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#1
06-19-2020, 09:19 PM
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Video / audio production on the cheap...
I've been playing a bit with better video and audio quality for Youtube videos, so I'm curious about what folks might think of this. It's perhaps a bit unorthodox, but I'm pretty frugal by basic nature.
This song demonstrates the use of a Electroharmonix EHX-720 loop pedal as the backing tracks "recording device", with the looped first guitar and bass played while the second guitar and vocal is added. The loop backing tracks, guitar, and vocal microphone are then recorded by a Tascam DR-05 small portable recorder. The recorded track from the Tascam DR-05 is combined with cell phone video in Reaper (audio / video software) and then uploaded to Youtube. 
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#3
06-20-2020, 10:12 AM
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I'm not sure what's going on with the embed, but try this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3G2...ature=youtu.be
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#5
06-20-2020, 03:02 PM
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The audio and video quality are both pretty good. A couple small suggestions for the video side.
Film from a bit of an angle so the mic isn't right in front of your face. Zoom in, or move the camera closer, to crop the frame a bit. Eliminate as much of the extraneous stuff at the frame edges. You don't need to see the pedals, or tbh even the bottom of the guitar. As long as you can see both hands and don't chop off the top of your head, a tighter shot would be good.
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#6
06-22-2020, 07:55 PM
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Quote:
I'll follow those suggestions for future videos. I wanted to include enough at the bottom to show the pedal use, as this was done to show looper use. A tighter vertical frame will do a lot to get rid of all that excess frame to the sides of the shot. My first attempt at doing smart phone video and I'm pretty impressed by the result you get as a side benefit of having a smart phone. They had to drag me kicking and screaming away from my flip phone, but this inexpensive Moto G6 is pretty useful! I installed the "Open Camera" free app and that lets me easily lock the focus / exposure so the picture doesn't change when the light varies a bit. I synced audio and video in Reaper and also used the Video FX in Reaper to lower the brightness of the initial video a bit. I'm used to using Reaper for audio and never used it for video until recently. It's rudimentary, but works well.
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#7
06-22-2020, 08:29 PM
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Quote:
I did manage to get the phone to lock focus, but you were smart to get a different camera app to lock exposure as well, as I can see small brightness changes in some of the videos. I will definitely do that for the next round. Aside from a better camera, lighting is the next thing that will take your video piece to the next level. Diffuse lights from the sides (45 deg angle or so) give more flattering lighting, plus a small "spot" light from about 45deg behind on one side to give a "rim light" that helps separate you from the background as well. If you can move farther away from the background, it helps too, since you can light you and not the room.
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#8
06-22-2020, 08:31 PM
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And since this thread is "on the cheap", my lights are clamp-on lights (the kind with the metal hood), clamped to a mic stand, with a "daylight" LED bulb and a white plastic grocery bag over it as a diffuser.
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#9
06-23-2020, 08:01 AM
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Good point about the lighting.
If I keep doing this I'll probably do something toward a good portable lighting source. There are some past topics where there are suggestions for inexpensive lighting, I believe they may have been suggested in Doug Young's comments. I have abundant natural light coming in, but as the video shows, too much. The sun comes through some overhead windows in the vaulted part of the ceiling in the room that sounds the best and can't be easily blocked since they are 16 feet above me. It's going to be a work in progress, so at least I know the smart phone on a tripod and a DR-05 in front of the guitar are capable of making an acceptable video for Youtube. Reaper has basic video abilities although the plug-in for video processing isn't the easiest or most intuitive to use. You do have to sync manually, but that's really not a deal-breaker. In my reading I ran across the free and open-source "Blender" video program that lists automatic video / audio syncing but didn't try it as it won't install on my older Windows machine. It would be great to hear if anyone else has experience with Blender for creating music videos. Last edited by Rudy4; 06-23-2020 at 08:07 AM.
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#10
08-31-2020, 07:14 AM
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I posted another of the "Quick n' dirty" series in the Show And Tell forum.
This one uses a simpler process: I used my cell phone (eventually only for the video) and also recorded two tracks of audio on my Zoom R24 at the same time. If that's all you were wanting to use you could then import the phone video and audio tracks to a DAW and sync, top, and tail them. In this case I added a second guitar and bass and then ported them to my PC for a quick sync and edit. You could also add the other instruments using your DAW, of course. I'm working with the balance between being able to do this easily with good track isolation and quality of sound, which is obviously going to be somewhat lower using the guitar direct in and the head-worn SM35 mic. I don't feel it's a big compromise based on how easy it is to edit tracks post-recording. The SM-35 sounds surprisingly good and is excellent at rejecting the room sound and the guitar. I'm using Reaper to combine and sync audio and video. It works well for basic functions and the video plug-in has a lot of features like fades, titling, etc. if you want to get in that deep. My intention here is to produce a recording that's flushed out enough to give folks I play with a good idea of what I'm looking for and as a way to learn the tunes / songs.
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#11
08-31-2020, 11:07 AM
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Looks and sounds really good. Are doing that without a click track? If you are, your time is excellent.
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#12
08-31-2020, 02:01 PM
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Quote:
No click track proper. I have started using a Snark Touch (screen) metronome to double-check what the actual BPM is when I figure out what tempo I prefer. I notate that on my lyric sheet as well as my preferred key to sing in and capo position. I set the Snark up to the proper BPM and use the visual LEDs (turning the sound off) so I can start a new tune off at the correct tempo, but I don't use it for the whole tune. I might glance over to it a couple of times to make sure I haven't sped up or slowed down too much.
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#13
09-13-2020, 07:14 PM
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Rudy4: HI silvercn here. For a very reasonable price point for the loads of video/audio edit tools you get, you might want to check out the Vegas Movie Studio line of product. I put a link here to one of my videos (The Cape) on YouTube. From there on my channel there are others that includes video recording with the Zoom Q2n.Then I import the video file into Vegas and it separates out the video from an audio alone track. Then I tweak the video/audio to taste with many fx included..then export the finished product to hard drive.
In my case, I do not apply any fx to the audio track, because for finishing touches, I load the video into my DAW, Sonar Professional to do that. Keeping in mind there is not real separation of vocal from guitar. But pretty decent results. On the ones where I'm not in the video those were just done in my DAW, and with Vegas Studio 16, I edit in all those pics, cross fades etc from a media bin within Vegas. https://youtu.be/-N0RFRABl9E Charles
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