Muliple cameras to a single track?

[kakapodoesvideo]

It's probably easiest if I explain what I want to do - which is easy to understand (I hope).

I want to point 2 or more cameras at a person shooting in archery. The cameras will be at different positions around the person, but since they are standing basically still, the cameras would be fixed. The idea is to examine their shooting technique, but I guess the could be applied to other activities.

The cameras would be connected to a single, powerful p.c. (we have mains power, so a big desktop p.c. would be used) with a 3 or 4 port firewire card.

Ideally, I'd like an application that allows me to capture the multiple feeds into a single capture file, so having shot 6 arrows we could immediately view them one at a time from multiple angles simultaneously. I appreciate that you will have lots of blank screen area because the feeds would have to be positioned and sized so they fitted the screen. Indeed my test rig would be using my old 3:4 format SD camera and my newer wide screen HD camera, so some sort of PIP display would be good (the 3:4 SD inset in the widescreen).

Anyone any suggestions for existing applications that might do this? I can run Windows or Linux as the machine dual boots.

[guns1inger]

You are looking for a software mixer. I have seen a couple going at pretty steep costs, however I believe the author of the enosoft DV encoder/capture tool was working on one, so you may be able to get a look at his beta version if you email him.

[aedipuss]

i don't think anyone has a mixed DVavi and HDV firewire software mixer. johnny malaria(enosoft) has one that allows multiple DVavi inputs. try pm'ing him for the beta like guns1inger says. switch the HD cam to SD and it should work.

another choice would be to be a hardware multicam mixer that will take both SD and HD like this.
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&store...odel=AV-HS400A

[kakapodoesvideo]

The mix of HD and SD was mentioned only because that happens to be the kit I have to hand. I think I can run the HD camera as SD so that's not an issue.

Thanks for the responses anyway. I'm surprised that with all the duplication of products that exist (these are any number of video editors), that no one has thought of writing something to do what I'm after. It sounds a reasonably useful thing for a number of sports, if nothing else.

I'll see what enosoft have to offer. I'm certainly not into spending more money on this