Capturing from multiple HDV Cameras?
Rick Stone
studio.
Right now I capture from a Sony HDR-HC7 directly to a Windows XP
machine with HDVSplit, record audio on a second XP machine with a
FirePod and Samplitude. Then mix the audio to a stereo WAV, copy it
to the first machine (that I'm doing the video on) and edit with Sony
Vegas Studio Platinum 9.
I'd like to add a second camera to this setup, but shudder to think of
having another PC running to do the capture (more noise, more heat in
the room, more time to transfer files from one machine to another).
Wish I could get ALL of this to run on a single machine but can't seem
to find any software/hardware that allows capturing from multiple
cameras in Windows (maybe it's time to get a Mac?).
Is there any way to capture two HDV video streams on a Windows machine?
Richard Crowley
Some people still record on tape and then capture after shooting. :-)
David Ruether
"Richard Crowley" <rcro...@xp7rt.net> wrote in message news:7okb1kF...@mid.individual.net...
> "Rick Stone" wrote ...
You "hit the nail on the head" again, I see...;-)
The OP could shoot multiple takes from differing positions with
differing close-to-far viewpoints/zooming, including maybe giving a
voice description of the location in the music for rough synchronization
with each take (using a single camera) for use later during the editing.
"Non-linear" editing makes doing this sort of thing SO much easier in
some ways...;-)
--DR
Ken Maltby
"David Ruether" <d_ru...@thotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hg3eh7$42i$1...@ruby.cit.cornell.edu...
That might be the best low cost approach, a good mixing/switch
for HDMI might be hard to find at anything like an afordable price.
(It's too bad that Blackmagic's "On-Air 2" never paned out.)
Luck;
Ken
Rick Stone
> "Richard Crowley" <rcrow...@xp7rt.net> wrote in messagenews:7okb1kF...@mid.individual.net...
Yes, just to clarify, I'm actually capturing directly to the computer,
don't even have a tape in the camera, just set HDVSplit to Record,
turn on Record on Samplitude on my second machine, and away I go. I
know you could record to tape first, but this DOUBLES the time it
takes me to get to editing (shoot an hour of video and spend an hour
transferring before getting to work on the next phase). My goal here
is to really streamline my workflow.
I did consider doing multiple takes with the camera in different
positions, but again, it's going to slow things down, and it's not
always that easy to get EXACTLY the same tempo, etc.
I also experimented with a hard-disk based camera, but have found that
EVERY editor I've tried just chokes on AVCHD. True, you can convert
the format to MPEG, but that's a lengthy process (a 20 minute file
takes about 1.5-2 hours to convert) and the resulting files are about
double the size (why not just capture an M2T stream to begin with?).
In an "ideal" world, I'd be recording 2 or 3 cameras to a single
computer; one wide frontal shot, one to my right (close up angle of
the left hand) one to my left (close up angle of the right hand). I
don't mind doing the audio on a separate machine (those files are
nearly as large and it's pretty simple to just copy the WAV file over
after I've mixed it down).
I've done multi-track audio recording for about 10 years, so I found
the video editing extremely simple to understand (except for all the
codecs, yikes!) Once I get this setup, I plan to record about 200
hours of material, out of which, I'll probably use about 20-40. I'll
be archiving everything on external hard-disks (and keeping a 2nd set
of backup hard-disks) as I go along.
Remember that when I'm doing this, I'm sitting in a (very small) room
by myself. I need to do this whole thing in a way that doesn't
distract me from the task at hand (the music and the lesson!).
GaryT
"Rick Stone" <rick...@rickstone.com> wrote in message
news:83e9daf4-fa80-4330...@a32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
If you were to use a second (or third) camera, I can't believe there is
*nothing* productive you could be doing during the time the additional
footage was being captured. You don't HAVE to wait for that to get into the
computer to get started and thereby double or triple the time. Do the direct
capture like you are doing now for the main camera if you like. Then after
the shoot while the other footage is being captured, go ahead and start the
project, using the main camera footage to begin determining where you might
want to cut to other views. You can begin editing the audio, creating titles
and menus, and so on. After the additional angles are available, lay them on
other tracks, sync them up, then use your roughed out markers and confirm or
revise the preliminary decisions and make the necessary cuts back and forth.
Or, plan the shoot so that at the conclusion you take your SO out to lunch
or something while the additional capturing to the computer is going on.
With a little creative revisions to the work flow there is no reason that
the time needs to be wasted.
Gary T
Martin Heffels
wrote:
>Is there any way to capture two HDV video streams on a Windows machine?
Canopus DV-Storm could do that with mini-DV, capture 3 parallel streams. Not
sure if their current line could do something similar with HDV, but you could
check out their website.
cheers
-martin-