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Multicam: mixing DSLR and Camcorder
Hi everyone,
I’m newcomer, but I was reading the forum for a while and found a lot of useful recommendations. Hope you can give me advice on my case.
I’m shooting mostly stage performance of my kids, which often happens in places with far from perfect lighting. I have recently discovered how much more I can get with a multi-cam video recording. Given that I shoot alone, I use one camera at wide angle setting to take it all and another to take closeups.
So far I was using Canon T2i and 5D MkII + Magic Lantern with auto-restart. It works fine, but I’m not happy: a restart can happen when I don’t have a good close-up. I want to get something more suitable for a long recording to get more predictable results. I could adjust my attitude and shoot the closeup camera such as it can always be used as a main source of video, but I do like the freedom of knowing that the wide-angle camera will get it all Ok. That’s why I consider getting a camcoder to use together with 5D.
I have a few specific questions:
1) DSLR and camcorders have different low light performance. Is it a problem for multi-cam editing?
2) I shoot 30p on DSLR. Does it mean I need to get a 30p camcorder or I can use a 60p one?
3) Any recommendations for a camcorder with a price tag ~1k$. I’m looking at Panasonic HC-X920 and Canon Vixia HF G20.I may need to clarify the second question. Cameras storing video in mp4 format have limited recording time (4GB or 30min or less). So I have to shoot in AVCHD, but this format doesn’t support 30p according to Wikipedia. Canon packs its 30p in 60i stream. So should I use 60p and convert it to 30p or maybe I should move alltogether to 24p and avoid non-standard 30p? I really don’t want to do anything with interlaced formats.
Thanks for your help,
Brian
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3 Replies
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the answer would depend somewhat on what you software you are using for editing. Some NLEs are better at mixing multiple formats than others. That said, you’ll get a better looking product by closely matching resolutions and frame rates as closely as possible.
Noah
Call Box Training.
Featuring the Panasonic GH2 and Panasonic AC160/130. -
Thanks Noah.
I’m using Final Cut Pro X. As far as I understand AVCHD format cannot be used directly by FCPX and it has to transcode to ProRes. So I expect that 60p video should integrate well with 30p project, but I don’t have any experience with AVCHD. I should probably borrow to see how well it works in practice.
Brian
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May be a bit late, but if you have the option of HDMI out, you can use something like the Atomos Ninja (bit expensive) or the Hyperdeck Shuttle 2, which will record to ProRes or DNxHD on SSD drives. This gives you far better quality for editing, as well as a better editing format, and does so without H264 compression (hdmi out is before the compression is applied).
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