Best way to make a performance DVD?

[ScottFB]

Hello
I'm not sure if this is a proper post for this forum but......
I'm interested in making a digital video recording of an acoustic guitarist's house concert performance but I want record the audio in ProTools and ultimately create a DVD of the show. I'll be using a Canon professional DV camera and I have an Digi 002R LE system using PT 7.3.1.
Can anyone recommend the best way to go about doing this project? Can I even do it with my PT system? Or is it an extremely simple procedure that I'm making way more difficult than it needs to be!?!?!!?
Any advice and/or specific procedures would be very helpful!
Thanks,
Scott

[Slim Shady]

You're better off recording the whole thing on your camera, then importing the audio from the camera video in PT and messing with it later. Without some extra gear purchases (including swapping out your 002 for an 003 amongst other things) you'd have no way to keep your camera and PT locked together while recording, and if you then later tried to lay the PT audio against the video it wouldn't be in sync.

[surflounge]

record as much multitrack tracks possible on the side, then mix it with the audio on your video in post production.

[danijel]

Record the audio to your 002 and send it to your camera as well (from the 002 outs). The recording on 002 has a fair chance to be higher quality. Import the cam audio along with the video to your PT project, and if there are any sync issues, you'll be able to fix them visually. But they will probably be almost insignificant.
Off course, if you plan to make a living off those kind of gigs, look into true sync-locking, as Slim Shady suggests.

[ScottFB]

Thanks to everyone who replied!
-Scott

[RangerJay]

You can record the audio separately into Pro Tools, mix, and drop it in your video project. It shouldn't be too hard to match up IF you record at 48,000 (not 44,100) for sample rate.

Most decent video editing apps will provide extra tracks, and you can move your audio waveform to match it with the camera waveform, then duck the camera audio when you want the better sound.

Since the camera records at 48,000 (unless you tell it NOT to, so check that beforehand), it's all digital, and it will match up. I suggest that you do a little test before the gig to make sure it works.

You can also send a mix into the camera from your board, if you are using one. This will give you better sound. However, if you are using several microphones and tracks, you lose out on the ability to tweak individual tracks in post-production.

Stick with 48,000 (you can use 24-bit in PTs, the camera will probably be limited to 16-bit, or even 12-bit if not set up properly). Sample rate is important here, and it makes for less headaches later if you start out correctly.

[stoneinapond]

Does anyone think it would be useful to do some kind of clapperboard at the commencement of taping, mostly for the audio reference?

[RangerJay]

That's the "traditional" way, with roots in analog recording. If you are using a digital camera and digital audio, it's not that hard to match things up. You can watch the guitarist's downstroke in the video and match up your mix file quite easily in your video editing application.

Just match it up as best you can and then move further down to the end of the song and watch for a mismatch. There is a little room for slop, but not a lot.

Also, if there is video editing involved, or multi-camera operations, things get dicier. That's why there is a whole industry built around sound for picture. If this is your first try, you will learn a lot.

[stoneinapond]

Originally Posted by RangerJay

That's the "traditional" way, with roots in analog recording. If you are using a digital camera and digital audio, it's not that hard to match things up. You can watch the guitarist's downstroke in the video and match up your mix file quite easily in your video editing application...

Whether it's analog or digital, I think that any time you separate video from audio without a timecode reference (if that is what the OP ends up doing), you are asking for trouble.

Yes, if the guitarist makes some obvious gestures, and as a guitarist I'm sure he certainly will, those can help in syncing. But I still think that some simple audio/video reference generated at the beginning of a take saves time and headaches down the line.

[Carl Kolchak]

Virtual Clapperboard :

Make sure both the camera and Pro Tools are running at 48khz sampling rate.

Start Pro Tools and the camera recording.

Have Pro Tools display the Big Counter (set to SMPTE if you have DV Toolkit or Minutes / Seconds if not).

Film the screen of your laptop making sure you can clearly read the counter - then haul ass over to wherever you need to be to film the performance.

Important : Once you are rolling, do not stop either the camera or Pro Tools until the performance is finished.

Now you can import the video in to Pro Tools and just align it so that the picture of the counter matches the timeline (there shouldn't be any noticeable drift even though they're not clocked together), then mix away and move on to picture editing.

That's one guerrilla technique that you can use for multiple cameras (if anyone does accidentally stop a camera, just grab another shot of the laptop screen and carry on).

Make sure you do several technical rehearsals / test runs well before the day you need to put it in to practice, so that you're completely comfortable with the process from beginning to end.

Hope that is of some use.