The work flow goes like this:
- Selected the 5:30 show soundtrack as the basis for the edited versions. The last show recording stands alone. It is too chaotic to be used for editing. The first two shows were recorded from the sides, so the 5:30 show gives the best stereo audio track.
- Audio extracted from video file and heavily edited, using Audacity software, to tone down loud clapping and other audience artifacts. Audio compression reduces the loudest parts and brings up the softer parts so the whole sound track can be listened to without having to constantly adjust your volume.
- Long sound track broken into song length chunks. When video from different shows is synced to a single audio track, multiple song selections will become out of sync because of the variable length pauses between the songs.
- Audio track and video from four different shows is imported into the MultiCam editing tool in PowerDirector 12. If luck holds (with 'streets'), the auto-sync tool properly synchs all five tracks. If no luck (with 'blessing') the tracks must be synched by hand. This is done by searching for something recognizable in all the video and audio tracks, such as a particular hand clap, marking the exact frame this occurs in all the tracks, and lining up the marks. Manual synchronizing is very time consuming.
- Once the tracks are synched, the desired camera recordings are selected throughout the song. I do this by opening all four camera videos in separate players on my second monitor. I watch each video in turn for a few measures of the song, and select which one will be used in the edited track. Usually this a process of elimination, ruling out the cameras which are out of focus at that instant, or have a bad angle on the main stage action. This is the point in the process where some creativity comes into play, choosing the exact moments for edits and how the successive shots will be composed.
- The MultiCam feature is new to this version of the software, and the user interface isn't refined yet. So, after the edits are roughly placed, the mixed video track is dumped into the normal PowerDirector editor. There, the timing of the edits can be tweaked to be just right.
- When the editing is finished, the recording is 'published'. This means that the video frames are rendered in the software to incorporate all the edits, and the recording is saved to disk in one of many possible file types, resolutions, audio quality levels, and video frame rates.
- Then, a final viewing of the finished video file to be sure the final product is all good.
- Finally, uploading to youtube.
This process takes in the neighborhood of 4 hours for a 3-4 minute song. The time is going down as I get better at it. The most time consuming parts are the audio file cleanup and manually syncing video tracks.
When all the songs are edited, there is going to be some sort of process whereby the songs are individually synched to the complete show audio track, and transitional video spliced in to fill the bits between the songs.
So, with that long winded explanation over with, here is tonight's video, 'Irish Blessing':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVHfrwR_9o
