Sonic'

Not sure if I will get an answer, but may do from one of the lurking experts

shortly I shall be recording a gig using my Tascam DA38 & DA88 (with SY88 sync card) multitrack recorders

and I want to record the video too on two camcorders (or possibly someone else do the camcorder recordings

What I want to do (if possible) is to transfer the video to PC, and do a 16 track mixdown of the gig, and marry it up to the camcorder mixed footage

One possibility is to do a 'live' mix there and then straight to the camcorder audio inputs, and not to use the camcorder built in microphones, as depending on the venue can be 'ok' or can be distorted on the peak levels (auto recording level sadly)

Or I could take some ambient mikes, and run a feed from the desk to the camcorder inputs (this way I dont have to worry about doing a live mix, and can leave half my gear at home )

Or the ideal situation would be to record the gig to the multitracks, and use the SY-88 card in the DA88 to send a SMPTE stripe to the camcorder inputs and a SMPTE stripe to track 16 on the DA88 (I'm pretty sure I can send two stripes out at once, or at the very least format the tapes with SMPTE code embedded) plus I have a MOTU Midi Express which can stripe SMPTE

This way I can digitally transfer the 16 tracks to the PC (I have a Soundscape Mixtreme with TDIF inputs & SMPTE in/out too) and then transfer the camcorder footage along with SMPTE timecode to the PC and essentially join them together in something like Nuendo etc

Is this feasable? or would it be more a case of getting the final mix right, sync'ing the tascams and camcorder together, and whilst transferring the video to PC use the mixdown version of the audio, then do my editing in premier

I have tried with some old video footage and multitrack mixdowns to combine them, but it is a whole load of hassle as the mixdowns tend to be shorter by about 5 seconds or so, so have to be stretch to the millisecond but you still get drifting, I did notice that the camcorder audio tends to be 48 and not 44.1 not quite sure why, or if this is causing the difference in song length

The camcorder footage is analogue (Hi8) and the Tascams are digital (but also Hi8)

The only thing is, is that if this doesnt work by striping the smpte to the camcorder, then the video footage is essentially useless then

Im sure it all can be done, and I need to do a few tests at home/rehearsals first to make sure I do get it right, but wondered if anyone else has done anything similar

ScoobyDoo555

It's possible, but you'll probably have to make the Camcorder the master on playback (unless it can slave to TC )

However, as long as you've got it all timecoded, you can pretty much "bump-frame" it in Premier

It's all about making your life easy

Dan

mannyo

You also need to make allowances for the potential different speeds when playing back. It only takes a small speed differential in the playback decks and you will soon be struggling to keep the timecode in sync. The main issue would be the Hi-8 analogue recording. If you could use DV then this is timecoded already. 100% digital would be easier, along with using a non tape format for recording. Maybe a PC recording all 16 tracks, and a hard drive based camcorder would remove the potential problems that tape can cause.