Favorite Cameras for live video input

thuggyBear's picture

First post.

I have been building patches for my band's live performances now for about a year- I've moved up from picking apart pre-made projects to programming my from essentially whole cloth. You can see some of the stuff I have done below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXo1-GZwIvY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drAq_lu--Mw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cJRvxv94_8

Not always the clearest view of the live video, but it will give you an idea.

One of the things that we did last show was incorporate live video, process it, and project it back on top of the band. I thought that it was a good start.

However, I was using a borrowed video camera (a Panasonic) hooked up using it's webcam mode. I need to get my own camera.

I also noticed that some of my comps took quite a while to update. Does the camera make/model have anything to do with bottlenecking the system?

As the title of this post says- I'm looking for people's favored camera makes and models. Is anyone successfully recording to the camera's SD card/tape while streaming video to the computer?

I've been searching through the archives and have found a dizzying number of hits, and I was hoping that some of you would be kind enough to clarify things for me.

Also- if anyone is in the NYC area and would like to meet up and swap notes, I'd be grateful. Thanks.

jd's picture
Re: Favorite Cameras for live video input

Hey Thuggy, Have used several firewire cams - Canon XL1s - Sony Z1U - Canon XL2 Keep them in DV mode (720x480) HD mode will work (1080i) but instead of a 5-10 frame delay (.2-.4 seconds) is more like 30-60 frame delay (1-2 seconds)

Any USB cam I have used gave me slower frame rates and more delay.

Imac ISight works ok, but still more latency than any firewire cam that I have tried.

All the cams I have used let you record to tape while feeding your mac. To record shows like that I tend to hook a DA (distribution amp) to the video feed for the projector, and from there record the futzed video output to tape. hope this helps! cheers! jd