Sync two cameras, audio, and crossfade ? help?

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:34 am

I have only lurked for a couple of days, just registered, and still feel insignificant

, but have a question and time is getting to be an issue.

Brief history: Over the last 4 years or so I have acquired VS5 bundled with my older firewire card, upgraded to VS6, and then to VS7 but am still a mega neophyte (like pre-kindergarten). I just downloaded the VS11 trial to see if it would solve my problem.

My question, and by the way this is not a for-pay venture, but as a favor I just videoed my nieces wedding this past Friday and they headed out for da honeymoon, and I was hoping to have something presentable for their return this weekend or shortly after. I have over 16 hours in four days into it so far, and it's still kicking my fanny, mostly sych issues for now, but when that's done, the next step might bite my hiney if I use VS.

I had three realtime input sources ...

1. Camera 1 with an operator from a tripod (much to my dismay, it was video only I found out later)
2. Camera 2 (my ZR10 miniDV fixed in place on a tripod during the ceremony)
3. A manned sound board to mix the keyboard, 5 wireless mikes, and the output was recording directly to a CD.

Too good to be true, right? Nah.

I have the two AVI camera tracks captured (both MiniDV), one with audio (albeit not great but is useful for sync), one without audio, and the CD audio which I ripped to MP3, sounds fine and will be the audio realtime audio track. I still have the two original MiniDV tapes and the burned CD from the ceremony in case I gotta start over.

If anyone is interested in my saga, in the interest of keeping it short, I'll continue on in the next post.

With baited breath ...

Rick

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:39 am

please view:
Multi Camera Editing

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:55 am

OK sj,

Thanks, I'm headed that way.

There is megatons of info on this board, and I just haven't had time to assimilate it. I had about 5 windows open this afternoon because I kept getting sidetracked on other info that caught my attention

I will say that the sync is problem #1, and switching between camera 1 and camera 2 with VS will be next.

Rick

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:02 am

There is megatons of info on this board, and I just haven't had time to assimilate it.

I've been visiting this forum for about 4 years and haven't assimilated it all yet.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:05 am

I wrote most of those megatons and even I have problems finding my posts!

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:44 am

(edit ... you guys did three posts while I was typing "war and peace" here, thanks)

sjj1805,

After reading the first couple of steps , http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=17570 I can see I'm in trouble, mostly with sync. More than half of what I did is closeups, so sync is important.

I'm gonna fall back and regroup tomorrow, so feel free to ignore all of the below unless you are really bored:

Camera 1 started first, and had no audio input. This was trouble on my part as I had never seen the camera before and didn't check to make sure a mike was plugged in. The operator uses the camera (which is a new high dollar one) several times a week, but always feeds direct to the sound and video board so he didn't know to ask, and probably has never needed the onboard mike, or has used a tape in it.

Camera 2 (my ZR10) started about 4 minutes later, and is what I'm using as the main anchor track because it taped both video and audio so was easy to synch to the audio source by ear.

The board audio recording started about 30 seconds after Camera 1.

The Camera 1 tape, (he handed it to me when he was done) when played back on my camera (Camera 2) when I got home to capture, ran much slower (several minutes not counting start offset), and this is what really has me baffled. I found this out when I found an anchor point in its tape and compared the end of Camera 2 and the audio track. My camera 2 tape and the audio were nearly perfectly in sync, but the Camera 1 took longer. I don't really suspect Cam 1 quality is an issue since it's in the several thousand price range, but maybe my camera "didn't like" the tape from the other camera.

Like I say, I think I'm gonna start from scratch tomorrow and recapture the tapes and audio and make sure I didn't miss something.

Let me make sure I don't have any cockpit problems before I bug everybody again.

Rick

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:00 am

Remember one small golden rule - if it looks right it is right.
You can fool the eyes but not the ears. Therefore synch the video to the audio and not the other way round.

You have a few options available where you appear to have audio/video synch issues with close ups.
a. split the audio from the video so that one can be stretched of shortened without affecting the other. You can then slightly adjust the playback speed of the video.
b. If it is proving difficult to keep the sound and video in synch - cheat. Replace the sound with some music. You might even get away with keeping the sound but mixing in some music.
c. Another way to drag everything back in synch is to bung in one or two still images or a freeze frame here and there.

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:11 am

Lab and sj,

I didn't mean to be rude ... thanks for your prompt replies. I was still in the headscratch mode and stepped outside for a breather.

I started this fiasco with another editor just because I had it, and it has a face sorta like the Pro version of VS, (rubber bands to fade between video tracks), but it lacks the capability to watch two video screens at the same time to see when the "fade to" transitions would work best, so I had a flashback and thought of my old VS7. As it turns out, the few fades I want (maybe 5 or 6 in 35 minutes) are academic if I can't sync it since they are pretty close up.

I gotta go to bed and rethink ...

Rick

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:14 am

sj,

I just saw your post after I just typed the above. I'll re-read at work tomorrow, and again I thank you for your replies. I have burnout, and 5:20 comes early in the morn, and at age 61 it gets earlier every day

Rick

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:54 pm

Was all the equipment left running once started?
I would revisit your cd and output as wav.
I can't see how the guy didn't use onboard sound if nothing was plugged in, you need to plug something in to stop the onboard mic working, unless he had manual control over audio levels and set it to zero.
Are you sure his audio isn't recorded on a track you can't access with your cam?
What is his cam?
Did he record in LP?
I have never heard of SP tapes playing at different speeds in different cams, as this speed is set the same in all cams.
It may pay you to ask to borrow his cam to capture into your pc.

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:37 pm

skier,

Was all the equipment left running once started?
I would revisit your cd and output as wav.
I can't see how the guy didn't use onboard sound if nothing was plugged in, you need to plug something in to stop the onboard mic working, unless he had manual control over audio levels and set it to zero.
Are you sure his audio isn't recorded on a track you can't access with your cam?
What is his cam?
Did he record in LP?
I have never heard of SP tapes playing at different speeds in different cams, as this speed is set the same in all cams.
It may pay you to ask to borrow his cam to capture into your pc.

I left my camera (#2) running unattended, but he manned #1 for the whole ceremony.

I agree with you about WAV, no use starting out "lossy" to begin with. When I copied it, I "ripped" it, but will redo and capture to wav.

Camera #1 doesn't have an internal mike as do a lot of consumer cameras (like my ZR10), but instead it mounts on top of the camera and has a short cable that physically must be plugged in (neither it, nor the feed from the mixer board was plugged in ... my fault).

I don't recall the model of camera just now, will check this weekend, but it belongs to the church so I would hesitate to ask to borrow it. The operator runs it for Sunday services as a direct feed to the video board, and had never used it to record before. It's a miniDV camera and like you I thought they all recorded at the same speed, so I didn't check. Regardless, I would think the recording time should've been the same in either case unless it has a "slow motion" setting which I suppose is possible.

edit>> I think I remember Cam #1 being a Sony similar to a DSR-PD170 and I just looked at a feature list for it and saw this:

DVCAM Format for Professional Shooting Environments

DVCAM is Sony's professional version of the ubiquitous DV format. The camera comes equipped with iLink for fast ingest into almost any non-linear editing system. DVCAM runs the tape at a higher speed than standard MiniDV, creating a more robust video signal and ensuring little or no dropouts.

Hmmm Maybe that's it.

I'm going to start from scratch tonight or tomorrow night and recapture the whole thing, using VS11 start to finish.

Thanks, I appreciate your response,

Rick

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:14 pm

It might pay you to take pc to cam if you don't want to borrow it. Maybe if you have a laptop and external drive if you don't have much internal space?

I've never used a pd170, didn't realise their mics had to be plugged in!

I think the dvcam aspect may be your problem, but LP speeds vary from cam to cam even in the same brand, so the pd170 LP speed may not be the same as the VX2100, even though they are sisters, most LP between brands is so incompatible that they don't even play.

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:44 am

skier-hughes,

That was a guess on the camera model, and probably wasn't correct, but I'll find out this weekend.

I got the two video tracks and the audio re-captured to WAV. I'd start the capture, run back to my plumbing honey-do project, come back after about 25 minutes or so, and found that VS11 was stopping the capture about 5 minutes or so into the tape. After the 3rd time I tossed in the towel and went back to Nero. Anyway that part's done, so I'll start again tomorrow night.

Rick

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:40 pm

Has anyone copied from one camera to another using the 1394 interface, or can it be done?

I was thinking about revisiting cam-1 (above) so I don't have to ask to borrow it, and playing back the tape that it recorded, and re-record it on my camera, which should clear up my speed issues and hopefully suffer minimal loss of quality.

My camera has the usual 4-pin connector, and think the other one does also. If that's the case would the 1394 connection require a "crossover" cable (if there is such a thing), or would a standard off the shelf 4-pin to 4-pin cable work?

Rick

kermitdafrog · Post by **kermitdafrog** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:46 pm

I guess I can withdraw the previous question ... I stumbled onto this at the 1394ta.org site:

What does peer-to-peer mean? (top)
1394 is a peer-to-peer interface. This allows dubbing from one camcorder to another without the need for a computer. It also allows multiple computers to share a given peripheral without any special support in the peripheral or the computers. It's another important reason why 1394 is the digital interface of choice and why its acceptance is growing

Cool

Rick