Technical advice needed

aldevis

Surrealist Contributor.
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London

I decided to start a series of audio/video recordings in various locations.
It is not supposed to be a professional series of videos or a CD quality recording, just something expressly made for the web
I will not be able to afford someone to help me all the times, so I will need to set up a light and easy-to-use audio/video recording system.
First attempt was made using:
- Zoom H4 (borrowed), internal microphones + 2 external on separate tracks. In the future, a laptop with a 4 tracks interface might replace it.
- Obsolete video camera. The mp2 format gave me some conversion headache: funny things happened using new and old QT players, iMovie, vlc... eventually youtube understood a .mov format generated by Logic from a vlc converted file. A better reasonably priced videocam must be in the pipeline. Anyone tried the Zoom one?
- Some stage lights from the side. They balanced the lamp in the video keeping the dim feel. I have been lucky they had that at the school.

Video has been made at the school where I teach (former mansion of the Earl of Sandwich) and everyone was nice and helpful without rushing us. In the next locations I might need to consider setup time as an issue.

Any advice is welcome.
 
Thanks FJ, it seems that I am missing something from my iMovie version.
Using a laptop, like in the video, for everything is probably the best option. I will look into better usb cams too.
Nice playing btw very Coltrane if you don't mind me saying...
😳
 
The audio quality is good (on my headphones at least), a bit hot in places from the piano, but that can be controlled for by mic placement/levels. There seemed to be a bit of hiss at the beginning, which may be an autogain somewhere kicking in (or it may be that the hiss is present all of the way through the recording and is hidden by the music. It seems to vanish, though, at around 17 secs). It's not too loud, could easily be notched out afterwards if you can't eliminate it at source. The video quality is low (you know that), so that's where I'd upgrade. From what you say I presume that you'll want something that plugs in to the laptop to record, and I can't help with that I'm afraid as we use a couple of standalone camcorders for recording here at the university.

Our lighting rig is a portable 3 spot kit, but most of the time I'll just use what's available in a room (making sure that the curtains are closed so that any change in the light outside doesn't effect the lighting inside). I like the way that the spot that is on you falls on the wall next to the standard lamp, and almost looks as if it is the lighting from that lamp.

Nice playing by the way. the Earl of Sandwich would be proud 😀
 
The audio quality is good (on my headphones at least), a bit hot in places from the piano, but that can be controlled for by mic placement/levels. There seemed to be a bit of hiss at the beginning, which may be an autogain somewhere kicking in (or it may be that the hiss is present all of the way through the recording and is hidden by the music. It seems to vanish, though, at around 17 secs). It's not too loud, could easily be notched out afterwards if you can't eliminate it at source.

Actually I willingly did that, fading out the camera track and fading in the microphones, to avoid that "fake" feel I sometimes hear on youtube. I might get rid of it: maybe it is not a good idea.
I had the piano microphone clipping (need to get used to the Zoom gain levels) so I had to play with the LR track.
Next session will definitely have a better audio.
Video is still a guess, I am not a "visual" person.
 
First of all, this really isn't my taste in music so I'll not pass comment, other than I love your tone and control over that sax! Lovely and very clever too!
Now regarding the capture of the video and audio, you already noted the clipping on the louder piano sections and addressed them so I don't think that, from an amature point of view, using basic kit, you could really improve on this. I love the quality, I feel the lighting works really well. In my opinion, and it is just that, I think you've done a great job. It looks and sounds fabulous. Well done.
 

Similar threads... or are they? Maybe not but they could be worth reading anyway 😀

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