Recording A Live Show Options

[Supernaut]

Hello All

We have a couple live shows coming up I'd like to capture on my PowerBook with Cubase. I've always done it with a DAT, 4-track or tape deck since they are very much "fire and forget" interfaces, meaning, I can hit record and forget about them, except to flip the tape.

Any suggestions for capturing with software? How many minutes of continuous music can a PowerBook running Cubase capture? I can't really babysit and run the recording, I'll be too busy playing guitar and singing. I have a friend who can man the controls for me if necessary.

How does everyone pull this off? Bring in the 1-hour show as one big sound file and split it up later on? Grab 2-3 songs at a time?? The ideal situation would be to hit record and then stop it at show's end and sort it out later.

Suggestions very much appreciated.

Thanks - JB

This post has been edited by Supernaut: Mon 21 Mar 2005, 19:01

[PristineRec]

I've been in similar situations, and I use only Protools. After every couple of songs, I hit stop and then hit record again. As Angryman points out, I also hit record in case of a freeze or crash or whatever. Stopping and restarting the recording has me end up with smaller files.
I used to just hit record at the start of the show and not stop until the end, but given that I backup all of my files to CD, this caused problems. I would end up with 800+ Megabyte files. Now I hit stop and restart recording every few songs, I end up with audio file sizes that are easier to deal with.