Maximum number of video tracks for virtual choir project

Peter_O

Newbie Joined: May 06, 2020 08:15 Messages: 2 Offline

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May 06, 2020 08:34

I just comleted our first Virtual Choir video using Powerdirector. https://youtu.be/V4ANCJX67Bg

As you can see, I used 4 x Video Collage windows to get the overall effect. For this first video we only had 23 singers out of a full choir of 45-50, so next time - with many more singers - the Video Collage feature might not not be up to it. Plus, I'd like to do a totally different style.

To give PD a chance I rendered each of the source clips down to 720p (the originals were in many different resolutiions & formats).

Q1 - was this a necessary step or would PD have been able to cope with lots of videos in different formats during a simultaneous edit?

Q2 - for the next video, if I was to just drop all (say) 45 individual vids onto the timeline would PD be up to the job? What's a sensible maximum number of HD edit tracks in the timeline? Any tips on workflow and keeping PD stable and in sync during the edit?

Many thanks.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at May 06. 2020 08:36

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

May 06, 2020 12:39

Very nicely done! That's a nice layout with 25 windows but I'm not sure how well that format will work out with double the number of choir members on screen. A continual slow pan/scroll across the screen might work, but that's a lot of extra editing work.

As to your main questions, 50 tracks is a lot of data to pull off your hard drive at one time. SSDs will do a better job than spinning platter hard drives, but there's also the amount of total bandwidth needed. I would actually downscale the clips ahead of time to 480p as that's still overkill for the small window sizes but it will further reduce the amount of data PD will need to pull every second when previewing.

Also, here are 99 A/V tracks available so you certainly can drag and drop them all onto the timeline. However, you'd probably only want to sync by audio (if you're doing that in PD) maybe 10 clips at a time, and trim the beginning and end of each set of clips so that they'll be easy to line up when new clips are added.

I would sync 10 new clips in each batch to one of the already synced clips so you can drag and position the new set exactly under the existing set of synced clips.

Peter_O

Newbie Joined: May 06, 2020 08:15 Messages: 2 Offline

May 06, 2020 14:11

Quote Very nicely done! That's a nice layout with 25 windows but I'm not sure how well that format will work out with double the number of choir members on screen. A continual slow pan/scroll across the screen might work, but that's a lot of extra editing work.

As to your main questions, 50 tracks is a lot of data to pull off your hard drive at one time. SSDs will do a better job than spinning platter hard drives, but there's also the amount of total bandwidth needed. I would actually downscale the clips ahead of time to 480p as that's still overkill for the small window sizes but it will further reduce the amount of data PD will need to pull every second when previewing.

Also, here are 99 A/V tracks available so you certainly can drag and drop them all onto the timeline. However, you'd probably only want to sync by audio (if you're doing that in PD) maybe 10 clips at a time, and trim the beginning and end of each set of clips so that they'll be easy to line up when new clips are added.

I would sync 10 new clips in each batch to one of the already synced clips so you can drag and position the new set exactly under the existing set of synced clips.

The audio was processed in Audacity - seperate tracks for each choir section, the backing track and the soloist - then imported into PD as a single audio track. That way I could easily tweak the audio (for bass, treble, balance, reverb, etc) and get everything in sync. Each of the Video Collages was lip-synced seperately - a bit of a hassle - though so long as the sound is good minor lip sync issues in the video aren't critical.

I'd do the audio the same way on any future project like this, but definately want to look at alternative and more creative solutions for the video. Hence my starting point here - to get a sense of what PD is safely capable on a project like this. Good suggestion to go down to 480p. Thanks.