Multitrack Audio + Video Recording?

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panang

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Anyone know of any software/hardware that supports simultaneous and synchronized recording from 8 tracks of audio plus video capture?
 
How much is in your budget? You can pick up Matrox RT for under $3k. Most video cards ($300 and up range) will work with Sonic Foundry products. Check there web sites and then phone their tech support for a 100% confirmed "YES". You cannot buy these boards in the local prosumer electric superstore. Check into the trade mags like: Videography, DV Magazine, even VideoMaker (this choice is simply for bottom feeding video hacks, but if you know nothing about video, its an ok place and can be found in most stores). There are wharehouses like B and H out of New York and others that sell acres of video and audio gear. Shop for the best price and used these stores against eachother.
Anyways- Pinnacle and Fast offer breakout boxes with analog (componant and composite) and digital (firewire) video and 1/4 and XLR in's. Speed Razor is a nice video software choice. Are you looking for home/hobby use? Who is your end user? If you are looking to sinc, find a very stable video card first that will work with audio. You also want to have the option to strip audio from video. With DV, the audio and video signals are intermixed, unlike analog, which can be separated. Hope with poiunts you in a better direction

Van Gogh
 
I think our budget is like 2k. Yeah we want to sync video (from a DV encoding card) and 8 tracks of audio (from a gadWave/824, i guess). This is for machine perception research use. Typically we need audio and video to be sync'ed to within 20ms of each other.

I'm a little worried about the video compression though-- because it's for research, we can't be introducing funky artifacts. But recording high-resolution to disk without compression doesn't seem to be possible... I wonder if there are any cards with lossless video compression out there...?

As far as software is concerned, Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video says it will capture as many tracks as we want.
 
Ok, here is the deal with DV video (Sony VX1000, Canon XL-1, Mini DV, etc.), the compression will never ever ever get better than 5:1 compression, because the camera records at 5:1. and 4.1.1. (4.2.2 vs 4.1.1 is another arguement, mostly concerning mattes). Digital Betacam, Digital S (made by JVC), DV Cam are 4.2.2 Broadcast standard, but let's not kid ourselves... these formats are very much out of the $2k budget. DV with firewire is the only way to go. Analog (although uncompressed) like Hi8 or SuperVHS is still at 400 lines of resolution which is 20% less than digital. Full blown uncompressed video will eat your hard drive so fast, you won't be able to dump a lot of raw source material into your workstation. Video eats much more than audio. By the way, 1:1, 2:1 and even 3:1 compression are still broadcast standard. So you can get by without owning an Avid 8000 media composer ($250,000) at 1:1 compression. Some video cards at 4:1 compression (like some Fast boards) say they are broadcast standard... survey says "liar!" And a 4:1 compression won't help you, because if you use DV, it's locked in at 5:1. This is why I needed to know the end user. Where were we? Only buy 60 min tapes max, the tape at 180 min. is too thin. Pre blacken tapes and the Sony made DV tapes with the chip ($25) are the very best ways to prevent artifacting. As for Video Vegas, phone both Sonic Foundry and the video board manufacture tech support regard Vegas being compatable. Video Vegas is so new on the market, I would try and find actual users in the field before buying this product.The problem with audio makers moving towards video is that this is there first version. I'm sure version 2 would be safer. Video boards have the same problem when moving towards audio. Sonic Foundry is a safe bet but fine a third and fourth opinion from actual users before buying. As for sinc, with Sonic Foundry stuff, you can sinc to 30 fps, 29.97 fps, 24 fps (film) and so on and so on. Their developers had the visual media inmind. 8)

Good luck
Van Gogh
 
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