John K.
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Nov 8, 2004, 2:31 PM
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QuadCam Review
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Thought I’d share my first experiences using QuadCam…
I recently completed a 65 min. wedding ceremony - my first dive into QuadCam. For the first time, I actually watched NOTHING footage wise beforehand from any of the 3 camera tapes I had.
With my old mixer (which I still have – a Videonics MX-PRO), I would skim through 2 of my tapes (cam 2 and cam 3) and briefly write down when to go to that cam and when not too – I then would watch in full the tape from cam 1 and write down time codes and the cam # I wanted to switch to. Follow me? It’s an effective and accurate way to do it, but time consuming and became more like a chore. Also, a pain when mixing, because you can’t be interrupted and pause things while you’re doing it or you have to start over.
So, having just picked-up QuadCam, I thought I would just “wing it” and make my switches as I was viewing the 3 on-screen boxes displaying my 3 different camera angles. Knowing that with QuadCam you get 3 seconds of hidden footage (3 seconds of footage you can trim on each start and end point of each insert/camera angle change you make – don’t ask me how they did this, but AWESOME feature) each time I inserted my different camera angles, I simply paid close attention to my changes and I would quickly switch to a different angle if I started to move the camera I currently had selected. When finished, I simply checked the inserts in the storyboard with the range button (set to “trim E”), tightened some up by trimming the ones which needed it and removed a couple of inserts as well. Could not have been any easier to do - for my first time, I probably spent about a good hour, hour and a half afterwards fine-tuning my inserts - I had just over 220 total.
A couple of minor things that occurred while using QuadCam I'll point out, but none had any affect on the end results:
1) As the footage was being played, a few times I'd see some quick flashes in the viewing boxes - almost looked like a couple of split second flashes from a different angle/insert box were bleeding into each others boxes - but again, it didn't show up that way when all was said and done.
2) Sometimes in the range screen, the audio seemed to lag when trimming in or out - other times it was fine - again, this only occurred while I was in the range window and only a few times.
A current disadvantage of Quadcam is that you can’t just change the audio; you are stuck with a single audio source throughout the entire mix. With my mixer, I could switch to my lapel mic, on board camera mic etc. while I was mixing the footage. For those using minidisc recorders, etc. you can just create a scene of you whole mixing storyboard and then split it up and drop in your audio tracks where appropriate. There likely will be the ability to just switch between audio tracks sometime down the road.
A second minor gripe, is that while you are in the QuadCam window running QuadCam – it doesn’t take up your full TV (or monitor) screen – in other words, the 3-4 boxes you are viewing your footage on while mixing, could be made a little larger if they re-worked the layout of this program’s viewing size to fit your full TV size screen. It is a good size for viewing, don’t get me wrong, but may be easier on the eyes for some if these boxes were as large as possible. I would not attempt to use QuadCam on any screen size smaller than a 19”.
An additional point I’ll make here – let me preface with this so there is no confusion (if you are unfamiliar with how it operates): QuadCam has you select one camera scene as your “background” – this is where your audio track for the whole mix will come from; and then you put your second camera in position “insert1” and the other camera scene (if you shoot with 3) into the viewing box labeled “insert2”. The reason I mention this is because when you are finished, all clips are put onto the storyboard for you as inserts – the hitch though, is if you must have crossfade inserts between all your camera angle switches, you’ll find that if you have inserts from cam 2 and 3 going back and forth, then back to your “background” shot, you can’t put in a transition effect between multiple insert shots strung together. So, you can either live with all hard cuts, a mix of hard cuts and crossfades, or make sure when mixing you go back to your “background” angle between selecting “insert1” and “insert2”. Sorry if this sounds so confusing, it really isn’t, but it’s hard to write-out. If you try this in the demo mode, you can do some minor tests on your own – which I did before purchasing. With the demo mode on QuadCam, you can tinker with 30 sec. of mixing footage.
In the end, I really enjoyed working with this software – it’s very easy to use, in fact, I didn’t bother with downloading their manual – I was up and running in a few minutes. I also didn’t use their SmartSync feature (which involves calibrating your actual cameras immediately before or after your recording); for me, it’s just as easy to find a simple audio cue to use to get your camera scenes all in sync before going into QuadCam.
If you shoot with multiple cameras (weddings, bands, independent film makers, etc.) and don’t want to invest in a mixer (mine cost $1400 nearly 7 years ago and only has SVHS inputs/outputs; they want $2800+ for it now with two firewire ports), then I think this is a great answer for your mixing needs. For me, my mixer has been acting up anyway the last 4-5 months – so, instead of paying to send it in for repairs, I’m glad I decided to pick up QuadCam.
Finally, I would recommend having a hard-drive of 120GB or larger if you are going to be mixing 3 cameras or more (plus, say reception footage) – and you also will need to have OS 3.6d to support this. For those with Avio units, I’m not sure if you need to have a larger RAM size (or not) than what was originally installed in your editor. Cost for more RAM is dirt cheap through reputable on-line retailers if you need it or want to upgrade and OS 3.6d is of course free if you already have any form of SmartEdit 3.
John
(This post was edited by John K. on Nov 13, 2004, 5:16 PM)
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