good capture unit

studioLord wrote on 6/9/2006, 2:17 PM
I am doing a seminar for a friend at the end of the month. We are going to use 2 cameras with a Videonics mixer. What do you recommend as the capture device? I have been looking at a DVDRAM that records for 360 minutes.
Each section of the seminar is about two hours long, so that would put two or three sessions on one DVDRAM disc. There are two days of the seminar and evening sessions / gatherings. I would also like to get "additional footage" outside of the seminars for add in pieces.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
If possible, I would use this setup on a fairly regular basis.
As budget allows I would like to move up in quality, so advise any suggestions on equipment from $200 to $2000 if you can.
Thank you
John

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 6/9/2006, 3:15 PM
If it was me, i wouldn't mix the video on-site. I'd take a couple of laptops and capture direct to hard drive from both cameras. That way you can make your camera angle choices after the fact and avoid mistakes.

DVDRAM holding 360 minutes sounds very heavily compressed. You'll probably be disappointed trying to edit the video from it.
studioLord wrote on 6/9/2006, 6:23 PM
What if you don't have a couple of laptops? I'm doing good at this point to have the budget to go 700 miles and shoot with two borrowed camcorders and a small mixer. There ought to be a way to do this with out being a Spielberg or a Ron Howard. I have about $200 to spend at the most on this. What about the DVDRAM recorder? You said i would be disappointed. What if i bought two of them and recorded to each camera? I wouldn't have to use the mixer and each camera operator could decide what to or not to shoot and then i could edit the result/ how about that for a game plan? They are only $150 each (cheapest model)
I'll wait for your advice before I decide. you have givren me good info on several things.
Thanks
John
Chienworks wrote on 6/10/2006, 4:11 AM
It's not the pre-mixing that makes DVDRAM a bad idea, it's the DVDRAM itself. It probably records an MPEG-2 version of the video in order to fit that much on the disc. MPEG is highly compressed and is a bear to edit. You'll loose a lot of quality, especially since the MPEG encoding is done in real time on obviously cheap hardware. These recorders might be ok for timeshifting TV shows, but the image quality has got to be marginal at best. Add to that that putting MPEG on the timeline in Vegas is tortuously slow to edit. It takes ages for the timeline to update when you scroll or move the cursor around. And, on top of that, your finished result will be rendering from MPEG to some other format which compounds the image quality problems greatly.

If you wanna go cheap, just record right onto the tapes in the camcorders. True, you can't get 2 hours on a DV tape so your camera operators will have to switch tapes at some point. Just make sure they don't switch at the same time and you'll be fine. Do your video mixing in Vegas after you get home.
studioLord wrote on 6/10/2006, 11:20 AM
Thanks for the much needed info. I almost bought the DVDRAM unit. I think we are leaning toward taking two computers and a Canopus110 and a Plextor capture box and go direct to hard drive with the live footage. You had recommended two laptops before. The best I can do toward getting to that scenario is to take two of my desktops and do it that way. Otherwise, we are back to buying 16 VHS-C tapes to capture with.
John
Chienworks wrote on 6/10/2006, 12:13 PM
Ah, i see the issue now. VHS-C is probably one of the least useful recording formats ever. I had wrongly assumed you had MiniDV camcorders. Sorry to hear you're stuck with that. It is possible that DVDRAM might have just a tiny bit better image quality than VHS, but probably not much. And you'd still have all the MPEG issues with it anyway.
studioLord wrote on 6/12/2006, 4:08 PM
I think we are going to buy a 320 Gig hard drive and use the mixer. I know.... we won't have near the flexibility, but we will get good video. I will be on the mixer and it is a "teaching seminar", so we don't have top worry about too much "action"... Any other ideas on this "production"? You have been a tremendous help... Thank you so much.
\John