TubeNet

Okay guys and gals..... I need a little help.
I'm looking for a program/app that I can use to record audio/video college auditions with on my MAC. We've been using Quicktime to record our daughter, but it's now getting very old, and some of the colleges and organizations she's interested in, can't handle the file size of the videos that it creates.

I need to be able to record audio and video on my computer, then be able to send it in the newer formats that the colleges want..... and I guess that now, everybody uses. My wife suggested that I contact you guys to see if anyone out there in tuba heaven has any ideas that might be workable.

P.

Instead of learning a new audio/video program, you might try the Bigasoft "Total Video Converter" to just shrink or convert the file type to whatever you want. There's a free version to try that limits the length of the converted video.

What formats are they asking for?

Also, do they require video? If they're fine with audio only, the file sizes will be much smaller.

I'm a big fan of Handbrake, but it can be a bit complex to use. You can specify all sorts of things about converted files, but it also has a bunch of preset output file types that are fairly easy to use. There is a bit of a learning curve with it.

For these purposes, Garage band and iMovie should work just fine. Depending on the age of your Mac, they could already be installed on your computer.

Okay..... thanks for the replies and PMs. Have already started investigating some of the options.


Thanks again.

Paul

For audio Audacity is free and pretty easy to use. It should do everything you need. iMovie for video.

mike

If the video is more than 5 to 10 minutes then most will be too large to email. Most email accounts have size limits so going with just audio is usually the best. If either the audio or video is too large you can put it on cd or dvd and just mail it. Most auditions dont require video so if they dont then I would just bypass it altogether and record her in a nice hall to capture the best sound quality.

So far, all auditions require video/audio, and a clock with a second hand in the frame to prove that there has been no altering of the video. No editing or cheating!!!

      I use GarageBand for quick samples or Audacity for more extensive work. Audacity can convert audio files to several different formats.

Garage band is installed on many Apple products, and it works great. For video, I bought a used Vixia model Canon on Amazon, and I also bought the "shotgun" mic that mounts directly to it. The files can go straight to iMovie. I will not say that iMovie is great, but at least it's not so hard, even I can publish a video with it. Sound quality is very good for the time and trouble invested.

If you want to reduce the size of your existing videos, I would use Handbrake and change the video size to a smaller size, drop the frame rate to 24 or 30 fps, use a video codec like h.264 (AVC) or h.265 (HEVC; slower to encode, gives very small file sizes, but not everyone can read this format [but most modern video players can]), set the output audio codec to AAC (for auditions I wouldn't go below 128K), and set the output file type to .mp4.

For distribution, apart from mailing a DVD or thumb drive, you can also upload it to Youtube and specify that the link be kept Private -- it won't show up in search results, but will work if someone has the actual link.

Could also share via Dropbox or iCloud file sharing, too.

What do you mean by the formats that colleges are requiring? File formats, or media types?