Musician's Toolbox III - Video clips?
Damian Allen
Just a comment, or maybe a suggestion, regarding the video clips on the
toolbox. It seems to me to be a big old waste of CD space.
I'm a video editor and multimedia producer - it's what I do for a living -
and my experience is that offerings like those listed in the Toolbox are
nothing more than a promotional for the stock footage houses providing the
clips.
Now I may be completely wrong, but usually the footage turns out to be
320x240 and highly compressed, the former making it useless for broadcast
and the latter making it next to useless for multimedia production.
Now if it is uncompressed 640x480 then we have a different story and maybe I
posted too soon. Even so, I can't help but wondering what a predominantly
audio user base is going to do with a bunch of video clips once the
novelty's worn off.
Please don't take this as a criticism against the 8.0 upgrade - the overall
upgrade seems like a bargain to me, and the audio and midi portion of the
toolbox seem both interesting and useful. I'm just wondering at the wisdom
of
slapping together megabytes full of video simply because Pro Audio can play
them.
David A. Fenton
a shot, then move on to bigger better things.
df
--
-------------------------
David A. Fenton
DFMedia, Inc.
david....@dfmedia.com
Damian Allen wrote in message <6tc55e$l...@hope.harvard.net>...
Gabriel Sierra
Now that you mention video and you work with it, tell me, how do you get the
video into the machine in the first place? I mean, If I want to make some
scoring to a video I have on tape, what card do I need to record the video? In
what format (MPEG, AVI,...etc..) This is a service I have always wanted to add
to my suit but I dont have much info.
Gabriel Sierra
Moondancer Recording Studios
moo...@prtc.net
Michael A. Sparti
Gabriel,
I am interested in this also, a friend of mine runs a A/V Co. I'm trying
to get work from him, (jingles/voice-overs etc.)
I haven't gotten anything yet. I'm just working my own projects'
which do not pay the morgage.(YET!)
I think you would need a SVHS recorder that syncs up to Cakewalk (via
????) and a video card to record the Video while recording their initial
audio to your disk (all sync'd up). Then, play the video in the Cakewalk
video track (???) and add your music. Then mix the music to 2 tracks and
save the file as a ??? and then output it to the SVHS recorder and give
it back to your client and COLLECT your mula!!
Thats how its done I think, and to think I almost got a job at a Delaware
tv station as a Master Controller. Go figure.
there are quit a few cards that will do the job but are expensive and
I am sure are as different as the audio/digital cards in price and quality.
Mike Sparti
Soylent Green Music
Inc.
Damian Allen
First of all, you need an edit deck capable of importing timecode. It's no
good just digitizing footage onto your computer from VHS, then scoring to
it, because once your done, there's no way to guarantee that your score will
sync up when you try to dump it back to the people editing the film or
video.
A cheap way to do this is to get a "window-burn" VHS tape of the footage. A
window burn is where the time-code is actually written over the top of the
footage you're watching, so you can then line up your Cakewalk score with
the numbers you see on your little video clip (although my suspicion is, if
you try this, your footage will get slightly out of sync over the peiod of
several minutes.
Another solution is to have the footage digitized with time code at a
professional edit bay, and saved to a Jazz disk to be ported onto your
machine. If you do that, you'll have to make sure the codec the video is
compressed with is not hardware dependent, or you'll never be able to play
it on your own machine.
The actual hardware you require to capture (assuming you're not trying to
import timecode with the footage, and attempting a window-burn instead) is
minimal, since you'll only want your video to display in a small 320 x 240
window. There are plenty of c.$200 capture cards that'll do this for you:
Iomega Buzz, Intel Smart Recorder III etc.
Bare in mind that video consumes far more hard drive bandwidth than audio,
so if you want to be able to multitrack as well you'll need to compress the
video to low quality.
Unfortunately, desktop video is a very inexact science. If you though
digital multitracking is hard to configure a machine for, just wait till you
try and get the video running.
Hope this doesn't scare you too much...
By the way, to get a deck that'll do timecode and a capture card that would
be suitable for importing such footage, you're probably looking around $4000
total - that's using DV format.
Gabriel Sierra wrote in message <36007E2E...@prtc.net>...
Noel Borthwick
You make some good points about dealing with video.
> First of all, you need an edit deck capable of importing timecode. It's
no
> good just digitizing footage onto your computer from VHS, then scoring to
> it, because once your done, there's no way to guarantee that your score
will
> sync up when you try to dump it back to the people editing the film or
> video.
In Cakewalk 8, audio and video are synced up to frame accuracy, so if you
record audio to video, you will be perfectly in sync within Cakewalk. (The
video frame rate is determined from the video you import) In the video view
you have a timecode (or frame) display so you won't necessarily need to get
a timecode "burn" on the video.
I take it the issue you were describing was transferring your recorded
audio back for the editors. There are a few ways to do this, and its no
different from the process you would use if you wanted to lock audio to an
external source.
If you have your DAW setup in the same location as the Video edit suite,
you could simply lock Cakewalk to VITC or SMPTE (which the original video
slaves off as well) and and transfer your audio at the same time. This will
guarantee they are in sync.
Alternatively if your DAW is elsewhere, you could use a timecode generator
and just dump the mixed audio AND a seperate timecode track simultaneously
to tape (DAT, ADAT, etc)
The video edit suite can then locks to the timecode track and transfer your
audio.
> The actual hardware you require to capture (assuming you're not trying to
> import timecode with the footage, and attempting a window-burn instead)
is
> minimal, since you'll only want your video to display in a small 320 x
240
> window. There are plenty of c.$200 capture cards that'll do this for
you:
> Iomega Buzz, Intel Smart Recorder III etc.
The only hardware you should need is a video card with capture
capabilities. There are several cheap solutions. The ATI All In Wonder is
pretty good, and the ASUS GT3 cards (same RAGE engine as the ATI's) are
very good for the money ( < $150 )
You don't really need high qualty video while editing since you are only
using it as a reference. (unless of course your intent is to author the
video itself)
If you want to do transfers for external editing you will need an interface
which can generate timecode. Most decent MIDI interfaces can do this.
> Bare in mind that video consumes far more hard drive bandwidth than
audio,
> so if you want to be able to multitrack as well you'll need to compress
the
> video to low quality.
You can re-compress the video and add your mixed down audio back to a
compressed AVI file, all within Cakewalk itself, using the Export to AVI
option.
> In
> >what format (MPEG, AVI,...etc..) This is a service I have always wanted
to
> add
> >to my suit but I dont have much info.
Cakewalk can play AVI, MPEG or MOV(Quicktime) formats but can only export
to AVI.
Most basic video capture cards come with software which will allow you to
capture from an SVHS or VHS input directly to an AVI file.
Hope this helps,
Noel
Damian Allen
you could simply lock Cakewalk to VITC or SMPTE (which the original video
slaves off as well) and and transfer your audio at the same time. This will
guarantee they are in sync.
Alternatively if your DAW is elsewhere, you could use a timecode generator
and just dump the mixed audio AND a seperate timecode track simultaneously
to tape (DAT, ADAT, etc)
The video edit suite can then locks to the timecode track and transfer your
audio.
capabilities. There are several cheap solutions. The ATI All In Wonder is
pretty good, and the ASUS GT3 cards (same RAGE engine as the ATI's) are
very good for the money ( < $150 )
You don't really need high qualty video while editing since you are only
using it as a reference. (unless of course your intent is to author the
video itself)
Noel Borthwick
<6u0v3t$j...@hope.harvard.net>...
>>This is all true, however there still needs to be some reference point as
to what 0:00:00:00
>>SMPTE is in the video. It's all very well to digitize from VHS and start
scoring, but if CWPA sets
>>it's SMPTE zero point somehere other than where the video editor did,
then it'll be up to the editor
>>to attempt to push and pull the score's start time until it matches
exacly to the footage. This is
>>especially important if beats and hits are timed to specific action
sequences etc.
>>Also, it's very important to make sure you have SMPTE set to either Drop
Frame or Non Drop >>Frame and the correct frame rate (24,25,30 etc.)
corresponding to the orginal footage.
SMPTE really comes into play only when you are transferring mixed down
audio from Cakewalk at the very end. As long as the timecode you are
striping matches the same the edit suite uses, you should be all set. This
implies that while transferring, your audio should start at the same offset
that the editor will be using. While editing with video within Cakewalk
there is no need for SMPTE sync.
-Noel