Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 I'm no video guy. The digital cameras with auto everything are about as far as I go. But lately I've been messing with creating youtube videos for the Songwriting Forum (moderated by Mr. Blue). These youtube vids done on an iMac in Photo Booth are so easy to create, upload and share for feedback with regards to songwriting. I'm am enamored with this simple, powerful medium. What I'd like to do do though, is be able to record a .mov with the built in camera and mic, then... while hearing the audio from the first "track". The first camera, record not just audio, but the video from subsequent takes. In other words... a little live demo that has some spice. Live overdubs with the correlating video. Then do a simple cut and render to .mov. Like this... [YOUTUBE]REL5R-Ls3oU[/YOUTUBE] She's clearly monitoring her original take and doing the video equivalent of an overdub with monitor playback via phones. The monitoring etc. I got, but being able to playback vid and record vid all via the built in iMac camera and mic? iMovie won't do this will it? How is it done? Cheaply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 Hee hee. Come on Lee, you should have figured this out. Record the audio first. Then lipsync on the video. KNPevuwWA6A And yes, I use iMovie for all my editing. Works like a charm. You can import the audio track separately, and do whatever you want with the vid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 No, no... I got that. What I want is all audio to be captured with the video. No lip sync. This is real. Just like when you do a one off on the mac into the built ins. Every take includes video. In sync with previous takes. Like a multitrack recorder. A live demo. But with overdubs and corresponding actual location video. Then edit the final from the various takes and overdubs. Each video take contains the location audio. I switch video and mix all the various audio takes. Like a cowbell overdub, but it's really my video take of me playing the cowbell. You hear the audio from all the video takes all through the song but the video obviously switches to the various takes. Am I making sense? No lip sync. Note in the video I attached of the very cool Julia Nunes, that she's doing an overdub and it's real. You see the video of the actual take. There's no lip syncing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 Am I making sense? No lip sync. You're making complete sense. But you're going to have to lip sync something. Understand why? The audio needs to be some kind of contiguous file. Just like the gal in your example, when she's singing harmony with herself. At some point, she's pulling together the melody and harmony overdub. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 The way to do it like you want is to grab your various sections of the song using the video cam, then export the audio, mix it down, and re-import it into iMovie. Then sync up the original video footage with the new mixed track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 You're making complete sense. But you're going to have to lip sync something. Understand why? The audio needs to be some kind of contiguous file. Just like the gal in your example, when she's singing harmony with herself. At some point, she's pulling together the melody and harmony overdub. Sure, I get that. What I'm saying is... The original take is just a guitar and voice and me singing and playing on a live video. That audio always stays. Then I play back and do a take of me singing a harmony while listening to the first video track's audio. The guitar and voice. Repeat. All the takes audio is mixed and plays even when its correlating video isn't. But when the cowbell comes in I switch to the cowbell video take. When I switch back to my ugly mug playing the guitar, the cowbell stays in... ??? See what I'm saying. This is no lip syncing in hers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 The way to do it like you want is to grab your various sections of the song using the video cam, then export the audio, mix it down, and re-import it into iMovie. Then sync up the original video footage with the new mixed track. Damn. I had that figured but thought there must be a more "multitrack" like way of handling it. In other words, how do you play back the bed audio from "video take 1" to do a cowbell overdub with cowbell video? All in the video software? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 Wait... I got it maybe. Strip the audio from "video take 1". That becomes the music bed in video terms. Now record live video takes to the music bed? In i Movie? Does that work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 See what I'm saying. Yes indeed. This is no lip syncing in hers. It's just an edit of another take of her doing the song. That's what I'm telling ya: at some point, the audio from the takes (whether recorded on camera or off camera or whatever) has to be combined. And then it needs to be re-integrated with the earlier take, just like any overdub. Whether or not she's lip syncing doesn't matter: she still would have to re-import the audio tracks as a single stereo (presumably) file and use it for the final edit of the film. With me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 He want's something like this (only played and sung well), right? (Pardon the lugubrious reverb. I do not know what I was thinking.)LpkU6qA1hpA iMovie sounds like the ticket. You must be able to use your Mac's cam directly in iMovie, yes? Even the clumsy and incredibly dorky Windows Movie Maker lets you do that. That said, I won't pretend to understand all the thinking at Apple. I can't figure out for the life of me why the iSite thing defaults to shooting side-flipped video and pix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 With me? Yeah. Not so quick and easy for a songwriting demo. Hmmm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 iMovie sounds like the ticket. You must be able to use your Mac's cam directly in iMovie, yes? Even the clumsy and incredibly dorky Windows Movie Maker lets you do that. That said, I won't pretend to understand all the thinking at Apple. I can't figure out for the life of me why the iSite thing defaults to shooting side-flipped video and pix. Nice guitar playing, that's cool. Yes, so you're playing to a previous video take. I'd want to do shot switces instead of the picture in picture but yes, the same concept. Like in the Julia Nunes video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 Wait... I got it maybe. Strip the audio from "video take 1". That becomes the music bed in video terms. Now record live video takes to the music bed? In i Movie? Does that work? Um... I don't know. As I said, I make life easy by not trying to force iMovie to do audio tricks. As you know, you can indeed kill the audio of a video clip entirely and import new audio to go over it. What I don't get is how you're going to monitor yourself from the first video take without it seeping into the second one, since these tools weren't designed for professional audio applications. So I'd make life a helluva lot easier and record all the damn audio into Pro Tools, export that to the vid, and lip sync. But I think you're on the right path. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rudolf von Hagenwil Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 Wait... I got it maybe. Strip the audio from "video take 1". That becomes the music bed in video terms. Now record live video takes to the music bed? In i Movie? Does that work? editing wise in iMovie, yes To add audio to your movie: - Click Media, and then click the Audio button.- Move the playhead to the frame where you want the music to begin. To use music from a CD, you must first import the song into iTunes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 What I don't get is how you're going to monitor yourself from the first video take without it seeping into the second one, What's so cool about little Julia's vid is you see her wearing a simple, single ear bud for monitoring her previous takes. Paging Julia Nunes! I'm going to email that kid. She's too smart for me. Great singer too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 Nice guitar playing, that's cool. Yes, so you're playing to a previous video take. I'd want to do shot switces instead of the picture in picture but yes, the same concept. Like in the Julia Nunes video. FWIW, I typically shoot my vid with my snapshot cam while simultaneously recording into my rig. I do the audio recording right in Vegas (the sub $100 plebe version, not pro). My current cam, a ~$150 Cannon, doesn't have great audio, but unlike my last POS Nikon cam (which died not long afer leaving warranty), the onboard clock is reasonably close to accurate, and there are no significant vid-audio sync issues over the course of 3 or 4 minutes working against audio recorded into my MOTU 828mkII. (The Nikon was 'off' about a second a minute, meaning it was only barely usable without either video or audio stretching. And the sound was a tiny, tinny crackle. It was really junk.) But it could be done. IIRC, the vid above was shot with the Nikon. When it's time for the overdub, I transfer the just shot vid from the cam to vegas, line it up with the audio, listen to that and record my overdub. Switching up shots would be easy in Vegas. The cheap version only has 4 video and 4 (stereo) audio tracks, but, as long as you're not doing a video overdub version of Bohemian Rhapsody, you'll probably be able to do OK. You can overlay video clips in an individual track (cross-fades and such) so those 4 tracks don't get eaten up by simple things like crossfades. If you were to look at, say, that vid project above in Vegas, you'd see two video tracks (with their interleaved audio tracks yoked to them), and two extra audio tracks. I don't use the cam audio so I ignore those. In that project I simply use a video overlay to do the inset, but you could just as easily cut back and forth between the tracks for intercuts. Another handy idea is to get some utility cutaway shots that can be edited in to break up boredom from the static cameras. Those should not show any movement (lips, hands) that has to sync with audio... basically they're CYA material for when you want to cut away from the main video for a moment. They can be a REAL lifesaver when you're trying, post-facto, to make something entertaining out of a one cam video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 What's so cool about little Julia's vid is you see her wearing a simple, single ear bud for monitoring her previous takes. One thing I've done is recorded camera audio/video, then exported the original audio to an audio app. Then done another video take and exported that audio. Then mix the audio. Then bring it back in, and doing a free sync to the orginal video. That would work for this. Like Rudolf says, you just need to import the audio into iTunes, and you can then bring it into iMovie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 Clever Mr. Blue. This is getting to be too much like work. I don't mean that flippantly either. I was taken by how valuable recording an iMovie was for writing. Instant feedback and documentation. Easy upload to share. Easier than soundclick. So ironically, the video was easier to share works in progress than any quick audio app I've used. iMac... instant. Upload to youtube. Link to thread. Done. I'm getting valuable feedback from the songwriting board in minutes. If it were possible to easily do an overdub, harmony, a second guitar, how cool that would be for fleshing out ideas. the video switching is just too cool and I see a lot of potential for sharing music in a nice crossbreed of live takes with video and overdub technology. Lo-High Tech media sharing. I want this in an app. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 Don't forget, Lee, that YouTube can capture video live. Me, I'm not that much a one take wonder -- although the video thing pushes me hard in that direction. (Since I typically find it marginally easier to transfer the vid by removing the SD mini-card than hooking it up by USB -- the mem card actually pops out a little easier than the USB cable goes in. But it does cut down on my inclination to do take after take.) And my cam does not do double duty as a web cam. (I did buy a $15 webcam but it was serious garbage. I didn't think they made computer add-ons as bad as it is anymore. The old Logitech 'ball-cam' I had 10 years ago that hooked up via serial port -- remember those? -- was far better.) What I'd love would be a good webcam type cam that stayed attached to the computer and could track straight into Vegas at the same time I was tracking audio in via my rig. And then the process would be as straightforward as a regular audio overdub session. (This assumes the separately but simultaneously captured audio and video would be in close enough sync, of course.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 7, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted December 7, 2009 What I'd love would be a good webcam type cam that stayed attached to the computer and could track straight into Vegas at the same time I was tracking audio in via my rig. And then the process would be as straightforward as a regular audio overdub session. (This assumes the separately but simultaneously captured audio and video would be in close enough sync, of course.) Which is essentially what I'm looking for in the Mac world. I take it, from what I've heard at least, that Vegas operated like this. More like a audio multitrack DAW as its roots were exactly that. I remember it as an audio only app... ...do that with video and that's what were talking here. A means to easily record overdubs but with video intact. Mix all audio and video in any way you see fit. It should exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members David Guitar Posted March 26, 2020 Members Share Posted March 26, 2020 I found this forum because I have the same question. I'd like to record the four parts of a chorale by myself and be able to monitor the original while I play the next three parts. I know it works on acapella on the iPhone/iPad but I want to use my Mac. Any updates? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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