Long recording - split or not? - suggestions very welcome

Man that sounds like a lot of work either way....

I don't know too much about video editors, but this sounds like a good time to have one.

What YOU need to do is figure out FIRST.....exactly what you want to accomplish. Do you want one big DVD type file or do you want individual files of the bands?  Is this a labor of love or are you getting paid for it? Ask all the questions now and then determine the direction.

In my mind, splitting the whole show into the individual song/performances will make it easier to work on and get the EQ and levels right. Make each one a separate project so you can do the proper work in the tunes. A good video editor will allow you to sync the music back to the video properly. Still, 20 songs is a huge amount of work and will take some time, unless you have help.

With 20 songs, it might be a good idea to listen objectively to the performance as a whole on the video you shot and then choose the best songs..... if that is not an option, take them one song at a time and work through them. A good video editor will make it easy to reassemble the tracks with fade in and all the fancy things that the editor allows, so unless continuity is critical.... that's how I would approach this, but I have never attempted anything like this so what do I know? 

Thanks for the responses.
I do have a video editor that I'll use at the end to 'polish the video' and add all the fades and textual stuff at the end.

Its always tricky aliging the video and sound. We do have some marker points in it though not exactly clapperboards but loud drum count clicks.

It'll all end up on one video. Its somewhat worse than I described as there are two sets, although the 2nd set was only 50mins long. It may end up as either two videos or a 'Best of' sorta thing.

Thanks again.
Paul.

Oh and no not getting paid. But I've just moved up from version sonar 8.5 to X1 and though (maybe wrongly now) that this was a good way to find my way around X1. 

A while back, I recorded a live show for a band.  They also had a camera crew with 3 HD cameras which filmed it for a live DVD they were releasing.

I captured the whole show in one project at 24/96.  When it came time to mix, I subdivided all of the songs in the original file and saved each song as it's own project so that they all could be mixed as necessary.

When it was done, I gave the mixes as individual songs to the video team.  Each file started exactly where the previous one left off.  They had no problem marrying everything back up that way since we all rolled the entire show without any stops.

Here's a link to one of the finished songs/videos from that project on You Tube.  Turned out pretty sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RoweBandMusic#p/u/3/XFX3DtxIMcA

Oh...and I guess there is this track on there from the project as well..
 
http://www.youtube.com/user/RoweBandMusic#p/u/3/XFX3DtxIMcA
 
 

I'd split it up into separate project files. If each band played a couple of songs, I might make a separate project file for each band, instead of each song so the mix is consistant for those two songs.