With what you want to do, you are already discovering the most efficient and practical way in which to capture your lectures. One of the ways I've captured a PA board was not to put a microphone on the PA speaker. Instead, I utilized a simple suction cup telephone pickup coil costing about $2.00 from Radio Shaft. You then place the coil somewhere around the back of the PA speaker on the speaker and nearest to the voice coil you can get. This gives you a direct electrical feed without the acoustic aberrations & miserable sounding reverb/ambience of the room. Placing that coil around the speaker in different positions will create vastly different sonic signatures. So some experimentation is still needed. If you can't get access to the back of the speaker, your method of placing the recorder in front of the speaker is your only real option. And it will sound generally, crappy.

As far as the video editing program to marry the video track to your soundtrack is a super easy thing to do with the lesser expensive programs such as Sony's Vegas home studio which is hundreds of dollars less than Vegas Pro. Since you're not going to be doing all sorts of effects and multi-camera shots, you can get by for around $150 US. Otherwise you are looking at over $600 US for something that has capabilities far beyond your needs. Your indication of utilizing a loud clapper to be utilized is also quite unnecessary. You only have to listen to synchronize your audio to your video track utilizing the audio of your video track to synchronize to your separate audio track. You simply match up the sentences, then zoom in to make sure you maintain proper lip sync. Then you can switch off the audio from the camcorder audio track. I do this all the time. Starting your recorder and your camcorder within one minute of each other should be more than adequate to obtain your synchronization.

Inexpensive cameras in this application can be more than 100% adequate but I would also recommend that you have 2 of them. One for the head-on shot and one for a side profile shot. Perhaps even one for a projected image and/or a fourth to get a shot of the audience. This can make your editing a lot easier when you have a cutaway shot to utilize that will look more professional and broadcast oriented. Otherwise, you'll be dissolving over the same shot or cutting from the same shot to the same shot which looks more like amateur hour. And so to cameras I feel is a minimum necessity in this style of lecture capturing and production/presentation.

Sony Vegas Pro user
Mx. Remy Ann David

I don't know of any such locate a sound application. (I'd recommend a clap or similar with a distinct short spike in the waveform).

You would very likely start both devices within a few seconds of each other and then clap as near as possible to half the distance between the camera and Tascam. (and do not stop the recording until the speech is over)

Then you would put the video footage into your video editing software along with the Tascam's audio tracks side by side and visually zoom in on the audio waveforms of each and look for the large peak caused by the clap. They will have started within a few seconds of one another, so zoom in on the beginning. Then nudge the Tascam audio until it lines up with the camcorder's audio. As you keep zooming in closer and cloer to get it more precise, you will keep narrowing in to the nearest frame. You should be able to get the Tascam to within half a frame or less, which should be close enough for all practical purposes.

The peaks of the two audio tracks lining up 100% perfectly in a video editor, are very slim - because video editors only have to be accurate to a single video frame. [ NTSC 1/29.97 of a second & PAL 1/25 of a second ] Although both audio recordings will be vastly higher sample rate (48k) the video editor is too coarse of a tool to cut it any finer than 1/25 of a second. In other words, for every second of video there are 48,000 audio samples compared to only 25 frames of PAL video.

Given your scenario, available equipment, low-budget, non-professional expectations - this is the best & cheapest method. And again if it 'drifts', you will need to look for pauses where you can cut the Tascam footage and nudge the tracks visually to match distinctive waveforms. If there's a time before the event to shoot a few minutes of footage of the audience attentively looking toward the stage - you can use snippets of that any time you need a cutaway to hide out-of-sync audio.

To be honest, I utilize heavy consonants as my clapper. It works just as well and marvelously to boot. Especially since you have the ability to zoom in with most applications down to the sample at one 48,000th of a single second.

So that's another thing to consider. You actually want to be recording your audio track at 48 kHz, not at 44.1 kHz as you would for a CD. And 48 kHz can be down converted to 44.1 kHz without much worry of any audio artifacts since the math really doesn't work from 48 kHz to 44.1 kHz. And vice versa. So when trying to maintain lip-synch, you should be recording your wild soundtrack at 48 kHz, 16 bit. Screw the 24-bit blah blah nonsense. It's simply not necessary. 24-bit only really matters if you're recording level is too stupidly low. And it won't prevent overloads at all if your gain is not properly set to begin with. 16-bit provides for a 96 DB dynamic range. If you can't get it right within 96 DB, you have no right doing this in the first place. And you really don't get 140 DB of dynamic range from 24-bit. That's because, most all audio equipment, even the finest stuff made, doesn't have much more than 100 DB of usable dynamic range. So it's a flaky bit of information to tell people they should be recording a 24-bit. That does not improve the resolution. Sample rate improves the resolution. So a 16-bit recording at 88.2/96 kHz is higher in resolution than a 24-bit recording at 44.1/48 kHz. It's not like connecting the numbers in a drawing we used to do as kids. It requires a little bit of technical understanding as to why this is so. You only need 24-bit if your level setting is really sloppy. Coming from the land of broadcast, you knew and learned better. Coming from the land of analog audio tape recording, you would utilize the nonlinear overload characteristics of analog tape to provide some natural limiting along with a certain kind of distortion that was deemed more musical for certain instruments such as drums. But you're not recording drums. They're not recording attires nor keyboards nor screaming vocalists. You are recording mumbling talking heads and all that is important is intelligibility not fidelity. So when recording talking heads, you'll want to roll off most everything below 100 Hz and virtually anything above 15 kHz anyhow. So hi fidelity condenser microphones can actually be more of a hindrance than a more frequency restricted dynamic microphone would be. So plug a SHURE SM57/58 into your TASCAM/TEAC audio gizmo instead of utilizing its onboard condenser microphone thingies. You can still utilize those condenser microphone thingies and simply roll off the highest and lowest of the frequencies in the software of your video editing software. It's already got provisions for that. All that's needed to accurately understand human speech is the same frequency response as telephones which is between 300 to 4000 Hz. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake until the cake gets too hot and the icing turns back into melted butter and Crisco.

Intelligibility is my game and I always win
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD, post: 388204 wrote: To be honest, I utilize heavy consonants as my clapper. It works just as well and marvelously to boot. Especially since you have the ability to zoom in with most applications down to the sample at one 48,000th of a single second.

What Non-Linear Video Editing program are you using that allows you to do sample accurate 48k editing in the video realm? - rather than frame accurate 25 / 29.97 / 30 fps editing, as the case may be?

Maybe the concern I've expressed in the previous post is outdated, although it is based on years of experience with two of the most widely used professional NLE programs. [Final Cut Pro HD and Premiere]

I am not the type of person who upgrades, just for the sake of upgrading - so, neither of these is the latest/greatest/bleeding edge version. They work so perfectly, so I haven't felt the need to replace, or upgrade either of these for a number of years. So if Vegas, or similar, can manipulate audio that well, I may have to look into buying that as well.

Thanks guys for the input. After I get the camcorder, I'll play with Vegas Home Studio and see how it goes.

Even though the audio test recording I did recently sounded pretty good, out of curiosity, would you have a link (web page or picture) for the "simple suction cup telephone pickup coil costing about $2.00 from Radio Shaft" whose coil I should try to hook to the PA speaker, so that I know what it looks like?

I believe this is what Remy is referring to: [="http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103876"]Recorder Telephone Pickup[/]="http://www.radiosha…"]Recorder Telephone Pickup[/]

This would be the Maplin equivalent: [[url=http://="http://www.maplin.c…"]Telephone Pickup Coil[/]="http://www.maplin.c…"]Telephone Pickup Coil[/]

Thanks for the links. I'll check where I can get one of those things over here and experiment when I get the chance.

That is exactly the device I am speaking of. It is essentially one half of a transformer basically, a single flat wound guitar pickup coil. So any electromagnetic energy it comes near it will pick up. So if you can get it close to the back of the speaker near the voice coil, you will pick up the feed directly. You will also in all likelihood need to equalize it to sound appropriate. Other nearby electromagnetic interference could interfere with it. But it can work better than a microphone in many situations. Turning it and placing it differently around the back of the speaker has a broad range on its tonality. It can go from thin and tinny to huge and fat depending upon the placement. Generally, I don't rely on the suction cup but a piece of duct tape instead.

Regarding the sample accuracy of video editing NLE programs. None of them are sample accurate. They are frame accurate which is 1/30 to 1/25 of a second which is all you need for lip-synch. And it generally comes close enough for music as well to maintain synchronization with the picture and sound. On very few occasions have I had the need to take my soundtrack then remove a few samples for extremely tight synchronization with video. That rarely happens. You can also get 1 to 2 retarded frames of audio to video before it becomes noticeable. It becomes much more noticeable if you're audio leads the video by as little as one frame. I've done this with programs all the way back to Adobe Premier 6.0.

I think you'll enjoy the Sony program
Mx. Remy Ann David

dvdhawk, post: 388216 wrote: So if Vegas, or similar, can manipulate audio that well, I may have to look into buying that as well.

Vegas (6 is what I use) is like having pretty much all the functionality I'd use from FCP plus Pro Tools, all in one program. You can even have two instances open at once, which I've done for manually triggering samples while recording a live performance to multitrack. There are a couple of things Pro Tools does better but Vegas does other things better and I prefer the workflow, even for audio-only projects.

Thanks for the feedback. What codecs are recommended in the camcorder and Vegas that offer minimum headaches to non-pros like me?

I think you'll find that strangely enough, the highest quality settings can be the least problematic to work with. Utilizing what they refer to as " uncompressed " .AVI file format is the way to go. It's actually not uncompressed but very lightly compressed data that has very few artifacts to it. So a one-hour lecture will create something on the order of a 30 GB file of video. Uncompressed audio will create around 600 MB of audio data utilizing uncompressed ".wav " file format. The more highly compressed formats such as MPEG 2, MPEG 4, Quick Time makes the computer actually work harder. And that's because it has less to work with. Given the size of current hard disc drives today, one does not have to rely upon these heavily data compressed and smaller file formats. Less is lost and more can be processed with less data compressed material along with less artifacting to contend with. Picture quality is better maintained. Sound quality is also better maintained.

All the codecs you need are actually included in the Sony software. It's really powerful software. Other third-party codecs might be required for certain other applications. But that's to be dealt with later. Sony has been fundamental in creating much of what we use today. Even though Vegas was created by Sonic Foundry and sold to Sony Corp.. It can actually do things that Avid/Digi Design, Media Composer-Pro Tools is now only getting to years later. But all have their place depending upon the kind of production you are doing. You are not doing network television production and nobody is handing you a $30,000 contract to make a rock 'n roll recording. And to be able to get away with a piece of software costing between $150 US-$600 US is a heck of a lot less than that other stuff. And is actually equally as powerful in the right hands or left.

My hearing & Video productions, are ambidextrous
Mx. Remy Ann David

What Remy said.

I found that Vegas 6, which is now very old, has more trouble with MOV (Quicktime) files than AVI or MPEG.

I guess Sony doesn't like Apple? Avid sure does.

So I'm still stuck with the MOV file since Vegas Movie Studio HD 11.0 can't open it, altough I installed the latest QuickTime application (7.71.80.42).

• Is there a good application to convert it to something Vegas is happy with?
• If not, which other good, affordable video editing application for Windows would you recommend for basic tasks like replacing the soundtrack with a WAV file or removing parts of the file?

Should I check [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.avid.com…"]Avid[/]="http://www.avid.com…"]Avid[/]'s Studio for PC or Pinnacle Studio?

Thank you.

Vegas works with Quicktime (.mov) files. As I've said before in one of your other threads, this may be a configuration issue, because Sony should "play nice" with just about any common source.

Straight from the [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.sonycrea…"]Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 Technical Specs[/]="http://www.sonycrea…"]Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 Technical Specs[/]

Supported Formats

Import: AAC, AA3, AIFF, AVI, BMP, CDA, FLAC, GIF, JPEG, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, OGG, PCA, PNG, RealMedia®, QuickTime®, SND, SFA, W64, WAV, WDP, WMA, WMV
Export: AAC, AIFF, AVC, AVI, BMP, FLAC, JPEG, LPEC, MP3, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, OGG, PCA, PNG, RealMedia®, TIFF, QuickTime, W64, WAV, WDP, WMA, WMV

Vegas Movie Studio HD system requirements

• Microsoft® Windows® XP SP3, Windows Vista® SP2, or Windows® 7
• 2 GHz processor (multicore or multiprocessor CPU recommended for HD)
• 400 MB hard-disk space for program installation
• 1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended)
• IEEE-1394DV card (for DV capture and print-to-tape)
• USB 2.0 connection (for importing from AVCHD or DVD camcorders)
• Windows-compatible sound card
• DVD-ROM drive (for installation from a DVD only)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.51 (included on application disc)
• Apple® QuickTime® 7.1.6 or later
• Internet Connection (for Gracenote® MusicID® Service)

On a brand new Windows7 laptop, I installed the latest QuickTime application, then Vegas, then opened the MOV file and I get the error.

Is there a way to investigate what the problem is?

I'm not sure what's going on there? I'm working on a documentary that was all imported as QuickTime files and I'm having no problems with that. I believe it wasn't even necessary to have the latest QuickTime application? Perhaps there is a conflict in codecs that you have loaded? Sony works with QuickTime files. What is the error you are getting? Have you utilize the Sony drop down menu to " import "? Have you tried dragging and dropping? And when you started your Vegas software what kind of file format did you choose to work in? I'm only asking this because I don't tell my Sony software to create a QuickTime project even though I am importing QuickTime files. I generally choose the mostly uncompressed, lightly compressed, .AVI as my project. Then I import the QuickTime files. If your QuickTime files have .AC 3 files for the audio, that's where there may be the issue? So it may require a workaround? Let us know?

Vegas 9 user with DVD Architect
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD, post: 388389 wrote: What is the error you are getting? Have you utilize the Sony drop down menu to " import "? Have you tried dragging and dropping? And when you started your Vegas software what kind of file format did you choose to work in?

I click on Project > Import Media to open the MOV file from the camcorder, and Vegas says:

Warning: An error occured while opening one or more files. An error occured while opening a codec.

FWIW, the MOV file opens OK in VLC and AviDemux.

If you want to give it a try, I extracted a 5MB sample (crappy video, but it was just for testing purposes):
jvc.camcorder.sample.mov

Also, to sync the camcorder and the Tascam, I figured I could use Audacity to generate 2s of 440Hz and play the file with my smartphone in front of them. Here's what it sounds like on the two devices (soundtrack from the camcorder extracted using VLC):
;)

Hopefully, Vegas or whichever video editor I end up using will be able to easily locate this 2s sound byte within the two tracks.

Thank you.

Someone found what it was: The JVC camcorder seems to format files using the Mac version of QuickTime, and it's different enough from the PC version that some applications cannot open such MPEG2 files directly.

AviDemux (video=>copy, audio=>copy, format=>mpeg-ps) or ffmpeg can convert the file, and I could import the file in Vegas successfully.

That's definitely a feature I'll check when buying my own camcorder.

Thanks everyone for the help.

That sounds encouraging! But bear in mind, when you convert / re-render / dither etc. there's always a possibility the algorithm involved can introduce minute discrepancies in the file that may affect your synch. But I wish you the best of luck.

As dvdhawk pointed out, there can be some timing discrepancies that can occur. This actually recently happened to me on this documentary film that I have been re-editing that originally started on Final Cut Pro. Most of the files are QuickTime files and most of open successfully. Others have not with error messages of something about not being supported or an actual QuickTime file. Thankfully, most everything that was important did open. However, I did notice while bumping these files up to a lesser compressed .AVI file format lip-synch issues started to occur. I found that converting these 29.97 FPS QuickTime files to 24 frame Progressive utilizing 3:2:2:3 pulldown not only solves some of the interlacing jaggies, it also seemed to correct the lip-synch problem. So I count myself lucky but then I'm not finished with this project yet either and perhaps the fun is just beginning? Oy vey.

I'm going out of my mind!
Mx. Remy Ann David

Thanks for the tip. Anyway, this little camcorder I borrowed is just for learning purposes. I'll make sure the one I get eventually uses a format I can edit easily.

BTW, is there a good introduction on audio/video that you would recommend, preferably with video and sound segments as illustrations?

I'm thinking books like Steve Stockman's [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.amazon.c…"]How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck: Advice to Make Any Amateur Look Like a Pro[/]="http://www.amazon.c…"]How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck: Advice to Make Any Amateur Look Like a Pro[/].

First, regarding your little camcorder that you borrowed for learning purposes, these items actually work surprisingly well, even the inexpensive ones today. I actually use some of these inexpensive ones in positions and situations where a larger more professional one has the risk of being damaged or is impractical because of their size to mount properly. My more professional oriented camcorder is then utilized for the primary shot. Where the lesser expensive ones are utilized for cutaway shots, where they can work quite well.

While I have not read that Steve Stockman book, I have seen it at the bookstore. And I would imagine it's a good place for you to start. One key factor is the automatic exposure control most of these cameras have. They are designed to provide a maximum of 100% video of the whites. This can cause problems with detail and resolution when the camera takes a Caucasian face and/or " whiteboard " making a face or a whiteboard nothing more than a white blotch from which you cannot recover from. Within these even inexpensive camcorders there generally is some kind of setting to allow for a certain amount of over or under exposure. So I generally will set the camcorder to slightly underexpose. This will retain much more detail than if you leave it set to ± zero. I don't want my faces or my whites going beyond 80% video. When you feed it into your computer, the software will allow you to make further exposure corrections if necessary. Once you hit 100%, correcting it downwards will not bring back any detail. But at 80% video detail will be maintained. If the camcorder is facing into a bright light, it's okay if that bright light registers 100% video since you don't need to see any detail inside a lightbulb. And that's a trick to make amateur videos not look like amateur videos.

I've also found that good standard definition video can in fact look better than high definition video since most high definition video is utilizing file formats that require much greater processing power from the computer. And those high definition file formats can be harder to work with than standard definition file formats such as the venerable ".AVI " as compared to .mpg 2 (MPEG-2, MPEG 2 transport stream M 2 T, QuickTime, AVC, AVC HD,.MP 4, H. 264, etc.).

I know you're going to do a great job. Then you can enjoy some French bread, some cheese and a nice glass of wine.
Mx. Remy Ann David

Indeed, I make sure the person I'm shooting isn't standing in front of a bright background (window or silver screen for slides) because that'll make them look very dark. I'll check what manual settings the camcorder offers.

Thanks for the tip on SD vs. HD. Are there brands + models you would recommend in the $/€500-below price range?