Mult-Camera Capture

[Andy Stinton]

I don’t see the time saving. The editor has to review the footage to edit it, around here they type comments on the clips as they digitize so that they can refer back to each clip. When the footage is straight to a hard drive they still have to review and chop the files up into clips and then put comments in . Where is the time savings ?

The other issue that we have seen, is that you are stuck with codec that use initially. With tape you can redig and use a different compression method.

Yes there can be issues with capturing to tape as you have mentioned, however the space in this box is not long enough to list the problems that you run into with a computer .

Andy Stinton
Corporate Video
Live & Stage Events
Business Practices

[Thomas Leong]

No one editor has the same workflow.

So perhaps Tyler’s workflow requires 3 big files that he can edit with. His ‘event’ may merely be a 3-camera view of a single session, and as long as the start points are aligned, a multicam edit generally requires selecting a single camera view at any point in time. No notes required nor breaking up into smaller files before editing.

Or it could be something else.

Thomas

[Tyler Groom]

Well to give you the exact scenario that I am involved in is this. We have a studio that has a green screen set-up in it. We want to produce a video. There would be three cameras filming the same thing from different angles, etc. I could capture them to tape and then record them into the computer, yes. But, it can be difficult to sync them up perfectly to each other. Therefore I figured that capturing them directly into the computer, would be more efficient, but please give me your thoughts…
Thanks

[Andy Stinton]

I think that you can already see from mine & Bob’s and Thomas’s views that there are two different schools of thought.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong but I don’t see any difference in the syncing process between digitizing methods.

I was wondering how you are going to capture the sound?

Andy Stinton
Corporate Video
Live & Stage Events
Business Practices

[Tyler Groom]

I was going to capture everything in via firewire or composite, but if you think that it is no easier to sync that way than there is no point in spending the money on the equipment. But please give me your ideas on the situation…

[George Socka]

Three computers running DV Rack ( Adobe On Location now ) In another thread somewhere someone had gotten DV rack to capture 2 DV streams at the same time using 2 unique FW cards.

If you are shooting DV, then no other codec will ever produce a better picture than raw DV

Or search for DVIO and try running that 3 times – using 3 FW cards.

Or Newtek VT5 which does this on paper – never actually touched one though.

George Socka
BeachDigital
http://www.beachdigital.com

[Andy Stinton]

I’m very interested in how the sound get efficiently mixed into the recording. I take that these computer capture methods require a line from a mixer back to the camera ?

Can you control each audio feed back in the computer?

Andy Stinton
Corporate Video
Live & Stage Events
Business Practices

[Thomas Leong]

Andy,

AFAIK, using Firewire as the medium, the audio is captured simultaneouslly with the video down the same wire. There is no control over either till after the capture. However, not sure about DVRack though.

Thomas

[Tyler Groom]

If I were to just capture the tapes, which I think we will do because there is no reason to capture directly into the computer. What is the easiest to sync the two cameras in Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0?

“The camera may add 10 pounds, but the computer can take off 50”

[Thomas Leong]

Others have done it by –
1. Activating a camera flash at the start of each camera recording; and/or
2. Use an audio signal/blip to indicate start of recording sent to both cameras at the same time.

Then line it up on two tracks in the NLE.

Thomas