Demo Piano Lesson Multi-Cam Video using RecoLive

As promised, here’s a demo video of me using RecoLive with 3 iPads, an old iPhone 4S, and a MacBook Air running RecoLive Capture (Mac OS 10.8 and up only – no Windows PC version yet):

A few notes:

• The AirTurn Manos Mount fits onto any standard microphone stand, and is a nifty way to mount your iPhone as an overhead cam. I wouldn’t recommend mounting an iPad for the overhead view, in case it comes crashing down on your head…
• RecoLive Capture is the desktop app for Mac OS 10.8+ that turns your Mac computer into another video feed. You can select the option to use the Mac’s built-in webcam or stream a view of the desktop. In my case, I used another program, Reflector 2, to stream the digital sheet music view from the iPad on my piano music stand onto the Mac desktop.
• The order in which your turn on your iPads/iPhone/Mac running the RecoLive apps is somewhat important. I found that opening the “master” iPad used to control all the cam angles first worked best for connecting to all the cam views.
• The iPads/iPhone/Mac connect to each other using a shared WiFi connection, so you need to make sure all devices are on the same WiFi router. If you don’t have available WiFi, you may be able to use a smartphone as a WiFi hotspot to connect all your devices – haven’t tried that yet, but if I do, I’ll be sure to report on performance.
• The final render actually depends on copying all the video files from the various cam sources onto the master device. This can take a LONG time, so plan your video(s) accordingly…

On a side note, I edited the opening and closing graphics into the final rendered video using an open-source video editing program called Shotcut. I will be working on a series of tutorials for this program. Shotcut is admittedly a bit clunky to use and somewhat limited in its feature set, but it’s hard to beat the price of “free” when all you want to do is put together simple videos. Once you get the hang of Shotcut’s interface and workflow, it functions reasonably well (although it takes longer to do some things in Shotcut than in my preferred video editor, Adobe Premiere Pro, but that’s a rather expensive program…

If I had planned ahead a bit, I could’ve created image files, put them into the master iPad, and triggered them there for the intro and outtro graphics within RecoLive and skipping the post-production edits in Shotcut. Of course, I couldn’t do that and play the piano at the same time…)

I can already see using RecoLive as a great tool for recording performances where you want to provide a more visually appealing video (think: student recitals or lecture presentations. Perhaps one wide shot cam to see the audience, stage and performer(s), another closer angle of the performer(s) alone on stage, and a third extreme closeup of the performer(s)’ hands or presentation screen? By the way, you can pinch the cam view to zoom in and out at will for each angle. Neat!). RecoLive would also be great for interview shows for video podcasts. Now you just need to get a couple of extra iPads and iPhones 😉

P.s. – my apologies for the horribly out-of-tune piano!!