Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jabney (john abney)]

low budget - high expectations

We need one or more video cameras that can fill a Youtube (etc) screen with bands playing a ~25' wide stage behind the main curtain (the total width is ~30').  For the same venue, we also need one or more video cameras that should be able to focus as small as a single player/singer's face, up to as big as a drum kit. The camera positions are ~60' back (& above the heads of the players), ~20' back (& above the heads of the players), at 0' back or on the apron (looking up), and (eventually) in the wings. Those are in feet ('Imperial') and from a FOH position. As far as suggested mm for each lens, I don't know. That's one of the things I hope to learn here.

We've tried using a Logitech web-cam w. 'Carl Zeiss Lens' and 'HD1080P' from ~60' away: much too far away. Tried using a YI Action Camera: same problem - too far. Moving the camera closer to the stage helps, but this room is a live music room. So we don't want to block the audience nor the performers. Our video is done by volunteers (me, at the moment, and I have other volunteer tasks as well) and we need to run the video remotely.

HDMI looks nice (and we may have to use it) but it seems that many (most?) of the HDMI-required cameras have built-in 'problems' such as a ~29 minute limit or a 15' length limit. I would prefer recording remotely on 7200 rpm hard drives in RAID 0. But most (all?) of the semi-affordable DSLR cameras that-also-do-video require you to record to built-in cards. Everything that seems to work for us seems to come down to video gear that uses SDI cables.

While there are many on-line reviews of DSLR cameras that-also-do-video; the full video camera reviews are missing or lacking. I've considered cobbling a real lens on the YI Action Camera (or something like it) but the guides seem to assume a level of video and mechanical knowledge that I have not yet achieved. I had an earlier post here asking about doing 3-camera video at $15k or $16k. After some coaching by readers (thanks!) I think that might work; but I think I'll need to start learning video on a much cheaper rig.

Any ideas?

Thanks for reading this. And if I've said something wrong here, please tell me.

[Erik Jerde]

Let me see if I have this right.  You want to do a 2 camera shoot.  One stage width one tight on the musicians.  From 60'.  Capture camera output to disk, greater than 30min run time.  HD1080.  Live music venue, so probably low lighting.  For $250-$800.

Is that correct? 

Gonna be blunt here, can't do it.  Can't even rent it for a day at that price.  If that's your budget for tools so you can break in and steal someone else's rig then it may be enough.

Serious question.  Why record?  What's the point?

[jabney (john abney)]

Let me see if I have this right.  You want to do a 2 camera shoot.  One stage width one tight on the musicians.  From 60'.  Capture camera output to disk, greater than 30min run time.  HD1080.  Live music venue, so probably low lighting.  For $250-$800.

Is that correct? 

Gonna be blunt here, can't do it.  Can't even rent it for a day at that price.  If that's your budget for tools so you can break in and steal someone else's rig then it may be enough.

Serious question.  Why record?  What's the point?

Somehow I lost the 'ea' to show that it was referring to each camera. It was in the headline at some point. Sorry.

As far as the reason for the recording, one reason: we need to promote our venue.  It's a relatively small room, in a small town, and all the media near us is sharing a shrinking market. And yes, we do our part by buying ads for the shrinking readership. The ads convey our rather decent schedule. The ads convey our very reasonable ticket prices. But what the ads don't convey is the music-friendly atmosphere of the stage and the listening area. Even when the sound on a video would have to be turned off because of IP costs.

Yes, we know the difference between a cover and an original played by its writers. And we know how to mute the covers; and those originals (of their own) that a band doesn't want to go out over the internet - for whatever reason. 

Promotion is vital, whether it's a venue or an original song. Production quality has to be even higher. We do that in the booking. We do that for the sound. We do that for the hospitality. Now we think it may be time to get a camera.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX85 can be rented for $57 for seven days. The same renter has a Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 X OIS lens to fit it for $92 for seven days. Then add one micro HDMI d Male to HDMI a Female for $5.98 from eBay (to buy), and an already existing HDMI a to HDMI a. What else would we need between the camera and a Matrox MX02 ingest device? We can devote 1.5 TB of a RAID 0 array in an HP Z600 (with two CPU's and an ATI FirePro card).

So here is my serious question back to you: for about $155 for seven days (plus shipping), would that be enough to see whether that works for us or not?

[veditor78]

Take a look at using professional HD security cameras. You can get them relatively cheap and different lenses can be installed on them.

I used 4 of them for a trade show live demonstration that was displayed on flown monitors. The cameras I used has HD-SDI output and were fed to a Blackmagic AETM switcher. It worked really well.

[jabney (john abney)]

Take a look at using professional HD security cameras. You can get them relatively cheap and different lenses can be installed on them.

I used 4 of them for a trade show live demonstration that was displayed on flown monitors. The cameras I used has HD-SDI output and were fed to a Blackmagic AETM switcher. It worked really well.

Thanks for posting.

I looked at some sites for under-$1,000 HD PTZ cameras and they could be had with SDI. But the chips had far fewer pixels than the Raspberry camera that I bought for less than $20. I personally like things that are 'cheap-and-cheerful' but when I said that I could build a Raspberry rig, the answer was, "No. That's like a security camera. Keep looking."

[Steve Ferreira]

You will need to rent a broadcast camera with CCU, triax, tripod etc. The CCU will have SDI out and then you can record onto something like an AJA KI Pro deck.

[ProSoundWeb Community]