[Mark Suszko]

Todd had a lot of useful things to say on that. His most important one may be the audio comment. It’s trivial to add a digital audio recorder to your arsenal, and I’d suggest you get two: one to record a mix out of your mixer, the other, somewhere on the stage, I’d suggest clamped to the lead singer’s mic stand. This gets you a “dry” board mix and a “wet” or “live” sound, that includes the drummer and crowd/ acoustics, and you can balance these in post to keep the energy of the live venue, but with the clarity of the board mix. Sounds like it’s supposed to, or at least, like how you rehearsed it:-)

The next thing I’d suggest is, if you’re not using an app like Filmic Pro to control the phone’s camera, you need to.

And yes, either get a gimbal for the phone cam, or, something I’ve done is put an adapter on a heavy floor mic stand (no boom) to hold the cameraphone or gopro, instead of a mic; this is like a portable monopod that can stand free, yet move quickly, and if you walk with it, the pendulum effect of the heavy base keeps it remarkably stable… Its nice in that it is fast and easy to move and position and takes up nearly zero floor space.

When I need a gopro type camera to run a long time, over 2 hours, I mount it high up on a light stand and I put in the biggest memory card I can find, and add one of those ridiculously long phone charge cords they sell at gas stations, connected to a USB power cube with extension cord, or if cords would be a problem, to an external battery pack, Start it and forget it.

Regarding your gopros, (or gopro knock-offs, which I love); more of these is always better – you can get a 4K version of these in the 60-dollar price range, and it’s handy because you can punch-in to the wide shot to make fake zooms, pans, and close-ups that seamlessly match, when your final output is only 720 HD. I use this technique on practically all my band shoots because I don’t have trustworthy live bodies to operate my cameras when we’re performing and I’m on stage. My budget doesn’t allow for HeroBlack models, but I love my 60-dollar-ish 4K from iconntechs https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H2TPL32/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B01H2TPL32. People also seem to like the Yi brand.

More on the go-pros: perhaps invest in a scissor clip mount, normally used for hanging video lights from the tracks of dropped ceilings – and adapt it to mount a go pro to that for a high, unobstructed angle from head-on or 45 degrees off to left and/or right: this becomes a stable, safe wide shot/ cutaway, and shows people dancing in front of the stage. Or try a clamp to add the GoPro to a light bar or other lighting fixture. Again, it’s out of the way, but offers a fun angle. A gopro on a short mic stand off the drummer’s shoulder or next to his ride cymbal is a nice cut-away – drummers don’t always get enough camera love, but cutting to their visual moves always looks good in an edit. In high-noise environments, like close to a drummer, their mics can be a little overwhelmed, so I run a layer of tape over the mic hole as an attenuator.

I have very good luck at my usual venue with some hard-to-source ball cap/strap clamp skeleton frames for my GoPros (came with the Iconntechs cameras, wish I could find more) that let me clamp them unobtrusively to the edges of the lamp shades in our pizza joint. These give almost drone-like coverage. I’ll try to put up a pic of that mount later. My GoPros never go into waterproof cases, only these open-air “skeletons”, which also have standard photo screw threads top and bottom for tripod attachment. In high-noise environments, their mics can be a little overwhelmed, so I run a layer of tape over the mic hole as an attenuator.

A strong magnet and a flexible mount may also work in some venues to go on a door sill or support beam. Such things are cheap to put together but give awesome angles.

Finally, I have a little constructive criticism on the way the vids are cut. I know up-front that your choices of shots up to now are limited by what’s available. But going forward, with more possible angles, I’d want to see a bit more conventional cutting between a wide establisher, some close-ups, and some matching action, as well as cut-aways in appropriate places. If you get the gimbal stabilizer, a slow walk across the room from left to right and back, pointed at the center stage, would make a nice master or cut-away. You can’t deny the energy of a single shot of a great performance from close-in, but for me, cutting adds some “punctuation” to the verses and chorus that enhance the experience and keep the eye interested as well as the ear.

One Idea I have for you, is to ask a bunch of friends and family to come to a gig, and have *all* of them use they phones or camcorders at the same time, from every possible position, then multicam-cut them in post for a creative look.

[Mark Suszko]

Update: we finally found an answer in the buffer settings of the Teradek receivers, and now the audio stays locked to the video. Putting this in here in case someone in the future comes across the same issue.

[Mark Suszko]

Guys, FCPX now has content-aware fill; this can “auto-rotoscope” out a lot of things. You might try it out on this.

[Mark Suszko]

Filmic Pro is very popular, yet dirt cheap.

[Mark Suszko]

How big is X-Box gaming in Ireland? Because every X-Box *is* also a BluRay player. And your customers are kids, so… they probably have one?

As to the piracy, your fears are legitimate. Even BluRay can be pirated at little cost. And file-based delivery just makes that even easier. You can count on piracy hurting your sales; it’s human nature.

I have a stock answer to this:

Give it away.

Give the programs away for nothing? Am I daft?

No, but you can do one of two things: you can ask for a minimum up-front payment to deliver as many free copies as people want. You don’t get the minimum, nobody gets anything. That will leverage the moms of the performing kids to become your sales force and your anti-piracy squad, because they’re out for their own kids and their own interest. I experienced exactly this when I did a ballet recital project.

Or, you can take a smaller up-front fee to make it a contract, and make the rest of the money up on advertising placements or sponsorships. Or make it *all* sponsored, with the free give-away. The program comes with commercials or “Thank You” slates on it. Same model as school yearbooks use over here.

You are trading a guaranteed payment amount for the after-event sales, which I believe tend to be spotty at best anyway. Another variation is to get an annual “retainer” fee from the school that covers any expenses and your profit margin, and just do everything “for free” as far as the end users know. The school recoups the cost by billing the parents thru an “activity fee” such as for sports teams. The school also then gets automatic permission slips to appear in public videos from those parents as well. That’s an issue at times here in the U.S., don’t know of it’s the same in G.B. and Ireland.

Either method short-circuit’s the pirates’ motivation to steal and re-distribute for cash. In fact, the sponsorship model -leverages- free distribution by others, i.e., the sponsors WANT the videos distributed widely as possible.
For school-related productions, the kinds of sponsors or “underwriters” you want to hit up for cash would include
formal wear rentals, fast food and pizza places, youth fashion outlets, electronics and gaming stores, car and motorbike dealers, music stores, and yes, even military recruiters.

[Mark Suszko]

The Schoeps is a very sophisticated and expensive mic. Can’t imagine it not working out.

My suggestion:

“PZM” Pressure Zone Mic, AKA Boundary Mic. PZM was a brand, but also a general descriptor. My favorite brand/ model of them these days is the Audio Technica Pro 44. They are popular conference room table mics that can be shared by two people, the pickup is that good.

Has a good omni pickup with some reach. Also great placed on the edge of a stage floor. Unobtrusive in that it’s a flat plate that can be gaffed to the top of the lectern or onto a nearby inside surface. You can tape it to a wall and the entire wall becomes part of the mic. Only issue would be if it’s on the top surface of the lectern and your speaker starts laying papers on it because it doesn’t “look” like a mic.

If the guest is in, say, a wheelchair, *next” to a lectern, mounting the Boundary mic on the side of the lectern next to their elbow will pick up pretty well.

I once mic’ed an event with several of these, and the guests didn’t believe they were mics, insisted on obtrusive “stick” mics on table stands instead.

Some lavs come with a boundary mic attachment that “converts” the lav into working like a boundary mic. I’m a little skeptical of that approach, but it’s also very unobtrusive. In those cases, in my experience, it needs to be taped down very firmly to a hard surface to work best.

[Mark Suszko]

I know he didn’t mean anything insulting by it, but the comment suggesting that features of FCPX are “dumbed down” for the “simpler user” is I think, a tad unfair.

I’ve been having to work in FCPX and Premiere side-by-side now for a while, and I have to say, a lot of the FCPX functionality is seemingly done in a much less “clunky” way than my experience of Premiere. FCPX is very intuitive and there is an economy of steps to do what you want, whether that’s using shortcut keys or the mouse.

My Premiere experience so far includes way more tabbing around to get to what I need, functions that seem similar but aren’t, and the paths to get to those items or tools I need don’t always seem “logical” to me.

Part of that, i’m sure, is just that I have more familiarity and practice in FCPX; I’m way faster in it, I know where everything is, and how the tools work.

But part of it is also just a better user experience, not “dumbed down”, but clearer, logical, “more intuitive”, and maybe more “accessible”. One little example of this, for me, is the implementation of crop tools. In Premiere, it’s buried two steps away in it’s own little bubble. In FCPX, it’s with all the other transform controls, and I like that.

I am impressed with how much faster Premiere renders out a file over FCPX. I’ve even done whole jobs where I’ve done the cutting in FCPX but handed off the final render to Premiere… But much of the rest of it seems like it’s pretty old-fashioned in how you have to work in it. I hate the interface, just hate it. They are putting me on a ledge, in terms of mastering Premiere before they take away my Final Cut Pro X at some random, unknown future date, so I’m under the gun to get better at Premiere… But cutting in Premiere to me just feels like work, when FCP has always felt like play. Simple isn’t “dumb”; it’s powerful.

[Mark Suszko]

I think I read that suggestion from Gary Adcock in an earlier thread. Tried copying the file back to a formatted drive module, the module read as 80 percent empty, indicating it knew there was *something* there, but nothing would play out. Still looking for a fix.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, yeah, I said we tried that in my initial post. Kinda sorta worked but not for the longer clips.

[Mark Suszko]

I generally take a dim view of “advertorial” content anyway: I can’t trust it. I’ll skim it, if the topic is of interest to me, but always with a suspicious, jaundiced eye. I know it’s sometimes a necessary evil to pay the bills. But I would never take money to plug something. If I plug it, its because I like it and believe in it, and I won’t hide my opinions if the thing I like also has some aspects I don’t like. And those kinds of reviews are what I trust.