Virtual Live Australia [music video channel]

INFORMATION

Virtual-Live Australia is a weekly spotlight on live original music, focused on exposing up and coming local talent to a worldwide audience. We are now back with our second season of live music online, which commenced in August 08 with the launch of this redesigned website. Season 1 videos (Dec 07- Jun 08) and the archives collection (from the Club Blink podcast days) will become available to members when the members section is added late 08.

Our main venue is Sydney's Agincourt hotel, where we film each weekend at Club Blink and Trash Saturdays, with plans to cover more venues from around the nation, showcasing Australia's diverse musical talent. Any venues interested in being involved in this project are encouraged to contact us through the comments and feedback page. Bands wishing to contribute material are welcome, more info for bands here

This website started its life towards the end of 2006 when multimedia engineer Andrew Gelao began recording live bands he was mixing, week in, weekout, and decided that a fair chunk of the acts he saw were deserving of a much wider audience. From its humble beginnings as the Club Blink video podcast with low res video mixed with a crunch box switcher, it has now been reborn as Virtual-Live Australia, showcasing a broader scope of Sydney's musical talent with multitracked audio and video quality that pushes the limits of internet connection speeds currently available. Andrew says:

"Hopefully the future is bright for Sydney's music scene, and it has long been my goal to help it grow. I have a huge passion for live music and the raw energy that it contains. I am continually working on ways to bring my audience better video, better sound, and to get them as close to experiencing these awesome acts live as is possible without actually being there. The aim is to be a fully functional online music channel, where you can watch the bands you want to see, when you want to see them."

TECHNICAL INFO

- Videos are encoded with apple's h.264 quicktime codec which is one of the industry's leading video compression standards. The videos are delivered through your browser via a highly versatile flash player which allows fullscreen playback. It requires flash to be installed.

- We prefer 16:9 widescreen video aspect; it is the future of TV standards, and a much kinder aspect for both framing with the camera and processing with the eyeballs.

- All videos are mixed live at the venue, meaning that you see the performances the way they happened. No post video editing is undertaken on any of these clips unless otherwise specified.

- The sound from older videos on this website/podcast are recorded as a stereo desk mix, meaning that no post audio mixing is possible. Unfortunately due to the nature of live sound reinforcement, the desk sound does not always give an adequate representation of the room sound or how the band should sound. Newer videos will mostly contain multitracked, post mixed audio so levels on the clips will be a more acurate representation of how a band sounds. Please note that tweaking will be done on levels only, there will be no cutting and pasting, so that you hear what the band played, note for note.

- Creative use of lenses allows us to get a wide view up close of the tight stages at the Agincourt Hotel, Sydney [come check it out]. Every weekend it becomes our make shift studio for two nights of live, local entertainment at the 3 level venue. The single chip fixed DV cameras deliver SD resolution for TV and web, but as broadband gets better so too will our cameras, but the eventual goal is of course HD [High Definition], and the ability to broadcast across digital television.