Another request for video help

[Once Far Off]

Hello to all.

I am looking for a solution to put our church services online. We are currently looking at hosting on Vimeo. We have a single PD 150 that we shoot the teaching with and run through a Kramer rack mount switcher to distribute video throughout our building. We are looking to take that static shot and post simple sermon videos online.

The main factor is time and simplicity. Our church is pretty much all volunteer in the tech areas, so it needs to be easy to use, and capturing footage from the PD 150's tape deck is not really an option as it would take too much time.

Eventually, we'd like to look at streaming and storing online, but if the costs are prohibitively expensive, just posting to Vimeo would do for now. I'd prefer not to buy something that would not be able to integrate into the long term plan of streaming live and hosting archive videos, but the budget is not unlimited either.

I was looking into the Tricaster or something like that, but the price point is a little high and I'm thinking I may be paying a lot for certain things I don't need.

I was thinking something like a hard drive based video deck might be an option, so that digitizing footage would be unnecessary and the file could be uploaded from our main computer after the service. Something like this:

bhphotovideo(dot)com/c/product/587052-REG/Datavideo_DN_500_DN_500_DV_HDV_Recorder_Player(dot )html

Any advice?
Thanks in advance

[blonborg]

Since it appears that your camera has a firewire port, why not record straight to a laptop.

Our environment is much the same as yours - all volunteer. When faced with the same issue, we bought a Apple laptop around the first of the year. While I'm certain we could do it with a pc, I *think* we've drawn in some additional volunteers who see the white laptop connected to the camera.

Since the upload to Vimeo takes time - we just send someone home with the laptop to do the upload there.

Bill

[petereit]

Since you're not shooting HD, I would suggest a $149 BlackMagic Video Recorder. It converts to H.264 on the fly as it records, so you're ready to upload to Vimeo as soon as your service is over.

[bpalermini]

Not to hijack this thread but Mark, have you used a BlackMagic H.264 Pro Recorder? We have a SDI-HD stream that we want to record for video podcasts. We would like to be able to trim the video, add a header and post easily. Is H.264 a good format to use if you want to edit?

[petereit]

Originally Posted by bpalermini

Not to hijack this thread but Mark, have you used a BlackMagic H.264 Pro Recorder? We have a SDI-HD stream that we want to record for video podcasts. We would like to be able to trim the video, add a header and post easily. Is H.264 a good format to use if you want to edit?

No, H.264 is a delivery codec -- not an editing codec, since it's not full-frame. If there's any editing to be done, you want a full-frame codec like Apple ProRes.

For an SDI-HD stream, I would recommend an Atomos Samurai. It records 10-bit uncompressed HD to Apple ProRes on its internal hard drive (HDD or SSD). When finished recording, you plug it into your Firewire 800, USB2 or USB3 port, it docks like an external drive and you start editing.

[Once Far Off]

Thanks for the input. The only problem is that we would have to buy another computer to make this happen. I'm a little cautious of having a computer capturing footage being the main solution in case of a freeze or other glitch. I'm looking for a more hardware based solution. On the BlackMagic site they have a rack unit called the Hyper Deck.

blackmagic-design(DOT)com/products/hyperdeckstudio/techspecs/

Would this work?

[petereit]

Back when we were single-camera, in a situation very similar to yours, I would record to the computer, but also record to tape. Then, if anything ever "glitched" on the computer, I always had the tape backup. Sure, it would take a lot longer to capture the tape, but in two years I think I only had to do that once or twice.

[petereit]

Here's a listing for one of the most reliable video recording devices I have ever used, SD or HD.

17" Apple Macbook Pro 2.33Ghz $999 OBO

[Once Far Off]

So what software would you use to capture the footage on the mac book?

[petereit]

You could use QuickTime or iMovie (both come free on every Mac) or the MediaExpress software that would come free with any BlackMagic capture device. We bought Final Cut Pro with our first MacBook so we captured straight into Final Cut.

[Once Far Off]

With iMovie, are there any issues with capturing for longer periods of time, like 45 minutes or so?

[petereit]

I have never hit any recording limits in iMovie. The only thing to be cautious of is if you're capturing uncompressed HD video. You'd have to make sure your capture drive and the connection to the drive is fast enough to keep up. Not a problem if you're capturing through Firewire, since the video is compressed to HDV before it comes to the computer.