

Hi David,

The Z1 does 480i and a 1080i/480i component, as i connect it to the widescreen monitor for live-view. But it doesnt have sdi, hdmi out. Only firewire, s-video and component.

We already went for a free demo of the Tricaster, the HD version and its just under $ 15000 and not within our budget.

Just went through the list of switchers you provided, even the JX-S777, but it looks like a home theater system more than a video switcher.

Looks like we are stuck.

[Mark Suszko]

Are you sure this will even work for you, because if you’re hoping to live switch and do green screen at the same time during the live switch, from three different camera angles, you need more effects busses to set up each of the three keyers with appropriate backgrounds and adjustments of those backgrounds in perspective and lens angle to correspond with the lens setting for each camera, taking each custom background as you cut to it.

If you don’t have a switcher that can do that, I’m thinking you will still have to take the live-switched master into editing to apply a chromakey at each cut point that matches that shot angle. And good luck matching that across any wipes and dissolves from the live switch. So maybe if you still have that much post work to do, the live switch is not that much help.

Without a pro virtual set system setup, just chromakeying from three different camera angles will look very wrong, because the background will not change perspective to match the changing camera viewpoints. You can fake it a bit with locked off cameras that never change zoom or position, but not much. This is not something I’d want to do every week on deadline pressure or with a live talk show without scripted lines.

I would have to think about it some more but my initial thought is to shoot three isos, set each one up with its own key background track, nest these, then use the multicam live-switch plug-in in final cut to make the live switch in post. This unfortunately will more than triple the editing time and storage needs, but this is the cost of adding the chromakey. Maybe there’s a better way, have to think about it.

[Richard Cardonna]

This does exactly what you need for less than $700.00. plus hardware(This means computer and basic capture cards) Total cost for me was about 2k, for computer, app and firewire cards and 900. for extenders. If you have computer (specs are not that high most of off the shelf computers can work providing you can add the number of fw cards you need and 2 extra hdd one for video and another to record) then cost will be much less.

Its called cutfour, Go to avtake.com

I do sports and talking heads and concerts.
It comes in dv and sd flavors (soon hd) i use 4, z1 cameras.

Does most of what you need and more. Almost like broadcastpix and tricaster,in certain aspect better.

Up to 4 cameras. its 720×480 resolution. records to hdd, can insert avi clips, images and titles screen capture.

You can connect camera component,dv,composite,hdmi,depending on hardware the system can use blackmagic intensity or decklink cards, or just simple firewire cards.

I use plain old fw. I purchased fw extenders and can place my cameras up to 200 feet away with no sync problems.
When I do talking heads I use 60 foot firewire cables.

You can also broadcast simultaneously to internet using any program you want.

avtake.com

(