At the moment my method to make guitar videos is very clunky: record audio tracks with Garageband (or equivalent program such as Cubase), record video on phone at the same time and then transfer the video & try to sync the two with imovie (or equivalent). It is quite time consuming and every time I have to reset everything for a new take I die inside a little.
I would prefer something more direct, e.g. a software that allows me to capture from the computer webcam at the same time as I do the audio recording (doing that separately with things like quick time is too much work for my laptop).
No firsthand experience, but I found the thread below where someone recommends Sony Vegas.
If you’re on Mac, I guess you’d have to run it in a Windows virtual machine using VMWare or some such.
I don’t know if Adobe Premiere (available native on Mac) is as full-featured for multitrack audio as Vegas is. There’s some discussion of it at the second link.
A low-tech approach might be to use a software other than your audio software to record video and audio simultaneously (most video recorder software will let you select your audio interface device as the audio source). Monitor a click track (or any mix of your existing tracks that lets you hear the beat clearly) to play in time. At the beginning of your take, use a visual indicator like hand claps, or a clapboard, or a light flash on the beat of the monitored click track so you can line the video up with the monitored clicktrack precisely when you go to merge your take with other audio tracks.
In addition to the visual reference to the click track, you could also start your take with some staccatto notes on the beat of the monitored click track to create a reference against the click track within the audio of your take.
Broadcast software like Wirecast or Mimolive does this, but if you have any kind of modern setup with amp sim, eq or fx in Logic or GB, then you still have to run Logic or GB simultaneously and feed that audio into the broadcast app using something like Soundflower, accounting g for synchronization delay. More importantly, recording live video to disk is a major processor hog and only the fastest machines can do it. So when we do work this way, such as for live broadcasts, we record to an external video recorder. See our blog post on the Batio interview that for our complete setup.
Bottom line, for all offline studio stuff, separate sound and video is the simplest way to go. No time recording limit, minimal computer processor load and disk usage, etc.
Alternatively, you can mix your sound and feed it into your camera as the audio input. That’s probably the simplest if you know for sure exactly what your audio mix will be and you’re pretty sure you won’t need any more fx.
One other thing to point out: there now exists software that automates the syncing process. We do this in Final Cut Pro X on Mac, which has a built in feature to synchronize clips. You just need to make sure the camera records audio too, but the quality doesn’t matter since it’s only used for syncing.
We can select the camera track, plus separate audio track(s), tell it to sync them up, and it lines them up in a timeline. If the recording is fairly clean it usually does quite a good job. Of course this doesn’t solve the problems of having to remember to hit record in multiple places, and manage additional media, but at least removes one pain point in a tedious process!
The software PluralEyes is a standalone app that does this and works with both Mac and Windows. It is pro software though so it’s pricey…
Adding to that, yeah, regarding clapboards, etc., look up “2-pop” sync for old school synchronization audio blips. In the absence of auto synchronization features in software, I’d be sure to have a blip at the end (or in between takes) as well for alignment over time. Otherwise, what Troy said.
These are good things to know and research. I have Sony Vegas but have not delved to deep into it. I have a Digidesign Eleven Rack and Pro Tools 12. I was thinking of using my iPhone camera to capture video and sound, but also capture audio via 11R and Pro Tools. I found a clap board app and it actually makes a clap sound and has a digital timer as well. It would be nice to capture main Audio in Vegas to eliminate Pro Tools use. Then all I would need to do is import video/audio from iPhone and sync with main audio, theoretically. Plan on toying with this soon. Uber guy gotta’ make the rent money! LOL!
Whoops I should have been paying better attention, just realized this topic had become a bit of a spam magnet! Deleted the last couple posts which I missed earlier but on second look were clearly spam links. (If anyone notices suspect posts/links elsewhere on the forum, feel free to flag!)
Locking this for now to dissuade further spammers but if anyone would like to re-open for additional discussion just send me a note and I can do that no prob.
