Hello all, I am about to shoot a six or more multi-camera production, and as I am used to 3-4 I am wondering the best way to get the most fluid playback for editing? I use both Vegas 8 and Excalibur (Thanks Mr. Troxel) I am assuming that syncing all of the cameras in Excalibur and rendering out the timeline would be best? I noticed that when I do a selective prerender in Vegas, I loose it as soon as I make my first edit.

Any thoughts, and thanks,

Chuck Pullen

My advice is to manually sync the cameras. Then run the sync tool WITHOUT adding any markers to the timeline. That will create the PIP view without moving the clips. Before pressing "Sync", make sure you check the "Render PIP View" box. This will then render the PIP view and properly place it so that it will be above the original tracks and below the tally track. It defaults to NTSC DV so you may need to change the render format.

Hi Mr. Troxel, thanks for the answer. I think we're on the same page about the multicamera syncing, but I do have a question. The last time I did a multi-cam project using Excalibur I seem to remember having an issue where when I synced manually (It seems easiest for me to do it that way) I thought I had to shift each camera a frame over so I can put all of the camera markers in (I.E. Camera 1 at 1:00;00, Camera 2 at 1:00;01, Camera 3 at 1:00;02) Is there an easier way to do that?

Also, as you mentioned, what will I want to change the render format to?

Thanks again,

Excalibur is the best!

You do not need any sync markers to run the sync tool. If you do not have any sync markers on the timeline when you run the sync tool, the events will NOT be moved. So...

1. Add the camera angles to the timeline
2. Get them in sync
3. run the Sync tool checking the "render" box which will create the PIP view and render it out
4. Add the camera switches
5. run the Multicam tool

I'll have to try that...Thanks again Mr. Troxel.