I’m simply paralyzed by indecision right now and can’t seem to decide which easy recording option to choose.  First, here’s my setup:  GuitarPort with GearBox, plus Spider IV 75 with FBV Shortboard MKII.  What I ultimately want to do is record a live performance to a guitar backing track.  I’ll be using a Flip video camcorder to record the video, and whatever makes sense to record the guitar so that it sounds better than what’s picked up by the Flip camera’s microphone.  Live guitar will be through the Spider so I can use the FBV to switch effects during the song.

For final production, I’ll need to trim the guitar track and the video track and synchronize the timeline for both so that it appears the audio was recorded along with the video.  I’ll also need to mute the video track’s audio (which will be recording the backing track as it plays out of my computer speakers, unless I listen to it with headphones while playing), and splice in the .mp3 of the backing track so that it also sounds better than what would be recorded by the Flip camera.  Obviously Ableton or RiffWorks won’t help with video editing, but I’d need to output the guitar track to .wav for importing into whatever video editing software I decide to use.

Using POD Farm with the GX seems redundant and unnecessary because obviously I’ll be playing through my Spider (that has all the effects I need anyway) with the GX setup post-amp.  Using the BackTrack post-amp sounds handy because I won’t need to use my computer to record, PLUS it’s very useful for just on-the-fly recording.  However, it seems RIffWorks can’t import.wav files recorded with the BackTrack so I can’t do any post edits to the guitar track.  Not sure about Ableton yet.

The BackTrack comes with no software, and while Ableton and RiffWorks are bundled with the GX they are free for download anyway.

Aside from splicing recorded guitar into videos, I anticipate wanting a very easy program for recording riffs, creating songs or jamming along to drum tracks.  Not sure how which hardware fits into this quite yet.  I’d probably prefer to record via the Spider so I can use the FBV, negating the need for GuitarPort or POD Farm.

Any suggestions and insights would be appreciated!  Even just writing this helps me to clarify my priorities, but who knows what I’m missing.