Beginner Advice on a setup to record long piano sessions, from above piano

mitya33

mitya33

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Hi, everyone

New poster here.

I'm a pianist who records videos for YouTube, from a perspective above the piano i.e. so the video is basically a wide shot of the piano keyboard, with my disembodied hands in shot playing the keys.

Right now I'm achieving this by dangling my phone camera above the piano, and recording on that, while audio is sent digitally into my laptop. I then use software to glue the two streams together and line them up timing wise.

I'd like to progress to a better setup but I've never got into cameras and so I'm not sure where to start.

Key for me is the ability to record long amounts of video - I may post some sessions that involve hours of playing, so I'd need a camera that doesn't have e.g. a hard 30 minutes video recording time limit, if such cameras exist.

I would then like to either line-in the audio to the camera, and the camera sends the combined (video + audio) stream to the laptop, OR continue to send the audio direct to the laptop, and then use something like open broadcast software to merge the streams, such that I can do live performances.

I would be very grateful for any help or camera suggestsions anyone could suggest. I don't to spend a fortune; the camera itself doesn't need to be amazing.

Thank you in advance.
 
I’m not an expert but thinking you could use an HD webcam connected to the laptop. Avoids memory or power limits and you’ll have the footage in situ ready to edit.
 
I did this a few years ago, tripod located behind the pianist, Gopro on the tripod's extended arm above the pianist's head pointed downwards on centre of keyboard, decent volume memory card & power bank.
Hope this makes sense :)
 
Both of the above options look better than a DSLR or Mirrorless solution.

Indeed if you're looking for quality music recording, it's unlikely any camera option will do better than a good mike DI'd into the laptop or a separate high quality digital recorder.
 
My (limited) experience of GoPros is they have a pretty short battery life (as in a 30 min video would more than eat a battery) but I don’t know if you can connect them to external power while you’re recording?
 
eoSimon said:
My (limited) experience of GoPros is they have a pretty short battery life (as in a 30 min video would more than eat a battery) but I don’t know if you can connect them to external power while you’re recording?
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Yes, you can use connected to a power bank, even the cheepo copies like the EK7000 will work connected to an external power source. Biggest issue is memory card size
 
Thanks, everyone. Based on advice from here and elsewhere, it sounds like I just need a decent webcam, since all I need to do is stream the video straight into my laptop, not have the camera actually save the video to its own memory.
 
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