What cheap option is there to use a Mac to produce quality 'Videosongs'?

Question

Some of you must be familiar with Videosongs, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uolz7V12evc

The idea is:

1. What you see is what you hear. (No lip-syncing for instruments or voice)
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it. (No hidden sounds)

I want to know how can I use my MacBook Pro to create videos like those. Which software do I need? Can I do it only using the pre-installed applications in my Mac? If no, then which cheap software do I need?

I'm just a enthusiast so I know very little about producing music videos in a Mac.

Edit 2011-05-27

The difficulty I see in this particular case is how to be able to merge multiple video/audio channels so they are all synchronized. Mixing the audio of course is something that must be done in a specific audio/track software but then I have to sync it back to several small videos and eventually repeat some of the videos. So my question is which software for Mac would be a better fit to accomplish that? Which one for audio and which for video? Can it be done only using GarageBand and iMovie?

Answer 1

I guess it depends more on your creativity than on the tools you use. You could do it all with your webcam using Photo Booth, in one take, but then you wouldn't be able to overlay multiple tracks and the audio/video quality would be bad.

The basic gist of it is: first you have to create a basic track, probably with some kind of metronome, so you can use it as a base for the instruments and vocals (note they always have headphones while recording, so they can listen to the base track). Then, for each instrument, set up a camera to capture the video and a quality microphone to record audio.

You can mix the audio together in GarageBand, and then sync the audio with the video you recorded at the same time using iMovie. It's a lot of work and can take a long time, but there's no "secret" to it.

If you want more "pro" tools you could use Logic Studio for audio and Final Cut for video. But for simple videos, I guess it would be overkill.

Answer 2

I can't see any difference to other home/amateur movies? What's so special about it? Have you tried iMovie? Comes with iLife, usually pre-installed on new Macs. Another option would be Final Cut, of course. But that takes some time to learn.

Answer 3

Your best bet would be simply asking them how they do it, I bet you'll get better answers than here.

But I'll re-enforce the guessing already here with my own, because I've never did anything like it as well, but I do have some contact with musicians and studios from far.

My guess is: there isn't any simple solution as you request, though I'd like to see one too. And probably the easiest options are indeed adobe, final cut, garage band and imovie. As long as you record all with cameras that will have the same default format, it should be simple enough using just the later 2. The troublesome part as Rodrigo Sieiro said, would be syncing it with the audio if you can't record it at the same time already synced with the camera.