Multicam Editing - What's your method in post?
 

This more of just curiosity... Final Cut pro has a multicam function that I never really spent enough time to figure out. I use two cams. So I just shrink the two cams into the canvas So I can see both of them synced at the same time) and cut out what I don't need and then expand them back to 100% to make the final product. Those of you that do this know what I mean. Does anyone actually use Final Cut Pro's multicam function? What about you other guys and gals that use different editing suites? What's your method? Again just curious...

Final Cut Multicam. Really only 4 steps.

1. Set in-points to match on the different clips.
2. Highlight the clips in the bin then right click --> make multiclip
3. Set clips to align on the in-points and click OK.
4. Drag the new multiclip into the timeline, double click, and set the canvas to 'open'

Thats pretty much it. The clips play simultaneously in the viewer window and the active angle plays in the viewer. The multiclip in the timeline splits with each click in the viewer.

I experimented with it, but it honestly felt like more work than the other way. Maybe it's better if you really get into it, but I didn't like it.

My way over the years has been similar to Tim's but I'm cutting with an old version of Avid that doesn't have a multicam function... so I fake it :)

Example:
V2 - 2nd cam with PiP filter, sized roughly 50% or so & placed in corner.
V1 - master cam

Leave both V1 & V2 active when placing add edits (I think slice is what FCP calls it).

I have "remove effect" mapped to the keyboard. The shot I want V2, I hit the remove effect key.

I do this continually until the multicam edit is rough cut. The only shots on V2 with the PiP remaining are all that's needed to get rid of & it's easy to tell which clips have the PiP effect applied.

I make only V2 active, place the timeline indicator on each PiP clip, hit T to select mark the clip's I&O, hit Z for lift/extract. Do this until there's no more to extract.

That looks like a good way to do it for sure. I take both cams and put them down to 49% and move them to the right and left side of the canvas respectively. I used to shrink them down to 50%, but by putting them at 49, I get a nice black bar that separates them.

I just leave the main shot as full frame. It's one less PiP effect to remove :)

We used to use Pinnacle studio 9.4.3 to edit with two cameras and it was a real pain.

We now use 3 cameras and Premiere Pro CS3 to edit and the Multi camera function is a joy to use.

Ok its a bit fidly when you first use it but now its become second nature.

You have to open up a new sequence and then place your three or 4 clips on the time line and synch them up. I usualy use the audio wave forms to do this.

Once synched up you close the sequence down and open a new sequence . you then place the original sequence into the new sequence timeline.

Its then just a mater of enabling the multi camera function and opening the multicamera window .

once you start playing the clip in the multicamera window you get to see 4 small screens , one for each camera and a bigger screen showing the selected camera

I tend to do a rough edit first and then go back into the sequence and place the cuts where I want them using the usual premiere pro tools.

It sounds quite complicated when you try to write it down but its way easier than trying to do it in pinnacle studio.

I used to have Pinnacle Studio.... still do somewhere. I used it for my first wedding on a notebook. I actually had a brand new Mac and Final Cut Studio, but I could not figure out how to capture the footage and put it into the timeline correctly. Seems so silly now.... lol. Pinnacle was awful to use on my notebook. I had been using it to do 5-10 minute vids for church and what not. When I put an entire wedding in there, it about fried. It was so bogged down, I had to wait 20-40 seconds between each click of the mouse or key stroke or anything. When I finally got all of it to render I exported it to mpeg and shipped it off to the new Mac... and never looked back.

i CANNOT understand why anyone with the ability to multi-cam edit doesn't!!!!

i used to do it the way described above in PPro CS2, and yes i got on with it.

but once i edited in multi-cam with CS3 (it really is a 2 step process, takes all of 5 seconds), i wouldn't ever look back....

it's insane why you wouldn't take the extra step??! there's a phrase: 'People don't like change' - it's a well known fact, but you have to trust us that you WILL prefer the better method.

with multi-cam editing, you have the clips running at the same time, clicking on the view you like the look of - so easy you could read a book at the same time and still give it undivided attention... the other method involved so much more painstaking analysis, to get the same result.

I'm with Richard. I use multicam in Avid all the time. It's very easy, just takes a bit of time to group the clips in sync, then you see them playing in realtime, with active camera in monitor. The beauty of it is that you can assign keyboard shortcuts to each camera, and cut realtime without ever touching the mouse.

One thing to be aware of is that the footage on the non-active camera could actually be used somewhere else. I find myself getting cutaways or whatever from unused portions. Quite useful.

I use the Vaast Ultimate S Quad Cam plug in within Vegas. End up with four PIP in the preview window and I have assigned keyboard shortcuts that let me cut between shots as I watch it back. Similar workflow to you guys, drag the tracks in, sync them up, apply the plug in and i'm ready.

Works great!

I am so lost. I got it playing and sync'd together but I don't understand how it will "edit" into a cut up a clip. I always did it the manual way. Mind explaining more on what to do after 4? Is this meant to only just view the clips at the same time and I still would cut the audio and video into another timeline?

Thanks


EDIT

Nevermind. Figured it out. Used the middle drop down menu and found open.

New question, what if I have 3 clips and clip 1 & 2 both are the same length more or less but clip 3 starts a few minutes later. Does that mean I can't cut it in as part of the multi-clip because it's in point is off? If so, is there a work around besides treating the newly made multiclip as a single clip and cutting in the 3 clip like usual?

Thanks

Marking Audio for Multi-Cam Edits
 

Before spending a lot of time cutting, i usually first mark the audio at logical transition points. Especially if its a music performance i mark to the rhythm, say every other measure, and at key changes in the performance. I find this saves me a lot of time even for things that are not musical, such as interviews. Then i go back a second time and do the camera selection editing then a third time for any transitions and motion, - eric

Hi Randy,

This is probably going to confuse you even more, but its a guide I wrote up a while ago for one of my editors in response to time wasted because one or two of the camera angles are stopped and restarted during the ceremony:

Event Videographer | Multicam

There are probably a lot of shortcuts I don't know about that could shorten that process...

2 cams
 

I have typically only two cameras to edit from for a wedding. Camera 2 is the main camera when it has the good shot set up, in between shots, I use Camera 1.

My work flow:

1) Lay down camera 1(master) on track 1
2) Sync up cam 2(close ups) on track 2
3) Cut away all the garbage from track 2
4) Make final adjustments, so cuts are logical


I use avid, but that really doesn't make a difference.

I do multicam on Premiere Pro all the time.Most of my stuff is music played live in venues, so I use three or sometime four DV cameras.

In PP3 it's all quite easy. Just bring in each camera onto a separate track and then sync them up. I usually use a visual hit point - drummers arms are great, and look, not listen to the audio waveform. I usually shoot with room sound on ch 2 and a radio mic receiver from the audio mixer on ch 1. Just zoom in, slide the audio tracks (still linked to the video) until they align and turn on all the audio tracks and see if they sound ok. Slipped tracks by a long way mean a positive echo, closer and it turns into a 'phasey' sound, and when spot on - turning on and off the individual audio tracks makes little difference.

Next is to create a new sequence and make it multicam - pp3 can handle up to 4 cameras. Turn on the multicam monitor and your four sources appear on the left and you hit record, then play and cut the cameras live with the 1-2-3-4 keys. Once done, you can go back and edit the edit! This just means trimming the points you cut at - I always hit the wrong camera, or cut just too late, and it's easy to repair. The only pain for me is these shows are two one hour halves, so the cut is in real time, then the tweaking - making a two hour show take at least a day - but adding the time to ingest the tapes, more like 2!

When I was doing the FCP/AVID/PP choice I spent most of a day at an exhibition going around the three manufacturers, and multi-cam on PP impressed me.

You need to read the manual. Once you learn how to set up a multiclip, you'll wonder why you haven't used it sooner!

Jeff

I'd say a good 75% of what I do with each and every wedding is edited as Multiclips in FCP. 3-camera ceremonies, and 2 to 3 camera receptions. The only thing that I cut without making multiclips are Pre-ceremony, Post-Ceremony, Highlights, and Trailers.

Regarding workflow- one thing that is never discussed is how to handle a drop-out (particularly an HDV drop-out) in a long file like a wedding ceremony. Typically an HDV drop-out manifests itself as simply a break in the file with 4-7 seconds of missing footage. When there is a gap or non-contiguous clip you have to re-sync the footage AFTER the error. Problem is FCP won't accept nested files into Multiclips- causing me to do lots of Exporting "Quicktime Movie" and re-importing the "stiched" file to be used for the Multiclip.

Anyone else have a different and/or better workflow...short of a snide 'go tapeless' answer. ;)

Uh, go tapeless... <wink>. I know it's been a nice switch for me, but then again I never had a dropout problem with HDV - maybe you should try a different brand of tape?


For me, it's shoot 4 cams for ceremony, start all about the same time, let 'em run, try to adjust zooms by running about as needed and still get the "manned cam" footage. For stage events 2-3 cameras, same approach.

Now that I'm tapeless, it's... quick, dump the footage, review it briefly, then drop the 4 clips onto the timeline in Vegas 8. I use VASST infinicam, although I've played with the built in multicam feature a bit - infinicam works 'cause I'm used to it, and already have it anyway!

Sync up the 4 cams - I look for a sound spike or just visually match waveforms for rough sync, then look for movements caught on all cameras to tighten it down. If I have an iRiver or other audio source, sync that too... Someone here mentioned panning the audio hard left and right to help sync the audio - a good tip!

On the rare occaision I had a camera drop out or a tape swap or whatever, I just manually re-sync the broken off sections, leaving a gap on that track - I try to avoid it if at all possible...

Once I'm happy with that, I save a version to fall back on in case I goof up the sync, and go through picking the best cam angles (with fingers crossed that there's at least one at all times!). Then it's fine tuning the cuts/dissolves, cover any gaps or smooth out flow with clever time remapping or slo-mo, cut out all but the best audio tracks, sweeten any audio as needed (boost low voices, cut extraneous noises), add CC if needed (finding it's not needed with the SR11/CX12!), titles/credits... Render once, toss on a DVD, watch it, and log anything I missed. Second pass and the ceremony "documentary" should be "perfect"... then go mix reception/extras/interviews/toasts and final the DVD.

I'm not quite to SDE speed yet, but I'm shooting for a very high speed (1-2 weeks) delivery.

I always find it interesting when people say they NEVER get drop-outs. I think either they don't shoot enough long wedding ceremonies, or they have them and don't notice it. Granted you didn't say you never get them but rather you don't have a drop-out "problem". I wouldn't say it's a problem but an inevitable fact that you WILL...ocassionally encounter them. It's not often and I almost never see them on tapes with lots of starts and stops. Usually long continuous shooting (ie ceremonies).

I started out using $7 Sony Excellence tape stock. Had a few dropouts and said screw it and went down to the $2 Sony Premium tape- I've never been happier saving $5 per tape with the exact same performance (an occasional dropout ever few tapes or so).

hi glen, when you say 'drop out', what is that exactly? frames that are dropped, which makes the multi-cam go out of sync? touch wood i've never ever had that.

but if you mean that really weird thing where you get one random red frame, then yes i've had that a couple of times...thankfully never during a multi-cam moment!

Read my guide in this post - there is a workaround that will save you drive space and time. Basically it involves filling the gaps in the camera angle with real footage so you can export a reference movie that multicam will accept. The easiest option would be if multicam accepted nests from within FCP, but as you know that doesn't work. Maybe in FCP 7...

Hey Joel. Yeah that's basically what I already do- fill the gaps with slugs then export either a self or non-self contained quicktime movie.

While I've had good luck with Sony premiums tape stock as well, I did have issues with one camera that wouldn't track Sony tapes for anything - had to use Panasonic tape in that till I got rid of it...

I noticed dropouts with the HV20 I tested, but can't say as my Sony cams ever gave me any grief, other than one nearing the end of it's useful life...

You are probably correct about the length of the clip being a potential issue, although this raises the question of whether the dropouts are on the tape or in the ingest? I know I had a lot of trouble at one point where every tape I ingested seemed to show dropped frames on the log of the ingest but the tape was AOK when reviewed, don't even remember what the fix was, but probably a driver update or reinstall. Just a thought...

Hi Dave,

I occasionally have the same problem - long captures keep quitting with timecode error messages but the clip is pristine. In those cases I use Capture Magic:

Big Mug Software Introduction

It just plows throw whatever you throw at it and gets it captured. No stops, errors or sync issues. You can't log and capture, but for troublesome tapes its a lifesaver.

Multicam editing in FCP is one of those things that is sooooooo easy you will sort of look back at your time wasted on two tracks in the timeline. Also if you know how to utilize the roll tool and the "E" command to move your edit, you will whip through a project in no time! Just make sure you have some way of syncing your cameras (ie, clapboard), but I know its tough at a wedding... i would use audio in that case.

I'm using Edius for multicam editing. I once edited 8 hdv cameras at once, editing was really easy! All 8 cameras show up on the screen, sync them up, play, and just click on the pic you want as it's playing back on the timeline. Just like cutting via live switcher. If a mistake is made, simply stop and back it up a few seconds and continue again. At the end, you can consolidate all the video tracks down to 1, add dissolves or effects between cuts or all cuts, etc... pretty easily.

The only downside of doing 8 hdv tracks at once is that playback is sluggish and sometimes stutters when editing, but that doesn't affect the final product.