Okay
Band I was in back in the 60s reunited in 2005 for a dance and concert in our home base city of Jacksonville, Florida. Gratifying to us that it was a complete sellout - like 1100 people - and it was a ton of fun. We didn't have a budget for professional post so I took the six cameras worth of miniDV tape and taught myself digital editing so all of us guys could see how it turned out.

I had to manually sync each scene cut to the separately recorded and mixed digital soundtrack so it took quite a while to do the job.

Anyhow, it's primative - straight cuts - no effects or spiffy transitions but it shows that eight 60something old guys could still get back up there and play a little rock and roll. I think I've gotten a bit better at this editing thing and it sure is easier than using tape and editing via A&B roll - it was fun. Of course the picture quality is better at full dvd quality - I uploaded this to YouTube transcoded as VCD to stay within the 100meg size limit.


"http://www.youtube.com/v/4ju1Tc2LQ3g&rel=1"

Hi imjay - Nice work and a great sound. You've done a good edit job for a 1st timer, but it would have made your job reeeeeeeeeeal easy if the guys with the cams had practised a heap more first.
Switching to spotlight filter on the back cam would have helped with the faces burning out and stopped the permanent zooming back and forth - I could go on, but I do understand the fun element of it for you.
Well done.

Thanks for taking the time to look and then comment. PC editing was surprisingly easy to self-learn compared to the limited previous experience I had with two camera a/b roll type analog post.

The camera guys - mostly friends - were under no direction umbrella and promptly forgot most of what I suggested before the concert began. Where do I begin with what I tried to overcome during post.

They didn't set white balance to a common white. They left their miniDV camcorders in the auto mode and as all know you can't do a good job of capture in a dark location with auto light and focus camera mode.

There was no timecode sync. Imagine using your ear and a mouse button for EVERY added scene/cut to try and sync the image to the separate sound track and having 18 hrs of video to dig through.

The rear camera on the floor guy forgot to switch from handheld mike (used for pre-concert audience interviews) back to built-in camera mic so all three hours of his performance tape had no audio so I had to sync and add sound to all his stuff in order to be able to hear to sync during editing.

One of the best "shooters" - handheld - stage left - had either a partial head clog or tape path failure so every few minutes his stuff went from great to nothing but digital noise and dropout. Three of six cameras were 3 chip - other three only one.

I'll quit taking space and rattling on so much - with what I had to work with going in I appreciate your saying that it looked okay and since there were only two public performances before the group disbanded again I feel very blessed to have been able to finagle six shooters and six miniDV cameras - None of the other guys thought recording was worthwhile so I had to pretty much get it all done alone and as much trouble as it was I was very glad to have the memories to watch and listen to.
Jim