OT: On the fly recording & editing system

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 7:03 AM

Gentlemen. I hope someone in this forum can advice me on my new endeavor. Our figure skating club is hosting it's first ever USFSA sanctioned competition and I was asked if I could provide the video services for the skaters and parents. The tricky part is this. It's a 3 day competition with over 300 skaters of which a good portion has to skate twice making it roughly 500 events. Every event is from roughly 2min. for the lower levels up to 5min. for the higher levels with approx. 2-3min. break in between.
What I would like to provide is a service where you can collect the skaters own video as soon as possible. So I am looking for a system that can record from the camera or a video mixer in case we use more then one camera, and at the same time allows for the already recorded portion to be edited; editing on the fly so to speak. Has anyone done this before? Any advice is highly appreciated. As final delivery I was thinking of USB drives, DVDs and YT uploads.

Comments

VidMus wrote on 2/18/2016, 7:23 AM

How about multiple sets of SD cards. One or more people edits from one or more sets of SD cards while another person records on them.

www.dannyfye.com

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 7:42 AM

Yes, that was my initial idea. We have about every hour a break where the ice is resurfaced and that is when we can change cards. I was hoping that there would be a system that allows for recording and editing at the same time. The problem with the card swapping is that I can't have a multi camera setup unless we use an external recorder after the mixer and change recording media on that one.

Marco. wrote on 2/18/2016, 8:26 AM

You could do this with Vegas Pro if you had an XDCAM Professional Media Station. StreamChase feature was added in Vegas Pro 11 build 510/511.

Current system used in broadcast houses is EVS. There is another upcoming system - SlomoTV.

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 8:39 AM

Marco

How a setup with Vegas Pro look like? What additional hardware is required?

Marco. wrote on 2/18/2016, 8:48 AM

I never had a chance to test this feature. Where we use those XDCAM stations we don't use Vegas. And where I use Vegas, I don't use those XDCAM stations.
What it should work like is you connect the XDCAM Media Station (XDS-PD2000, XDS-PD1000 or XDS-1000) via Ethernet (or USB?) with your Windows/Vegas system and rest of workflow is just like the regular XDCAM workflow in Vegas Pro. Except the Pro Media Station no further hardware should be required.

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 8:52 AM

Weel, at a price tag of over $30k it's out of the question and I don't think it does what I am looking for. From what I am reading in the Vegas manual, to would ingest clips and while they are ingested you can work on those already ingested. That isn't quite what I had in mind.

rs170a wrote on 2/18/2016, 9:34 AM

OldSmoke, have you considered a NewTek Tricaster?
There's an inexpensive one (the TriCaster 40) for $5,000.00 US on the B&H site.
More info is available on NewTek site.
Here are the tech specs on it.
The only potential drawback is that to do any post work on individual performances, you'll have to grab each segment from the Tricaster's hard drive with a USB stick and bring it into a laptop (running Vegas of course!).
If that's not needed, throw in a USB stick, copy it and hand it over to the happy customer :)

Mike

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 10:06 AM

Thanks Mike!

I was looking into something like this, the Roland VR-50HD together with a Atomos recorder. I am surprised that the TriCaster 40 only has HD component inputs. Anyways, there are several places where I can rent a TriCaster but the problem remains the same, and maybe there is no low budget solution to it. It doesn't allow copying information from the recorded material while it is still recording. I do not intend to make any changes to the recorded materials, other then splitting it into events and the only time I may use Vegas is to make DVDs if someone still wants that kind of media.

Marco. wrote on 2/18/2016, 10:07 AM

"StreamChase" means, accessing and editing a file while it's still being recorded from a live source or ingested from a disc. I think it should fullfill your needs (e.g. in the broadcast area it's used for editing live sport events etc. while the signal still being recorded) though - yes - it's very expensive. It only makes sense if you already own such a device or can rent it for a reasonable price.

Hopefully I'll be able to test the StreamChase workflow with Vegas Pro within the next weeks.

GregFlowers wrote on 2/18/2016, 11:32 AM

What about old fashioned HDV cameras? Can record the livestream directly from the camera to a computer with firewire with the tape as backup. Old fashioned but effective. Not sure how you would do several cameras into one computer simultaneously though.

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 11:42 AM

Greg
A single camera setup is not a problem but we have to provide as a minimum a 1280x720 59.94p SDI signal for the judge's own reply system too.

farss wrote on 2/18/2016, 2:22 PM

There's cameras such as the FS5 that'll record to two SDXC cards, also has a HD-SDI output.
The HD-SDI output can feed the judges. One SD card can handle a day's recording. The other one is swapped out to someone who copies the clips to USB flash drives and then clears the card ready to be swapped through the camera.

Bob.

edit:

I'd set the timecode generator to Time Of Date then the person copying the clips to the USB drives can verify which clips belong to which competitor using something like Catalyst Browse. The biggest challenge is organisation and logging, such events rarely go exactly to schedule or more importantly maintain planned sequence so someone needs to be logging things.

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 5:26 PM

Good idea Bob and my usual rental place would have one for rent too. I just can't find a 20x zoom for rent for this camera.

David Settlemoir wrote on 2/18/2016, 7:45 PM

Why not stream it to livestream using a pay per view service like this: http://cleeng.com/live-streaming-ppv. You could do single camera or multi from your switcher to the encoder.

As long as you've got a fast connection at the venue.

David

OldSmoke wrote on 2/18/2016, 8:11 PM

Live streaming is only the icing on the cake, we can do that with YT too but it doesn't solve the problem supplying a physical media.