Lockdown jam - Going multi-screen

For a while I have been thinking I need to try a multi-screen video where I accompany myself. This is the first attempt, but it took some time to achieve.

Firstly I had to find some software that could do what I needed. I tried Kdenlive which is included in Ubuntu Studio, but could not see how to show multiple videos at once. I also had Openshot. This had the option to display a different video in each corner of the screen.

I recorded the videos with guvcview via my webcam and M-Audio interface. I did the acoustic and vocal one first. This had its own issues as I kept getting distorted sound. Resetting the interface seemed to resolve this. I played that back in VLC whilst recording the electric. I had not really prepared the song, so it was just an improvised arrangement. I do know some of the solo of this Eagles classic. I still managed to mess it up a bit, but it is not so easy to cut in a fix as with audio editing.

I loaded both videos in Openshot. There's an option to show the audio waveform and this made it easy to align the tracks pretty well by eye. I had thought about doing a percussion track, but it was late by this time and I had had enough. I am submitting this for our Arlesey Musicians watch party tonight. Generally people just use their phone to record themselves.

Guitars are my Taylor acoustic and Benford Tele.

I learned a bit from doing this and may well try it again with other songs. I have very little experience of editing video and am always impressed by what others do. I expect that even my free apps can do some impressive things.

Rock on!