I need to find a replicable system which will allow a recording onto a laptop of a live feed from 2 camcorders in a distant room. Details as follows:
My company runs training sessions all over the world. We use the following set up to record role plays:
In Room A, 2 camcorders record the action of a meeting, each camcorder filming the people on one side of the table. The A/V signals (2 x video, 1 x audio) are fed through long cables to Room B, where one of the 2 video sources is selected by a tutor using a simple A-B switcher. The tutor switches between the 2 video sources every 30 seconds or so. Currently the selected video signal, plus the audio signal, is recorded either onto a Sony GVD or an Archos 605 wifi. At the same time, the signals are also pushed into a TV monitor or data projector so that they can be seen and heard by an audience in Room B. Subsequently the recording is played back to the role players.
Problem is that GVDs are very expensive and quite fragile. Archos 605 is obsolete and its successor, Tablet 5 with Android, doesn't do the job.
So I want to find a way of recording the feed directly onto a laptop. Picture and sound quality is important, as is lip sync, but we are looking for something that is watchable quality, not HD quality. We also need to generate a mm:ss clock whilst recording because the tutor takes notes during the live feed based on elapsed time. Tutors around the world typically use netbooks or Vaios, so graphics cards will be variable, and I must assume that the usable laptop input will be USB 2.0. We could upgrade to laptops with firewire, but I don't know how to feed firewire between the rooms (typical distance is 10-30 metres).
We have about 50 set-ups like this around the world. Can anyone suggest best practice to achieve what we need? Most grateful if you can.
