Workflow for edited Audio and Video Recordings

[paticus]

I want to make some videos for social media, where I'm composing the various parts of a song end to end.

Here's a basic example:
Sublime w/ Rome on Instagram: "Start your weekend off with a little reggae version of “Blinding Lights” by @theweeknd"

I'm trying to wrap my head around the workflow for this. Naturally I will want to work in my DAW for the song creation (Logic Pro). But I'm not sure how to capture and incorporate the video.

Any advice for doing this? Thanks!

 

[tothemax]

Not sure if this will help, I'm sure others will chime in. I've been working off and on for a lesson video of Green Onions for our drummers son. The way I started was to create a video of me playing with the original music as a backing track. I was able to import that video into my DAW (Cakewalk) and then add audio tracks in the DAW. I haven't made much more progress than that, but your post was timely as it's on my "To Do" list for this weekend. It's wet and windy here today. I'm on Windows 10, and I had to upgrade my system to a later processor to support the video editing software I'm trying to learn. Looking forward to your updates...

Cheers and good luck...

 

[DirtDog]

You’ll need a camera (duh), lighting and some video editing software at a minimum.

You *could* use a multicamera set up and perform one take, but you’re probably going to be better off using one camera, performing multiple takes (one for each camera angle/instrument) and editing it all in video editing software.

Given that the editing part for muticamera will be challenging, I suggest Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. Sure, you could edit in iMovie or whatever, but syncing multicam footage is a snap in PP or DR (where you have a common audio track to reference).

In any case, you will go through a learning curve. I’ve been going through the curve for the last year or so. There’s just so much to know if you want to produce a relatively polished video. There a more than a few really good YouTube channels out there that can help you through.

Get a camera that can record in 1080p (HD) and 24 or 30 frames per second if you don’t t already have one. An iPhone can do this and there’s some apps that give you more control than the native camera app.

Don’t really need 4K or higher frame rates for stuff like this. If you go with a DSLR camera, lens choice will become important.

 

[DirtDog]

Here's a good explanation of how the "multicam" approach works in terms of editing.

Note that she's recording one take onto multiple cameras. that's one way of doing it.

Another way is to record multiple takes on one camera (e.g., separate video for each of your audio tracks that you want to record). In this video, change "Camera 1", "Camera 2" etc for "Track 1 (Bass)", "Track 2 (Guitar), etc. and the principles are identical.

In either approach, you need to ensure you capture your audio in your DAW AND onto your camera (for syncing purposes in the editing software). You'll dump the camera audio for the final edit and use your DAW mix.

Basically, you record and mix all audio in your DAW. Then edit video with the DAW audio in video editing software.

Assuming you record each audio track into the DAW and record onto video at the same time, here's the overall workflow for a one camera/multiple video clips process:

• First, export a final mix from DAW and import into the video editing software.
• Import all your video clips (incl. camera audio) into the video editing software
• Then sync your video (with rough audio) to the DAW audio within the video editing software (you may need to reference the YouTube video below to figure out how to do that).
• Then get rid of the camera audio after syncing all video clops to the DAW audio mix (either by deleting the audio track from each camera clip or by zeroing out the audio from each camera clip).
• Then start editing* the video clips into one complete video synced to the DAW audio.
• Finally, export the complete video/DAW audio sequence and upload to Youtube.

*this is where it starts getting technically challenging, but editing multi camera sequences in package like Premiere or Resolve is quite easy once you get the hang of it. Learning curve, YMMV.

 

[Mighty Thumb]

The Blackmagic Designs ATEM Mini Pro ISO will allow you to record up to four HDMI sources as well as the Program output at once to an external SSD drive. It also has two stereo line level inputs. These two plus audio from each HDMI input (if there is any) are also recorded as separate files along with a DaVinci Resolve project file. This makes editing in DaVinci Resolve, which is free from Blackmagic Designs, much easier.
ATEM Mini | Blackmagic Design
ATEM Mini – Workflow | Blackmagic Design
ATEM Mini – Editing | Blackmagic Design

 

[tothemax]

I did take DD's advice and downloaded DaVinci Resolve, minor hiccups in that my video card was not supported on the latest version. Uninstalling and going v17 did the trick. Having older model video camera's were a bit of a hassle but in the end would up using a couple of web cams I had. Lots of tutorials out there and making some progress. Hoping to get all the video done today and then move on to editing, then work with the audio. The DaVinci mixer looks pretty impressive, it did appear to grab the plugins from my DAW. Not sure if you integrate your DAW with it or not... that's another tutorial. Appreciate the info...