[Chip Thome]

I would say Denis has done a good job of describing an all encompassing way to CYA, as far as having sufficient rights to the use of everyone’s image/voice in your promotion.

As you elude to, it is fairly unrealistic to expect the average videographer to have all that paperwork gathered together, before production and posting.

The end result is if you don’t have complete CYA, you are going to assume some liability should you offer it for public display for your promotion.

You have to decide how much of a liability you wish to assume.

IMO, anyone could demand you remove their image from any online video, or DVD, if they one day get a bug up their butt and decide they don’t like it. Seriously, at that point, a legal fight isn’t worth it. Because those images were captured in a public place during an event that was held in public, they may not have any legal grounds to stand on. The attorney costs to defend yourself though, could easily outweigh any gains from the promotional value.

These are the hazards of being in business.

An insurance policy that includes Errors and Omissions may cover the expense to defend yourself if such a case would come forward.

What you have done, gotten permission from the bride, and probably also the groom to use their video for promotion, is probably what most everyone else does. Those videographers also then will be assuming any potential liability, as you may, should they/you not get every last single release of everyone shown.

If one day you think you might wish to commercially sell footage from this wedding to others for their use, all bets are off and you MUST have every single release signed.

[Chip Thome]

I hate to say this, but reality is, most just ignore the law and leave themselves open to possible litigation for their actions.

Getting a license to use most any popular song from the last 30+ years is a very involved process and expensive.

Those who wish to comply with the law, typically will use nondescript music from a source such as Smart Sounds or from an artist allowing use by a Creative Commons license.

But, if you heard it on the radio, or played in a club, chances are you can’t afford the license to use it legally in your production.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.

[Chip Thome]

Arturo,

A few questions.

What is the budget and pay for this project ???

Have large a crew do you have doing this with you ???

Do you have experience with the additional gear being suggested here ???

[Chip Thome]

Just remember, you have one firewire port, one capture program and one external USB hard drive for each camera. Then you assign one of your processor’s cores to that capture program.

A dual core laptop will give you two cores. Then as long as you have two firewire ports that are on separate busses, and two external USB drives you are going to functionally end up with two complete computing systems, running inside of one laptop at the same time, capturing two different cameras.

If a budget allows it, the switcher is a great route to go. The drawbacks, the costs and if you have the wrong camera selected, you are won’t be archiving the footage you might be really wanting for a given segment.

[Chip Thome]

Now as far as putting them together.

First, start all three cameras recording.

Get a standard camera with a flash and have someone aim it toward you. Aim all three of your cameras at that person and especially at the camera, and have the person “flash” the camera to set a beginning point for the files your cameras are going to create. A camera flash will last about one frame. When in post, find the “flash” on each timeline, delete everything ahead of it and you have the common start point to sync up all your files both video and associated audio. External audio, this won’t help.

Do this EVERY time you start or restart any camera. All cameras must be flashed together, in order to sync them later in post.

[Chip Thome]

Here’s been my experiences with SD, which is going to be different, but the theory is probably the same.

I can capture two cameras into my laptop, one via the factory firewire port and one via an express card firewire port. Each port needs it’s own capture program, and that program needs to be associated with just one of the two cores on my laptop. The other, gets the other core etc.

In SD, files sizes for AVI are captured at a rate of 13 gig per hour. I made the mistake once of capturing in a compressed format like WMV, and it was trash, as you experienced with Quicktime.

Each camera needs to be captured to a drive that is separate from the main OS drive. Otherwise you risk getting an OS callup, giving you a serious drop out without notice.

So when I have done multiple camera capture I had Adobe Premiere capturing one camera to one USB drive using one core and one port and Adobe OnLocation capturing the other on it’s own unique USB drive, core and firewire port.

So basically, I am running two unique single core systems, through one dual core laptop.

[Chip Thome]

We have shot 4 cameras for quite a while, two stationary and two B Roll. When I began, somewhere I read to “quesstimate” editing time for such a shoot, figure on 1 hour of editing time per minute of finished video. We frequently will exceed that ratio, as we are doing “one take” probably as you are going to do. Our work has been concentrated in band promo work, and we have found there is no way to automate the editing aspect, as the action varies on stage from performer to performer during any given song. We also try our best to align our cuts to the song and it’s tempo/beat. We use Premiere Pro and there is an ability within Premiere to view all your clips at the same time and cut from their various windows thus saving time. Although this could work for some types of events, for the band work we have done, it appeared useless. Our cuts typically are at 4-6 second intervals…closer to the 4 mark than 6.

Because two of our cams are roaming and shooting B Roll, when we get to editing, we have to watch a selected cam for the duration of the portion we wish to use, to make sure that cam stays on the view we want. Often times we have gone to editing and gone into selecting a cam’s view, only to find it unusable for the 4 second duration because the operator left that view for another on stage elsewhere. If all your cameras are stationary, you eliminate that, but your clips can get a very stale appearance as the viewer sees the same view time and again.

Here’s an example of using two basically stationary views:

https://www.vimeo.com/807308

For that song, it just about works, at least it was close enough to get away with.

This now is the same group, different location and shot with four cams and extensive editing and effects/overlays:

https://www.vimeo.com/2158436

Our editing and effects time for the second one exceeded 1.5 hours per minute, but gave us the product we wanted to present.

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[Chip Thome]

I do agree with all that has been said so far. The limitations listed are accurate as is the potential quality as shown in the image quality of the wedding Jeff posted a link to.

BUT, I just watched a trailer from a different forum for a music video done with DSLRs and to be honest, I couldn’t tell it from SD.

The DSLR is going to give you some pristine footage, if you are proficient enough to be able to adjust the camera accordingly. If you need to go for “cool” as in that music video, you are going to lose everything a DSLR is good for, and might as well use just about anything.

Another thread I have seen, brides are not crazy about their wedding videos where every sequence is starting out “out of focus” and then coming into focus. They have commented it is “bothersome” to watch.

As an all around camera, for me, not an option. Of course, YMMV.

[Chip Thome]

You are looking to stream live or just live events and captured for later distribution ???

Also, what kinds of events are you thinking of ???

[Chip Thome]

Panasonic HMC70. Shoulder mount and 3CCD.