Need Video Help

Skip Ellis · Post by **Skip Ellis** » 13 Nov 2020 12:24 pm

I have an HP laptop with built in camera (works fine) and I also have a USB audio interface. My DAW is Reaper.

How do I put it all together to make a guitar video for sharing on YT or FB? Do I need some additional video software to make it work?

I'd like to make a video of me playing live over a backing track that I've pre-recorded in Reaper.

I'm just not knowledgeable at all on all things video.

All suggestions appreciated......

Ian Rae · Post by **Ian Rae** » 13 Nov 2020 3:28 pm

I'll be interested in the answers too. My camera will pick up audio from other internal sources such as Windows Media Player or YouTube, but not the output from my DAW - I don't understand why.

Ian Worley · Post by **Ian Worley** » 13 Nov 2020 5:33 pm

If you want to combine video with separately recorded audio you need a video editor program. I just posted this link in another thread, OpenShot is a free open-source video editor for Windows/Mac/Linux, powerful but very intuitive.

Drop the video and a matching audio file from your DAW into the timeline, "nudge" the audio as needed to sync it up, crop/zoom/transition/title etc. to your heart's content:

https://www.openshot.org/

Another great open-source video tool is HandBrake, use it to optimize, compress, resize and re-format videos for sharing and posting:

https://handbrake.fr/

Douglas Schuch · Post by **Douglas Schuch** » 13 Nov 2020 5:55 pm

One trick that Greg Booth gave in an interview with Troy Brenningmeyer - If you know pretty much what you will play, you can record the video first, aiming not for perfection, but just no huge glaring errors. No worries about sound quality. Then record the audio seperately, using the same backing track. You can even do it one section at a time, if need be (cheating, but you better believe Nashville does far more!). Then synch them up. Since you are playing the same thing more or less, the video should match the audio pretty close. Anyplace it doesn't, you can shoot some cutaways - closeups of the bar, feet on the pedals, etc.

This presumes you've sorted your main question - the advice given already seems spot-on.

If you have any problems with OpenShot, DVDVideoSoft.com has free video editing software that I have used - not lots of bells and whistles, but it gets the job done:

https://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-video-editor.htm

Greg Booth · Post by **Greg Booth** » 14 Dec 2020 10:48 pm

Douglas Schuch wrote:One trick that Greg Booth gave in an interview with Troy Brenningmeyer - If you know pretty much what you will play, you can record the video first, aiming not for perfection, but just no huge glaring errors. No worries about sound quality. Then record the audio seperately, using the same backing track.

This is actually backwards from how I do it these days. I used to record the audio and video together and do take after take until I got it, OBS for example. Nowadays I get the audio recording done first to my liking. By then I know exactly what I played having made numerous takes. Then I shoot the video and as long as I play what I did in the audio it's not crucial that it be perfectly executed. The last step is to substitute the audio recording for the video sound track and sync it up by matching the wave form. Hope this helps.

Dan Beller-McKenna · Post by **Dan Beller-McKenna** » 22 Dec 2020 5:46 am

In the few recordings to which I've added video, I do what Greg describes. Two differences though:

1. Sometimes I can't remember for the life of me what fills I played and the results are slightly comical.
2. Greg is a phenomenal player, and I'm . . . not. $:\$

Brad Richard · Post by **Brad Richard** » 15 Jan 2021 8:12 am

My approach is also the same as Greg's, but I've got a couple of options I use. If I've got a really noticeable spot that doesn't match, I'll split the video and use a quick fade out/fade in to hide it. Another thing is if I don't feel like recording video of me playing, I'll just use some free video clips. I've done that with Hawaiian music and it worked out quite well.

David Hodan · Post by **David Hodan** » 15 Jan 2021 8:44 am

Take a look at obs. https://obsproject.com/
IT can use and combine from any audio or video sources your computer can see. You can use static images or pre-recorded content and place your audio over that if you want. You can record to disk or stream to any service with ease.

Open Source.

James Quillian · Post by **James Quillian** » 16 Jan 2021 4:16 pm

I have never used reaper but what I do with my DAW, an old version of Cyberlink, might work with Reaper.

I set as a sound source my sound device. I then extract the audio from my video file, usually MP4. I optimize the sound in a sound editor, save it and then insert it back into the video program in a different sound track. The original sound is then muted or deleted. But I don't know if that can be done with reaper.

Ian Rae · Post by **Ian Rae** » 16 Jan 2021 5:04 pm

You can edit video in Reaper, although I haven't tried anything complicated yet. You need to have the right version of VCL installed where Reaper can find it.

Brad Richard · Post by **Brad Richard** » 17 Jan 2021 8:26 am

I mostly use Videopad from NCH, but have done some work with Reaper. I found it to be very easy to use. It may not be as robust as some dedicated systems, but for basic video editing it works great. You just insert a clip and then edit much like you do with audio. Not much for FX, though, as I remember