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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
 Posted - 02/07/2009 : 12:07:27 AM
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Fran posted a most beautiful version of thi mele as an honor to his friend, Lance McCollum, who just passed away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9KyIWjff2k&feature=subscription
Fran, the reason I did not wait until Sunday's list, is that I am hoping you could wala`au a bit abou how you made your video.
You have the same camera I have. And Paul has the Zoom H2, which certainly makes better sound than the flip camera. This software that you said you need to have to synch them together, -- is it a commercial software you gotta buy? Where would it be available. Is it a pain the the tush to record this way? I mean with the Flip Mino, its pretty much fool proof even for one like me, but it sure is hard to record stuff like the dulcimer cause nomo good sound. The dulcimer comes too quiet.
When you amplify your guitar, do you have the Zoom by the amp or does output plug into the zoom?
I think some of us (well, OK, just me), need a lesson in making decent sound on You Tube.
Mahalo if you can be persuaded to share your recording engineer expertise with us.
Mahalo nui loa.
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Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2009 : 07:35:34 AM
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Thanks for the nice comment on the video, Wanda. I'm happy to offer whatever knowledge I have.
I don't amplify the instrument, I just place the H2 about 18" from the lower bout of the guitar. It's just outside the viewing angle of the camera. Since the H2 has directional mics, placing it very close to the instrument emphasizes the bass, due to proximity effect, so I try to stay some distance away. Another alternative is to move the H2 closer to the guitar, then use a filter to reduce the bass after recording.
After setting up and starting the video and audio recorders, I clap so I have a synchronization point. Then play the song. Then do the same steps over and over until I get through the song without embarrassing myself <grin>.
Then I move the video (in .mp4 format) and audio (in .wav or .mp3) to my computer.
I have used various software for editing clips and merging audio - Adobe Premier Elements, Nero, and Windows Movie Maker in the past, but none of these (in the versions I have) will handle the 720p HD(ish) video the Flip Mino HD creates. I found a free program called AVIdemux which handles the X.264 MP4 video format very nicely. In fact, since I only trimmed the start and end and replaced the audio, the software did all the processing without decoding and re-encoding the video. This seems to be one of the tricks to maintaining good video quality.
You can download the software here: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
The interface of AVIdemux is a bit underwhelming, but it's quite effective for these simple tasks:
Open the video in AVIdemux
Switch the audio track to the external file created by the H2.
Find the "clap" marker.
Adjust the offset between the video and audio until the clap sound matches the clap movement.
Save the video with the new audio track, I give it a new name so I can always get back to the original.
Open the newly saved file and trim the start and end.
Save the trimmed audio separately to a new file.
Save the trimmed video (with audio) to a new file.
Pull the audio into my audio editor (Audacity is free and the beta version works well).
Normalize, filter, compress, add time based effects, whatever seems like fun. In this video I only normalized to -1dB.
Save the audio to a new file.
Finally, go back to AVIdemux, open the trimmed video, replace the audio with the edited and improved version. No need to align them, because both the video and audio were trimmed in the previous step.
Save for the last time to a new video file.
It seems like a lot of steps, but using these free tools this way preserves the video quality while raising the audio quality.
The latest specs on YouTube allow the uploads up to 1 GB, my 3 minute video was only about a quarter GB. Even so the upload took a pretty long time, even with our fairly fast cable modem.
There's a world of free video tools out there. I've been learning by browsing through this forum: http://forum.videohelp.com/
If you have any questions, shoot them to me. I'm a long way from an expert, but I'm happy to help if I can.
Fran |
E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi
Slack Key Guitar in California - www.kaleponi.com
Slack Key on YouTube
Homebrewed Music Blog |
Edited by - Fran Guidry on 02/07/2009 07:40:16 AM |
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