2 cameras at the same time in iMovie

[reebzor]

Hey, I'm trying to do a little research for a co-worker. He handles some AV stuff for his Church so I'd really like to help him out. Right now he has one camera connected to his Mac Mini via Firewire for capturing live. What he'd like to do is connect a second camera to the Mini and switch between the two signals in iMovie to get different views/angles/etc. I already told him he could just film both and then slap them together in post, but he rather not have to do the extra work. So basically my question is: Is it possible to connect both cameras via firewire and switch between them in iMovie while capturing a live feed?

I don't know a lot of the details but if you need more let me know. Thanks.

 

[spinnerlys]

He needs some kind of video mixer that supports firewire.
http://www.soadv.com/Merchant2/merc...e=VIDMXPRODV&Category_Code=VideonicsFocusLive

It would be cheaper to tape the event and then edit it together. But that might not be what he wants in the end.

 

[notjustjay]

I'm pretty sure it's not possible. Even if it were possible to have two DV streams connected to iMovie at once (something that it was not programmed to support), trying to switch between them would take time to resynchronize, and you'd get pauses and video glitches.

I found this thread, which asks the same question, and suggests some expensive capture hardware:

http://dvcreators.net/discuss/showthread.php?t=23740

 

[reebzor]

Another thing we were thinking of doing is using a video switcher, connect both cameras to that then the switcher to an eyetv type video capture card. I'm just not sure how well that would work either.

EDIT: notjustjay: I checked out that link and they mentioned a firewire switcher but I would be referring to an AV type switch. The more I think about it though, I'm sure there would definitely be some type of lag between the two signals so I'm not sure that would work either.