Submitted Question:
I am trying to convert an existing/outdated elementary broadcast studio for use with VC3. The studio has two separate video feeds, as well as a separate audio feed (w/ mixer) into the production room. I have a few questions:
1) Can I use the existing video cameras? They appear to simply be supplying video via an RCA feed back to the production room? Obviously, this wouldn't be a firewire capture device, so I'm not sure that VC3 will like this setup very much.
Technically speaking, yes you could use those existing analog cameras (we did at first), but I'd not recommend it. Your PC would need an analog capture card installed for each camera, and they run about $100 each. It puts a LOT of stress on the PC to use two or three of these analog capture cards at the same time, since your PC is trying to keep up with converting the video signal to digital. We had "hiccups" at times, especially when transitioning between analog cameras. Keep in mind this was the computers fault, not VC's fault. As a result, we found it much smoother to use two firewire cameras, since the signal is purely digital coming into the PC, thus the computer does not need to do any heavy converting. At around $300 each, these firewire cameras are much better for VC use. I cover using both analog and digital cameras in my Training DVD Volume 1.
2) Assuming I can get past the video camera issue above, you talk about using the mixer to push the sound back out to the camera, and that makes sense. But obviously, that won't work for me (since the two cameras are supplying video only to the production room). Is there a way I can merge the separate audio/video sources using VC3? For example, feed the mixer output to the line in on the sound card, and then just merge that with whichever video is in use.
No-- you want to make the camera responsible for BOTH video and audio being fed into the PC. That way, the firewire cable is carrying BOTH mics and camera footage into the PC in sync. The scenario you mentioned puts the PC in charge of matching audio with video, and usually the PC cannot do this task sufficiently. Make the camera responsible for matching up mics and live video. In other words, think of the camera as the video AND audio source that feeds the PC via firewire cable.
Hope that helps, let us know by leaving comments or questions below!
