Which? Why? How? etc...

Hi,

I have been a long time mac user, with my focus on music (Logic & Pro Tools). I am now taking a big step into the unknown as I aim to create a new video series for my band. Basically, it will be happening in front of a White CYC Infinity Wall Stage with everything mic'd up and going into Logic. It will then be mixed/mastered so we can get the best sound possible but keeping the live element.

We will be using 1 professional video camera (roaming), and 4 HD cameras (static) to film the songs. I have never done anything with video before, so this may end in disaster! We want something similar to this, visual wise: YouTube - Train - Drops of Jupiter (Boyce Avenue acoustic cover) on iTunes

I to keep the video's as simple/professional as possible, editing/shot-wise, but want to really emphasise the live aspect. I must also point out before I begin asking questions that money is no object, as long as it is within reason!

Firstly, which program is best to get to grips with quickly and easy to produce great quality stuff? I guess we're looking at Final Cut, Adobe Premiere or Avid Media Composer - Avid would work better with Pro Tools?

Obviously, the synchronisation between the video and the music is key, so will taking an audio track from the mics, rather than the cameras themselves, and then placing the audio on top have an affect on this? How is it best to guarantee the best synchronisation between audio and visual?

We will have moving graphics for song titles etc so what program should be used to produce these?

Thirdly, whilst not a video-wizz (yet), I am quite mac-savy so how long should it take to produce 1 4 minute song (excluding audio mixing time), bearing in mind we are keeping everything extremely simple?

Thanks in advance,
Macbook30

I can't answer all of your questions, I might be able to give you some ideas, but you're working with Pro Tools, which, in all honesty - I have never used.

MacBook30 said:

Hi,
We will be using 1 professional video camera (roaming), and 4 HD cameras (static) to film the songs. I have never done anything with video before, so this may end in disaster! We want something similar to this, visual wise: YouTube - Train - Drops of Jupiter (Boyce Avenue acoustic cover) on iTunes

Click to expand...

No problem - except the one fun part, if you're using 1 "professional" camera - I assume some sort of 3 chip HD camera, and 3 "non-professional" cameras, the video quality may look very different between the three cameras which may give a more jarring experience when switching between cameras. You may end up doing quite a bit of post work to get color balances close enough between the 4 cameras so it doesn't look like 4 cameras that never should have been used together - you may get better results if you can do a white balance on all three cameras where you may only have to tweak a bit in post to make it look good.

MacBook30 said:

I to keep the video's as simple/professional as possible, editing/shot-wise, but want to really emphasise the live aspect. I must also point out before I begin asking questions that money is no object, as long as it is within reason!

Click to expand...

Simple is good, especially for a first time.

MacBook30 said:

Firstly, which program is best to get to grips with quickly and easy to produce great quality stuff? I guess we're looking at Final Cut, Adobe Premiere or Avid Media Composer - Avid would work better with Pro Tools?

Click to expand...

Personally, I'm a fan of Final Cut, but since Pro Tools appears to be owned by Avid, you would probably have better integration between Pro Tools and Avid Media Composer.

If you were to get Final Cut Studio, you'd probably end up having to export your audio to OMF, import that into Soundtrack Pro (which comes with FCS) to then get it into Final Cut Pro (FCP doesn't have a direct import of OMF, but it can export to OMF)

MacBook30 said:

Obviously, the synchronisation between the video and the music is key, so will taking an audio track from the mics, rather than the cameras themselves, and then placing the audio on top have an affect on this? How is it best to guarantee the best synchronisation between audio and visual?

Click to expand...

Actually, you're gonna have a bit of fun, you need to sync 4 different cameras AND a separate audio track. I've never had to sync an audio track like what you're going to have to do.

The easiest way would be if you had some way of using a time code generator to set the timecode for all of the video cameras as well as your audio recording deck (which I assume is a professional deck capable of recording time code) - but if the 3 roaming cameras are not pro level cameras, they may not be able to take an external feed for time code.

Usually for camera syncs, I tend to go low tech and use a still camera strobe that all of the video cameras can see the output from and then in post sync the flash together to get all of the cameras on the same frame (usually I end up using the audio from a single camera rather then a separate source, but I also am not working with professional musicians ) prior to cutting between cameras.

I would have to *guess* and this is a major guess here and could be very wrong - you could do some sort of sync of the audio to the videos by using a loud noise like a clapper - then you would need to see the wave form of the audio to find the peak and sync everything by that peak then move on. I don't know about Avid, but I know in Adobe Premiere you can view the timeline increments based on a much smaller increment then 1 frame of video which would make audio based syncing easier (this is also assuming you had all of the camera and your extra audio source mic feed at about the same location for when you did the clapper otherwise they may be off a little from each other based upon the time it takes for a sound wave to travel a distance from where the clapper is to where the audio input is - this is just a guess tho, the amount it may be off based upon the distance of the mic feed may be negligent)

This page is old, and has to do with Final Cut, but it has some information about working with multiple cameras that might help clear some things up for you: The Essentials of Multicam Editing in Final Cut Pro

MacBook30 said:

We will have moving graphics for song titles etc so what program should be used to produce these?

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Depending on the complexity of the moving graphics, you may be able to use the built in titling capabilities of the editor you choose, otherwise you may need to use some external tool to generate advanced titling effects. I don't know about Avid - I assume they have some tool, otherwise you could get Adobe After Effects (or if you used Final Cut Studio, you could use Motion which is included).

MacBook30 said:

Thirdly, whilst not a video-wizz (yet), I am quite mac-savy so how long should it take to produce 1 4 minute song (excluding audio mixing time), bearing in mind we are keeping everything extremely simple?

Click to expand...

How long to produce 1 4 minute video? That's a loaded question. It could take anywhere from minutes to hours to days. It all depends on how well you know your software, how well you envision what you want in your end result (ie: if you don't have a story board or some form of notes of how you want everything to fit together, you could spend hours and hours and hours looking and thinking of different combinations only to keep changing your mind because you don't have some form of plan for what you want), how much post you need to perform to get everything just the way you want it, etc. If you have little to no experience with video editors, I'd expect it to take a lot longer then if you had experience with them. You could always hire someone to take care of the video aspect for you so you can focus on the creative aspect - that would at least take the trouble of learning new software off your shoulders....

Thanks Nethfel.

We will probably end up recording into Logic Studio, so Final Cut is probably the best option. We need really quick turn-around times, so would you suggest using all the same cameras?

Yes, if you can afford it, get all same make/model of camera and color balance them similar to what's suggested in that article I linked (using the same target, etc.) so that way at least your camera output should look like it is supposed to instead of potentially going from a warm recording to a cold recording, etc. You may have to tweak colors a little, but not near what you would have to do with multiple different cameras (trust me, I've had to use multiple different cameras, it's no fun in post fixing color differences).

I will admit, I really like FCP - I've used several different nonlinear editors and it's probably one of my favorites (not like that says much as everyone likes different software for different reasons )

MacBook30 said:

We will have moving graphics for song titles etc so what program should be used to produce these?

Click to expand...

Motion, part of Final Cut Studio.