Recording

cleats

I tested out the recording feature this weekend and it seemed to work ok except the audio was recorded from the mic on the computer and sounded really bad. Is this the only way to recored audio? Also, can I save the file the same size as it is being played? like if I wanted to Recored a Video mix to be played back later in Scratch live. With the same audio and video quality as it was when I recorded it.

Nick

The audio is currently recorded from the default audio input device selected in the System Preferences (for most people this is the Mic input, or the Line input - if they've plugged in something to the Line input port). The next version of MixEmergency will have a pop-up menu so that you can select the audio input device from within MixEmergency. So, currently, to record high-quality audio, you will need to run a line from your mixer's main output to your computer's audio line input (which should be beside the headphone output on your MacBook Pro), and make sure that Line In is selected in the Audio panel in the System Preferences. Regarding saving the file at the exact same quality: no, I don't think this is possible (depending on exactly what you mean). Your video mix must be re-compressed. It is of course possible to re-compress it at the same (or any) dimensions, and without any very noticeable artifacts (depending on how you have the compression set up - e.g. it's possible to compress it with in a lossless video format).

djchrismix

I have a question about this feature, what settings should be ideal to get the best quality out of the picture, it seems like when I tried setting it optimal settings for DVD-Like quality it came out looking like garbage and it took 16hrs to encode. What am I doing wrong?

Nick

How long was the mix that you were exporting? I generally recommend setting the dimensions to around 640 x 480 and exporting using the "QuickTime to Movie" setting. Then in the options, go to the video compression settings and select.... Compression Type: H.264 Frame Rate: either 25 (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC) Key Frames: Every 25 or 30 frames Quality: High (or Best) Encoding: Faster encode (Single-pass) Mutl-pass encoding gives slightly better quality, but means that MixEmergency must render out the performance multiple times (doubling or tripling the amount of time that it must spend encoding) - so generally I recommend Single-pass encoding. Also note that you need to specify the frame rate, as I believe it defaults to 20 or 15. I recommend producing a few very short recordings (1-2 minutes) and playing around with some of these settings until you find some you're happy with. The settings above should be of high enough quality for most people though.