OK!!!
I FINALLY finished my project that I said I'd do.
DISCLAIMER:
This is my FIRST video I have ever done of myself drumming. (Don't ask what my other videos are.. Wink ) The drumming is fair, at best, and kinda kludgy in the beginning. I was mostly concentrating on the video camera on me rather than drumming. Then I relaxed a bit.
Secondarily, I wanted to show some of the functionality of the DM10, and my e-kit. So, there are parts that show the Visualite hi-hats with the drop clutch (this is HUGE, in my opinion). The dynamic sounds of the DM10 - hard and soft hits.
To watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-UiIkhGL68Anyway, this was using my MacBook Pro (about 2 years old at this point), Garage Band, iMovie and an old video camera (at least 7 years old).
Here are the details of the experiment / video.
Step 1: started the video first, then GarageBand for recording.
Pretty simple, click record on GB, and I have a remote for the video camera. I think starting them at the same time would be optimal, but difficult.
Step 2: play drums.
Duh.
Step 3: stop GB & video cam
Again, stoping at the same time might make syncing the video and audio easier, but, meh.
Step 4: Import the video into iMovie
This was done via FireWire - my video camera has a FireWire export, iMove makes this REALLY easy.
Step 5: Detach the original audio from the video.
This took me a while to figure out. It wasn't very intuitive but I finally figured out that in order to take out the audio the video camera recorded, there is a 'detach audio' feature.
Step 6: clip the video to a more useful start / end
The precision editor is pretty cool. But mostly I needed to erase the beginning of the tape that was imported that were of other projects, so I had to trim.
Step 7: Edit the GarageBand audio file to trim out the empty space.
The video was where I wanted it, now to focus on the audio, so I simply opened up the GB file, and trimmed out the dead space. Save.
Step 8: attach the GB file to iMovie.
This was weird. There seems to be 2 ways to attach. iMovie made it easy, you simply browse for the file, and drag it into iMovie. HOWEVER, if you drag it to the clip, it can put it in the clip out outside the clip, this took a while to figure out. If it is IN the clip, you can't do anything to sync the audio with the video. The key (which took me a while to figure out) is to have the audio outside the clip. THEN, you can drag the audio clip around to sync the two.
Step 9: Synch the audio with the video.
This was tough. I am sure professional level software makes this simple, but with iMove, this seems more difficult that it should be. In the end, I think I lucked into it. The sync is pretty darn good, and it STAYS synced the whole video.
Step 10: publish / export video.
This was CAKE. you export it to the HD, and you're done. What is even cooler, is there is an 'share' pulldown, and one of the options is youTube. You add your account, and share it, and iMovie exports and uploads the video.
So, that's my quasi 'report' on using a Mac with the FREE included software of GarageBand and iMovie. Overall, it can be done, the hardest part is syncing the audio with the video.
comments and questions accepted. Good luck!!