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Most Efficient Workflow for Incorporating PowerPoint Slides?
Hey all– long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I’ve appreciated this forum for quite a while in answering questions that pop up around my use of Vegas Pro. At this time, I’m using Vegas Pro 15.
Currently, I’m working to produce Continuing Education videos. The content and presentation of these videos could be executed in a number of ways, but right now I’m opting to try and get things done in the quickest and most efficient ways possible. With the video I’ve recently started editing, that will consist of some tried-and-true ‘talking head’ style lecturing interspersed with the relevant PowerPoint slides from the presentation. This specific video is about 5 hours long, with 134 slides to integrate. I have the PowerPoint slides exported as .PNGs, and plan to use the multicam editing features to go through the presentation and jump between 2 different camera angles of the presenter along with a third video track that contains the slides.
What I’m hoping for some guidance with is the best workflow to make this happen. I could go through the entire presentation and mark the relevant points where different slides are referenced (either placing the slides as I go or later on), then go through the entire presentation again to do the multicam editing, but that takes at least two passes of everything which seems inefficient.
Instead, I’m wondering if there’s any somewhat smooth way to do everything in one pass, making the multicam cuts while also moving slides into the right spot as I go along. Naturally some starting and stopping would probably be needed, but it still seems like things could be done faster than making two full passes. But it seems there’s no way around needing the slides in place prior to making the multicam track? Not using multicam, manually cutting and muting tracks while also moving the slides into place, seems like it would end up being even more time consuming than the two passes.
I don’t suppose there’s any way to create a sort of ‘alias’ in multicam mode, telling Vegas to point to the 3rd video track (with slides) at specific points of time for a certain duration, and then place the specific slides in place earlier? That seems like it could be the best method, but doesn’t seem to be the way that multicam mode is (or can be) set up.
I’d love to get any advice that comes to mind from folks here. I’m also open to hearing about other software that might make this process faster, although for the time being I probably am relegated to just using Vegas Pro.
Thanks in advance!
-Joseph
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4 Replies
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I’ve actually never had need to use multi camera edit mode, I think I did it once just to try it. But how about just pressing M to drop markers where you want the slides to go as you are doing it and then dropping them in later?
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Thanks, Dimitrios.
I only recently came around to incorporating multicam editing mode. So far it definitely seems to be a lot more efficient than what I was doing before, which was to meticulously manually cut and mute around one track in order to to have other footage be revealed. Multicam editing basically yields the same result but in a much more intuitive manner.
The method you described for incorporating the slides is what I started out doing, but is what results in either needing to do a second pass of everything (in order to do the multicam editing) or a lot of starting, stopping, and manual editing (which seems even more time consuming).
I thought I might be missing an easier way to do things, but maybe the options I’m aware of are as good as it gets.
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Joseph, I do multicam manually. I first lay down 2-3 tracks, sync them up. I put the main camera on the top track. The B camera on the below track and if I have a C camera, that is on the third down track. In your situation, I would load all the slides in the fourth down track in the order they will appear in the video for the approximate time they need to display (but not perfect as it will get adjusted as I go along).
I would edit off the top track. As I previewed that track and got to the place I wanted the first slide I would stop, cut all 3 video tracks, position slide one in track 4 on the cut line. Then proceed editing track 1 until I reached the point I wanted to take the slide away, I would cut all 3 video tracks at this point. Delete track 2 section, delete track 3 section, and lengthen/shorten track 4 slide to fit the video gap. Then proceed editing track 1 until the next point I wanted a slide to appear and repeat the process.
In along with this I would use the B and C camera tracks to cover up jump cuts from track 1 caused by the presenter coughing, sneezing, over long pauses, repeating words, to avoid the and’s and ah’s etc. But I would proceed through the entire editing process in one pass.
Your alternative method of making two passes could actually be faster than my one pass, or vise -vs, depending on how many camera angles and your style compared to my style of editing.
I have used multicam in the past but it failed to provide me with the fine tuning control on switching cameras and eliminating jump cuts as I would like, so always reverted back to my manual method. Perhaps I haven’t put in enough effort to fine tune the multicam method, but as I often do, I go with what works best for me, and obviously you should do the same. On the other hand, I may only do 1-2 multicam segments a year.
Just my way and a thought which may not be worth the time it takes you to read this.
Best Regards……George
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I appreciate the thorough considerations, George. The editing process you described is essentially what I have been doing for videos prior to this, though with those previous videos I was also manually building out on-screen annotations (via Vegas Pro’s text generation tools) as opposed to having the slides I could incorporate. While the results were good, the entire process seemed far too time consuming (or maybe I’m just personally slow).
I haven’t spent a ton of time with multicam editing yet, but in Vegas Pro it seems that you can combine the video tracks for multicam editing, make at least a rough edit by simply hitting the number that corresponds to which track you want at any given time, and then break those edits back out into multiple tracks. The tracks that were selected to use are left active for the relevant durations of time that were indicated, while everything else is muted. In other words, you end up with a similar result as your current process, and things can be further refined from there. It seems to be a good way to at least make a rough draft that can then be further tweaked to taste. It does necessitate some auxillary workflow changes, though, in that you need to either do your FX edits on a media level or add them after the multicam editing process. Combining tracks for editing destroys the track FX / edits.
Thanks for the thoughts!
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