Software suggestion needed: Recording Piano videos

P

Pianoguy

New member
I make videos of somebody playing the piano. I have a good-enough solution for the audio, using two mics and a Focusrite USB audio interface. For video, I use a webcam.

The way I produce these videos right now is, however, overly complicated. There must be a better way, and I'd be glad for any suggestions.

Currently I'm recording the audio using Garageband while at the same time using Quicktime to record the video. I export the audio to a file in Garageband, save the Quicktime video to a file, and import both in iMovie, where I manually synchronize the audio track and the video track and do the actual video editing.

All this import/export and manual sync is rather tiresome. There must be many other people who have similar requirements, since I assume my use case is rather common. Hence I'm hoping that there is some more integrated software solution. Ideally I could record audio and video in the same application and do both audio and video editing there, without switching between different applications and file import/export and without manual synchronization of audio to video.

Any suggestions?
 
Oddly - while your solution for audio works, do you not have any need for editing of the video? That adds another element. For music projects, the workflow is always more complicated, and there isn't any quality system that really works. Audio quality we bang on about here all the time, but video wise - a single camera is a bit like recoding in mono - fine, but so lacking, compared to recordings made commercially. Two cameras means four times as much work of courses, but if one camera is enough, the simplest solution I'd use is record the audio as you do now (Garage band would be no use for my style of work - it's more geared for other uses). Get a camera that records HD onto a card, then sync the two things up in the video editor - and again, I'd not use iMovie, but I think (not sure) how good it's track slipping ability is?

In premiere and Cubase - what I use, I simply look at the audio waveform, then find the same place from it's shape, in the audio locked to the video, and slide them until they align. Lock the two tracks together and mute the camera audio track. Fade ins/outs/captions are easy and that is that. There really isn't a simpler workflow I can think of. Takes me very little time to sync up tracks, and I usually have two or more video tracks.
 
Thanks for the answer, rob!

I'm a beginner, hence I started using the software that I already have on my Mac. I don't really know what other DAWs can do, but I have the impression that I would only need 1% of the features of the big commercial products. I record two microphones, cut the tracks, do a few tweaks to equalizer, reverb, balance etc. and export. Even Garageband seems to be oversized for what I do.

iMovie does let me do basic video editing (cutting, fade in/out, add texts etc.). What is "track slipping"? What's the reason why you would not use iMovie? (for the use case of amateur videos)
 
Well - on this Mac, I have garage band and iMovie - yet I pay adobe for their product and I use cubase for my music production - ~Cubase pro 9.5 on the main system and elements 9.5 on this MacBook. The reason is because they do the job better. The track slipping is where you have multiple clips and need to align them - maybe you used two cameras, or one camera and a separate audio recorder - that kind of thing. You need to move some of them in time, so that they are in sync. So on the piano, you can see that first note going down, or the hammer moving, and need to align the sound of it to the same place.

I've just fired up iMovie - it can slip the audio to sync with the video - so it does do what you want - and it pretty simple to work. It's a bit lacking in features to make me want to use it, but I could sync up your video and audio quite simply - I think manual sync isn't a real issue. People always complain about how hard it is, but even though my system can sync automatically, and there is special sync software available - I've never had a project that couldn't be done simply by ear.

I don't think there is anything simpler than just bringing in two clips, syncing them - and getting your pianist to simply clap his hands does it very simply - and then topping and tailing. That really is as simple as it gets.

For some of my projects, I shoot video, record audio on a zoom recorder - have to bring both into my editor, time sync them, then edit. That's as simple as I can imagine really? Is your workflow causing grief? The webcam seems to be a bit horrible? is it decent quality?

iMovie seems OK to use - it's free, after all.
 
OK, then maybe there just isn't the kind of automation I have in mind.

In my previous setup, I used Quicktime with a Webcam and a Blue Yeti USB microphone. Recording a video was to press just one button; no syncing, file import/export etc. was required. This was basically good enough for my use case, except that I wanted better audio. The webcam quality was good enough for my purpose; its big advantage is that I don't need to fiddle around with SD cards, charge batteries etc.

With my current setup, my audio is much better, but instead of 10 seconds of preparation for a video the preparation time is more like 5 minutes. I was looking for ways to get those 10 seconds back ;)
 
I haven't used it but Sony Vegas does both I believe.

I am wanting to do some multi cam video of me playing live soon and am thinking of just using iphones ( and one of the multi cam IOS mixer apps) with the audio mix via the camera kit / usb out of a stereo mixer...Haven't done it...but that's my plan..
 
Final Cut Pro X does multi-cam editing where you can select different camera angles and have them synced automatically based on their audio tracks. The important thing is you can also include a pure audio track and they are lined up with that. At its simplest, an audio track and video track can be automatically aligned based just on the audio.

I used that for this video I did last week.
YouTube
 
That's some clean audio in there Keith...great performance and great track!
 
TAE said:
That's some clean audio in there Keith...great performance and great track!
Click to expand...
I record into a Zoom H6 with a couple splitters and DIs when I go do an open mic. It's really just for audio feedback I give to the performers, so do quick mixdowns in Logic Pro.

I've started setting up cameras to try and figure out the video thing. Last Thursday was a real learning experience - but it's always fun. This was late in the evening and there had definitely been some of the local craft malt beverage consumed by this time. (I forgot I had set a camera next to me!) But Raoul is one of my favorites and he writes great tunes, as well.

P.S. to OP, I am convinced after some experience that the best place to set up to record audio is rarely the same place to set your camera(s) for optimum video. The corollary is that you'll get the best results by doing the audio recording independently of the video; do that mixing in a DAW, then take that audio and put it into the video, which you create using video editing software. I.e., use the right tool for the right job, especially for musical content. While many DAWs and most video software do both, but unless it's a voiceover of a static camera, it's not likely to be as good as it should be.

Syncing isn't hard, and some video software, like FCPX, can make it very simple.
 
Well, to make my motivation a bit more clear:

I'm exchanging piano practice videos with other guys who work on the same pieces, hence we exchange many videos back and forth, sometimes multiple times a day. We want good audio quality (hence the external mics) and webcam-quality video, and since we are frequently exchanging these videos, which are basically for one-time viewing by a very small number of receivers (say, 1-3), all considerations that typically apply to a quality music video are not relevant. Since we are producing so many of these videos we want the "production time" to be minimal.

One "single button press" solution I did try that "almost" worked was to setup Garageband to send a live output of the result to a virtual audio device (there's a software called "Soundflower" for the Mac for that) and then route that audio output as input to Quicktime, which also records the video. It only "almost" worked because the audio is something like 200ms lagging behind the video, otherwise that would have been a decent compromise.

---------- Update ----------

Well, to make my motivation a bit more clear:

I'm exchanging piano practice videos with other guys who work on the same pieces, hence we exchange many videos back and forth, sometimes multiple times a day. We want good audio quality (hence the external mics) and webcam-quality video, and since we are frequently exchanging these videos, which are basically for one-time viewing by a very small number of receivers (say, 1-3), all considerations that typically apply to a quality music video are not relevant. Since we are producing so many of these videos we want the "production time" to be minimal.

One "single button press" solution I did try that "almost" worked was to setup Garageband to send a live output of the result to a virtual audio device (there's a software called "Soundflower" for the Mac for that) and then route that audio output as input to Quicktime, which also records the video. It only "almost" worked because the audio is something like 200ms lagging behind the video, otherwise that would have been a decent compromise.
 
You really need a single device capturing both at the same time, without the external bump of a USB (or other system bus) and A/D interface with software drivers involved, IME, if you really don't want to deal with syncing in any way.

Any old camcorder recording to SD card with a stereo mic input jack and a decent stereo electret condenser mic (Sony makes one under $100 I used to have - probably dozens of used ones for sale at you-know-where). Or, maybe just a new Zoom video recorder - the audio on those things is pretty good.

Really, no disparagement of what you're looking for, but it seems you're over-thinking this if it's practice stuff to be tossed. What's he listening on, the computer? earbuds? You can always keep recording the way you are and save those, and if there's a lightening-in-a-bottle day you can revert to the little bit of work to sync it, but otherwise just get one single solution that captures everything. You won't do it ITB unless you get a video capture card, then hook up an external camera with its audio capture, like a DSLR + Zoom H6 or similar, that connects to the video card.
 
Being as this is not critical with regard to audio clarity and video ....you just want to watch each others performances...once...It would seem an iPhone or Android phone positioned properly and maybe an external mic and Facebook live would do you folks just fine...EZ PZ
 
Pianoguy said:
I make videos of somebody playing the piano. I have a good-enough solution for the audio, using two mics and a Focusrite USB audio interface. For video, I use a webcam.

The way I produce these videos right now is, however, overly complicated. There must be a better way, and I'd be glad for any suggestions.

Currently I'm recording the audio using Garageband while at the same time using Quicktime to record the video. I export the audio to a file in Garageband, save the Quicktime video to a file, and import both in iMovie, where I manually synchronize the audio track and the video track and do the actual video editing.

All this import/export and manual sync is rather tiresome. There must be many other people who have similar requirements, since I assume my use case is rather common. Hence I'm hoping that there is some more integrated software solution. Ideally I could record audio and video in the same application and do both audio and video editing there, without switching between different applications and file import/export and without manual synchronization of audio to video.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

The solution you describe is the one I use, but with different software.
The process is the same, though, because the various suites that can 'hi-jack' audio paths generally can't do so for DAW software.

Your previous solution was one-click because your microphone was being fed directly into quicktime (+1 for OBS, btw...Better framerate and lighter-weight output).


There is another other alternative but it's a bit messier to set up.

You can set up an aggregate device in audio/midi setup.
That device would be made up of your interface, and soundflower.
Now tell your DAW to use that device.

This means you you can pipe your mics in to the DAW, have some live eq/comp/verb etc, and pipe them back out via soundcloud with small latency.

With that in place, like a big complicated effects pedal, you can tell quicktime to record video, and audio from soundflower.

With that routing in place, you can also have the DAW sending final output to your headphones independly of the soundcloud output,
which means you can control the level of what you hear without affecting the recorded output.

The initial set up can be a bit of a pain, but once its in place the process is now very quick and easy, and flexible.
 
The preamps on my JVC cameras are surprisingly good - 48V phantom and the analogue audio section isn't a hiss generator - I've never thought of connecting one to my system with firewire to record live - but a quick test suggests it does it rather well - and no file transfers needed - capturing via Premiere works nicely. I might actually use this for some of the talking head videos I do - I've always used a separate audio recorder and ended up with two cards, but I don't need to, and no syncing required. I'm thinking now of this workflow to see if it does save me much time.
 
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