keith.rogers
Well-known member
I have been playing around with video for about a year now, going from one camera to two, and just this past weekend, managed to have 3 cameras up and stay in focus for more than 15 minutes. I've learned a lot.
First, it costs a bundle if you want to do multi-cam recording. I've got basic consumer digital cameras (2) - low-middle mirrorless from the past few years with "fast enough" lenses to work indoors mostly, and a pretty old camcorder that probably cost $200 back when. So, pretty quickly you're over 1 large, and that's for very basic stuff. Prosumer or better, fuggedaboutit. And then there's [big] batteries galore and SD cards (64GB if you want to try and get through an evening without changing cards - not always easy depending on where the card access door is!)
Then, there's storage. I go through GB like a new bag of pita chips. Just ordered another RAID enclosure and a couple of big drives because I am maxed. I thought I had enough for *years* of audio, and it's gone. poof. Sure, there's a lot I could purge but I've done all the temp/optimized file cleanup and there's not enough to do more than a couple short projects from media I've already got in libraries.
Software, maybe free stuff is good, but it usually lacks one or two things you'll really want at some point. Mine was the fractional rotations needed to account for cameras just enough off plumb/level to make you start to turn your head. More $.
And, finally, I don't think it's a one-man job if you want to guarantee success. You might get lucky, but I always have some failure - hence the adding of cameras. You can't watch the record levels and check that cameras haven't decided to autofocus on a fly that just went by and then instead of going back to the perfomer picked out a lightbulb halfway to the stage, or something. [Being in two places at the same time problem.] And, in a live situation, finding a place to put a camera that you can get a decent angle often means you have to set it and leave it there for a long time because you don't want to be standing on a customer's table all night.
Anyway, I'm off the soapbox now. I'm still in the "trying to figure out if I even want to do it" phase, and seem to keep pulling out the credit card. Going to see if it gets easier before I fill up these new disks and decide if it's fun or not. Hoping that gives me a year
First, it costs a bundle if you want to do multi-cam recording. I've got basic consumer digital cameras (2) - low-middle mirrorless from the past few years with "fast enough" lenses to work indoors mostly, and a pretty old camcorder that probably cost $200 back when. So, pretty quickly you're over 1 large, and that's for very basic stuff. Prosumer or better, fuggedaboutit. And then there's [big] batteries galore and SD cards (64GB if you want to try and get through an evening without changing cards - not always easy depending on where the card access door is!)
Then, there's storage. I go through GB like a new bag of pita chips. Just ordered another RAID enclosure and a couple of big drives because I am maxed. I thought I had enough for *years* of audio, and it's gone. poof. Sure, there's a lot I could purge but I've done all the temp/optimized file cleanup and there's not enough to do more than a couple short projects from media I've already got in libraries.
Software, maybe free stuff is good, but it usually lacks one or two things you'll really want at some point. Mine was the fractional rotations needed to account for cameras just enough off plumb/level to make you start to turn your head. More $.
And, finally, I don't think it's a one-man job if you want to guarantee success. You might get lucky, but I always have some failure - hence the adding of cameras. You can't watch the record levels and check that cameras haven't decided to autofocus on a fly that just went by and then instead of going back to the perfomer picked out a lightbulb halfway to the stage, or something. [Being in two places at the same time problem.] And, in a live situation, finding a place to put a camera that you can get a decent angle often means you have to set it and leave it there for a long time because you don't want to be standing on a customer's table all night.
Anyway, I'm off the soapbox now. I'm still in the "trying to figure out if I even want to do it" phase, and seem to keep pulling out the credit card. Going to see if it gets easier before I fill up these new disks and decide if it's fun or not. Hoping that gives me a year