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Im installing an IP Camera security system for a friends new music studio.

They would like a video camera system to record musicians playing drums, piano, singing etc and provide video on USB drive at end of session. Also, live stream video and audio via website if they want.

Im thinking of buying HDMI video cams and put them on mic stands. Then run HDMI to an interface box of some kind.

NewTek Tricaster looking interesting, but not sure about the 5-7k pricetag not including cameras.

Anything out there that can do this?

Thank you for your help!

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dvdhawk Fri, 07/29/2016 - 07:37

How many cameras do you think would be the most they'd want?
Uncompressed HD quality for the takeaway video on a USB drive?
Compressed video, good enough to post on their FB page?
Webcasting a single camera, or a manned video mix?

The TriCaster may seem expensive at first glance, but considering everything it does with the capability of being broadcast quality, it's actually a very good value. (Even though I actually think you're a little light on the number, if you're speccing HD.) If all they want is web-content, then it might be overkill.

Edirol makes small relatively inexpensive HD mixers, with no means to record/capture.
There are standalone HD video to hard-drive recorders you could hook up to that.
Blackmagic Design makes nice capture boxes that can do HD capture up to 4K resolution, some of which should do live streaming simultaneously.

As you introduce more devices, you're asking for more sync problems. HD digital video requires substantial buffering and processing to flow glitch-free. Digital audio doesn't require anywhere near the data transfer rate of digital video, so one of the devices will need to have the ability to calculate the offset before embedding the audio into the HDMI video signal.

If I wanted to do it right, I'd buy the TriCaster and their switching controller (and man the camera(s) and switcher/mixer.) But unless there's verifiable revenue coming from it, it seems like a money pit to me.

bouldersound Thu, 08/04/2016 - 09:45

Live multi-cam is going to be a bit of a challenge. If I were to put together an affordable live rig I'd use some older camcorders with analog outputs into something like a Videonics MX-1 (unless there's something better/cheaper these days), and connect that to a cheap (under $50) USB video capture device. You will need someone to mix it live.

Running multiple camcorders and mixing it later is relatively simple. There are things to learn, like syncing all the audio and video, and it takes more time. But ultimately you get a better product.

dvdhawk Sat, 08/06/2016 - 08:45

I have owned an MX-Pro for a long time, unfortunately nobody wants (to pay for) SD video anymore. It's certainly good enough for a generic webcast, but you're limited to 720x480 resolution via the S-Video inputs. The two MX-Pros I've used never handled audio very well anyway. But to your point, running the audio straight to the record deck and bypassing the Videonics audio section never resulted in any noticeable sync issues between the audio and video. The analog video path did not result in any significant lag-time.