Video plus USB audio HELP!!!

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
Here is one (of quite a few) that I have cranked out using Vegas Movie Studio.
https://youtu.be/7daxeuQQdTk
Video was recorded on a Sony RX-100 Mk III point-and-shoot camera.
Backing track was imported into Cubase and played simultaneously with the recording
Audio was recorded with Cubase 9.5 DAW software.
The guitars were through two different Eleven Racks.
All audio went through a Presonus Studio Live AR12USB mixer.
Video and audio were combined and synchronized using Vegas Movie Studio.
The third guitarist (lower left) was not recorded. As I recall, it was his choice.
BTW, the guitarist on the white Strat is Diego Vargas, one of Griff's private (face-to-face) students.
This was shot in my music room in February of 2019, while Diego and his parents were visiting us.
 

Iheartbacon

Blues Junior
That works well, but it is way more involved than I wanted for this purpose. I was hoping to avoid using too many pieces of hardware and software and especially avoid the editing/mixing step. I wanted to just hit record, and get video from the laptop camera and 3-4 channels of audio (stereo backing track plus mono/stereo guitar) from the focusrite.

Adding a cheap mixer would likely solve my problems. I am also thinking I could do it by connecting the laptop’s mic input to one of the monitoring/headphone outputs of the 6i6 and just monitor and record everything as mono. The 6i6 is already mixing the guitar and backing track so I can monitor them on headphone 1. I will see if I can dig up the right cables and converters to test this but I am still worried about the video lag with the Windows Camera app.
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
That works well, but it is way more involved than I wanted for this purpose.

I get that. It's a lot to bite off for what you want to do. The only reason I have the gear and software to do this stuff is I have an interest in documenting the local music scene in my area and have had to put together a lightweight kit to get acceptable recordings in clubs and outdoor venues.

If I didn't have that kind of interest, I would probably prop my cell phone in the corner and record with it!
 

CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
Here is one (of quite a few) that I have cranked out using Vegas Movie Studio.
https://youtu.be/7daxeuQQdTk
Video was recorded on a Sony RX-100 Mk III point-and-shoot camera.
Backing track was imported into Cubase and played simultaneously with the recording
Audio was recorded with Cubase 9.5 DAW software.
The guitars were through two different Eleven Racks.
All audio went through a Presonus Studio Live AR12USB mixer.
Video and audio were combined and synchronized using Vegas Movie Studio.
The third guitarist (lower left) was not recorded. As I recall, it was his choice.
BTW, the guitarist on the white Strat is Diego Vargas, one of Griff's private (face-to-face) students.
This was shot in my music room in February of 2019, while Diego and his parents were visiting us.

Just took a look at those Sony cams.
Of course they just came out with the newest Mark VIII for $1,200.

Well before guitars and recording, I was into photography.
Sold all my 35mm gear years ago.
I've steered clear of camera G.A.S for years...............hope I can hold out:rolleyes:
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
Just took a look at those Sony cams.
Of course they just came out with the newest Mark VIII for $1,200.

Well before guitars and recording, I was into photography.
Sold all my 35mm gear years ago.
I've steered clear of camera G.A.S for years...............hope I can hold out:rolleyes:

You can move up or down the product line on those. I found the MK III to be in the sweet spot of pricing. It shoots video at 1080p60, and does a pretty decent job in low light. While I take a lot of stills with it, its video capabilities are really why I got it. Before it, I had (still have) a Zoom Q8. I was really excited about it when I got it, because of the exceptional audio recording capabilities, but I was sadly disappointed by the fixed focus and the 160 degree view on the video. The zoom is digital, not optical and the resolution disappears pretty quickly when you zoom in. It's also noisy in low light. In order to get a live shot of just a band onstage, I had to be nearly on top of them. I keep the Q8 around and still use it, but only as an audio recorder. It is comparable to the Zoom H4n audio recorder and the battery seems to last forever when the video is disabled.
 

Iheartbacon

Blues Junior
SOLVED!!!!!!!

Ok here is the semi-simple solution. A VIRTUAL mixer! And I already had one installed DUH!

So, I am using VoiceMeter Banana to capture the 4 (two stereo) inputs from the Focusrite, mix them and send them to a virtual cable that I can then set as the input device in Windows. To do this you set output A1 to Focusrite ASIO and then in the setting menu you can set hardware input 1 to ASIO 1 and 2 and harware input 2 to ASIO 3 and 4. Route the two inputs to output A2 which is set to the virtual cable (or B1/B2 which I think will also work if you don't have VB cable). Make sure nothing is routed out to A1 unless you want to send audio back to the focusrite. You can adjust levels in VMB if needed. Set the Windows default input to the other end of whatever output you sent the audio to and voila, the default Camera App sees the four channels come down as a single mix.

This is a bit convuluted to setup, but once the audio routing is in place, you simply open VMB and Camera and hit record and it will capture everything.

FWIW, I have the backing track going through the focusrite so I can hear it and the guitar together through the hardware monitoring with virtually no lag. You could set the Windows playback device to VoiceMeter and from there send it to both the input to record and a headphone output to monitor if you don't have extra inputs on your interface.
 

Iheartbacon

Blues Junior
Great!
Now I need to digest what you did.

If I can post pictures to this forum, I will share some screen grabs and write up in more detail what I think it will take to duplicate. It shouldn’t be too hard, but the software involved doesn’t have the best documentation.
 

JffKnt

Blues Newbie
Okay...there's more than one way to skin a cat as they say...here's what I do:

I'm sure everyone has seen the "scene board" they put right in front of the camera. It's a grease board with the name of the movie, scene number, etc, etc. written on it. Then there is this slap stick thing hinged to the top. You hear someone say, "Action!" then that slap stick comes down with a CRACK!!! and the camera is rolling.

Ever wonder why they do that? It's to sync audio and video (or at least that was a common technique 'back in the day.')

I use a similar technique when I'm recording audio with one device and video with another. I recently made a video where I recorded my guitar into a portable recorder. What you don't see or hear on the video is me knocking on my guitar 3 times before I start performing. I cut that part out of the final video.

The reason for knocking on my guitar 3 times is to get this unmistakable "wave form" pattern recorded. That is the equivalent of that SLAP STICK on the scene board. It provides an audio point of reference to use in the editing software. Even though I'm going to use my portable audio recording for the audio in my finished work product, the mic in the camera is still working and is recording audio in addition to the recording I'm making in the portable recorder.

I use Sony Movie Studio, but this technique will work in any video editing software. Once I have mixed the audio (on the DAW) and I'm ready to add it to my video I put the mixed audio track I made on it's own time line in the video editor. Now I have 2 audio tracks in the video editor. One that the camera made and the other I recorded using the portable recorder.

What I do to sync the audio is to look for those 3 spikes in the audio wave forms (when I knocked on my guitar 3 times) and I line them up. Viola! My audio track is synced with the video. To check I play the entire thing with both audio tracks...the video with it's own audio track PLUS the additional audio track I recorded to ensure it's synced. I can slide my audio track forward or backward as needed to dial in and sync it.

Here's an example of my latest video I made using this technique. I didn't do it quite right, but in this video I left some of the audio track the camera audible so that you could hear the wind blowing as I played. But I didn't leave it turned up loud enough so you can't hear the wind...all you can really hear is the audio from my portable digital recorder. https://youtu.be/BZRxB-kDtu0

Of course I recorded 2 tracks, one rhythm and one lead. I mixed them in my DAW. Then I imported the finished audio track into the video editor and synced it with the audio track recorded by my camera by lining up the 3 wave form spikes from when I knocked on the side of my guitar.
 

matonanjin

Chubby, old guy trying to play some blues.
Windows only is not an issue, so I will give all three a look. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, I just want very basic video capability so ease of use is number one.

Thanks!
I also, like @PapaRaptor, purchased Vegas Movie Studio. @Cowboy Bob mentioned DaVinci Resolve and it is a great one. But it is almost too powerful for our limited needs and has a significant learning curve. It also requires a very powerful computer to run. There are other video editors almost as powerful that are free. If you aren't familiar with the term they are known as "open source". If I hadn't invested significant time in learning Vegas I would probably restart with Olive. It seems like one of the best free ones out there now. Another great free one is OpenShot. If you want to invest a little bit of time there are some YT videos doing comparisons of Video Editors.
 

Iheartbacon

Blues Junior
I am familiar with clap boards and hand claps for multi-camera YouTube videos etc. and that is a great trick for bringing audio and video tracks together in an editor. The goal for the September challenge (which I ended up missing due to a temporary job change grrrr!) was to keep the process as simple as possible.

The idea was to play the backing track and then record the guitar, the backing track and the video all at once, without the extra steps of opening the tracks in a daw to combine and then sending them to a video editor. For this task the goal was merely usable for review and critique of the guitar playing, not a professional looking video product.

The “should have been more obvious” solution that took too long to find was to combine the guitar and backing track in a mixer (duh!) and then feed that audio to the video camera software as the mic input. You could use a hardware mixer, but I ended up using a simple and cheap (Free?) software mixer to combine and route the audio in Windows.

I haven’t messed with the setup since September, but one other thing I learned is I am going to need a backdrop and better lighting to get good video with a crappy laptop camera.
 
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