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The exponential greatness of multicam in FCPX
Excuse the snarky thread title, I’m just trying to get your attention.
As part of a previous thread a claim was made that the implementation of multicam editing was better on FCPX than with any other system. What might surprise some of my less ardent admirers is that until recently I believed this to be true. When X finally unveiled it’s multicam I was very impressed – built in sync by waveform, ability to combine different clips into one angle, ability to add effects to an angle and have it passed through to an edited timeline. As a multicam editor working in Legacy I was impressed and somewhat envious to the point where there was a moment where I seriously considering downloading the X trial. Fortunately that moment passed.
However when I finally switched to Ppro I noticed that it too could sync via waveform, consolidate clips into an angle, add effects to angles, add additional angles after editing had begun, even switch an angle from HD to 4K at any point in the edit.
But maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there are aspects to cutting multicam in X that are clearly superior in it’s design. So I invite you to enlighten me on what you see as the strengths of multicam in X. This is not an argument thread, this is an opportunity for learning, both about X and about multicam in PPro, and other NLE systems as they come up.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
127 Replies
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Herb…you just don’t “get it.” If you’re still plunking multicam onto “tracks” … then you are a long beaked dinosaur.
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[Daniel Frome] “Herb…you just don’t “get it.” If you’re still plunking multicam onto “tracks” … then you are a long beaked dinosaur.”
Daniel, while I appreciate the snark, I would really like this thread to be about learning. Teach my something about any NLE’s multicam system, or be gone.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Very well Herb. Your snarky title was the inspiration, and I apologize for following suit.
There does not seem to be any large functional difference between Ppro and FCPX’s abilities here. FCPX had these capabilities first, which is likely what gave it the (rightfully so) “superior” claim. However, as they always seem to do, Adobe has caught up nicely.
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[Herb Sevush] “But maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there are aspects to cutting multicam in X that are clearly superior in it’s design. So I invite you to enlighten me on what you see as the strengths of multicam in X. This is not an argument thread, this is an opportunity for learning, both about X and about multicam in PPro, and other NLE systems as they come up.”
I own my multicam. You’re just renting yours. 🙂
Beyond that, I assumed that everyone had rebuilt their multicam (albeit two years later in the case of Premiere) to the standards set by FCP X. Apparently Premiere is still working on a functional scrubbing function in the timeline, but I see it works fairly well on thumbnails.
But I used to assume that Premiere was always just as good as FCP legacy, and just that it hadn’t won support. But when CS6 came around and 7 had been EOL’d, I found that, with the exception of format support, it was still lagging behind 7 in feature parity. Mainly in aspects of media management and trimming and other minor mundane tasks that are needed daily. (X is still playing catchup in many of these areas too). But with CC I think it seemed corrected and I hear good things about their multi-cam. I haven’t heard that it’s better than X, but the general feeling that I get through the grapevine is that it works just fine.
But I really take issue with the whole subscription thing. Not so much the cost. Just the ideology. So I’m doing whatever I can do to find ways around it. Not to save money. But to keep from being sucked in like a bad relationship that’s hard to get out of because you’ve become so co-dependent. I have my CS5 master collection for most things Adobe (theres a fairly useless Premiere in there), Motion, FCP X and I rent Adobe CC when I have to for newer AE stuff. No hard feelings Adobe, we’ve just grown apart.
So back on track with Multi cam, it sounds like you’d be better off sharing the aspect of Adobe’s multicam since I don’t get the feeing here that many here are using it. I didn’t use 7s much. But I jumped on X’s and it seemed to do just what a multicam should. I do know the big complaint is that you can’t finalize an edit. IOW you can’t turn it into straight cuts to better facilitate XMLing it to other apps or media management. I ASSUME that you can do that in Premiere since it’s a much more mature NLE. But maybe not. I personally have had an issue with FCP X’s multicams’s inability to finalize in a music video. I synced up all the different camera angles to the different parts of the song. Basically, a different camera angle for different takes. As well, for generic shots, I put different options in the different angles. That made for a lot of different angles. 10-14 maybe. But the problem arose with the second version. It was a corporate parody, so the first version was a one off promoting something, then the second version was 65% the same, with different lyrics for different parts to make it more generic. So I duplicated my sequence and you come to realize that if you change anything in that multicam, it’s going to change the original version. IOW you can’t delete an angle or change what’s in an angle. And you can’t duplicate the multicam itself. Well, you CAN duplicate the multicam in the bin, but now you’re starting from scratch with the edits of the multicam which only exist in a sequence. There’s no way to tell the multicam in a new sequence to relink to a different multicam like you can with a compound clip. If there is it wasn’t obvious. With a compound clip you can duplicate it and reference it to a new master clip. I very used to doing that in AE with nested comps when you duplicate a version of a project. Can’t seem to do that with multicam. At least if I could finalize an edit I’d still have a tweakable editable final version.
So I had to add another 10 angles or so to the existing multicam so as not to mess up the first version, and to reuse what I already had. Perhaps I could have duplicated the whole library itself, but now that’s just getting messy. I ended up with a multicam that supports two versions of the video with 25 angles or so. A little unwieldy. And don’t forget the multicam had to support two versions of the FINAL video. There were multiple incremental versions along the way for each. Say, 5. So really the one multicam had to support 10 versions of one video. So if someone wanted me to change a shot to a shot that didn’t exist at that point in the multicam on another angle, I had to add an angle or destroy a previous version by changing the shot on that angle. So all the angles on the multicam actually represented all the changes of the videos like a big long undo list. All because I couldn’t reference a new master multicam.
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[Bret Williams] “I own my multicam. You’re just renting yours.”
Last nite I saw a spot on the news where a financial analyst was making the case that in the modern world renting a house is smarter than buying one. For myself, I prefer owning. I’m not fond of the subscription model, but for me it’s a business decision, not a morality play.
[Bret Williams] “Beyond that, I assumed that everyone had rebuilt their multicam (albeit two years later in the case of Premiere) to the standards set by FCP X.”
You know what they say about assumptions.
[Bret Williams] “I used to assume that Premiere was always just as good as FCP legacy”
Having used Ppro since version 1, I can tell you that was not the case.
[Bret Williams] ” But when CS6 came around and 7 had been EOL’d, I found that, with the exception of format support, it was still lagging behind 7 in feature parity.”
Yes. But they have made huge strides since version 6. I would not have switched to PPro if version 6 was my only option.
[Bret Williams] “But with CC I think it seemed corrected and I hear good things about their multi-cam. I haven’t heard that it’s better than X, but the general feeling that I get through the grapevine is that it works just fine.”
Which is what this thread is designed to explore. I believe there are some real differences between the various implementations but I don’t think there’s any clear cut advantage for either one. I’m not sure if Avid’s multicam, which has always been excellent, has kept up with the other two, and I’d love to hear from some Avid editor’s about that comparison.
[Bret Williams] ” I do know the big complaint is that you can’t finalize an edit. IOW you can’t turn it into straight cuts to better facilitate XMLing it to other apps or media management.”
That is something you can do with Ppro or though it is a non-reversible photoshop type flattening that makes it less valuable than Legacy’s ability to go back and forth between multicam mode and straight cuts with a click of a mouse button. The problem with non -reversible flattening is say you want to export for a color grade. After the grade is finished there is no way to make any further multicam adjustments in case of last minute changes. Best procedure is to duplicate your timeline before flattening it to protect yourself from that sort of situation, but still not as flexible as the Legacy way.
[Bret Williams] ” I personally have had an issue with FCP X’s multicams’s inability to finalize in a music video.”
I have to say you lost me totally in your description here. You needed to have different versions of a music video – I get that. The different versions apparently shared some angles but also each needed some different angles as well. In order to use portions of one timeline to create a second version you chose to add those additional angles to the master multicam. I got that as well, and yes I can see how that might proliferate the number of angles in that multicam clip and make it a bit unwieldy. But I don’t understand the bit about cutting one version affecting another version. The various versions should be related to the same multicam but not to each other, I don’t see why after duplicating version 1 to make version 2, later changes in version 1 would make changes in version2. Can you clarify ?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
I’ve been looking at some of the Adobe tutorials and it (the interface) looks rather complicated to me (but so foes 7 now). In PP do you have an “Angle Editor” as such, like in FCPX? Double click on Multicam sequence and it takes you to another timeline with all your synched up cameras for fine tuning sync?
One of the great features is to use Multicam for multi take single camera shoots where you can approximate sync and then and nudge them around in the angle editor. This of course does not apply to you Herb.
Is the truth that there really isn’t much in it?
I can’t even remember how Multicam worked in Legacy and why I prefer X.
The bottom line is I understand why you would stick with something more familiar as I did.
But I have yet to hear from anybody who has stuck with FCPX and learnt its “new way” (yes time consuming) who has not had a light bulb moment and thought “this makes a lot of sense” despite the odd idiosyncrasy. And then you just don’t wanna go back.
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[James Ewart] ” In PP do you have an “Angle Editor” as such, like in FCPX? Double click on Multicam sequence and it takes you to another timeline with all your synched up cameras for fine tuning sync?”
Yes. In Ppro the multicam sequence is a timeline that uses variations on nesting behavior to perform it’s magic in the final editing timeline. At any point you can open up the original multicam source timeline and make any adjustment to the clips that you can do in a regular timeline – nudge the clips, combine clips from different tracks onto a single track, add filters to audio or video, add media at any point in your edit – and all your changes to the multicam source timeline will flow thru to any edit’s you’ve already made using that source as well as any future edits.
It is also possible to take a normal timeline and turn it into a multicam source – this becomes valuable if you ever use Plural Eyes to automate the creation of a multicam timeline when your individual sources have lots of stops and goes. Without Plural Eyes you have to consolidate the tracks manually.
[James Ewart] “But I have yet to hear from anybody who has stuck with FCPX and learnt its “new way” (yes time consuming) who has not had a light bulb moment and thought “this makes a lot of sense” despite the odd idiosyncrasy. And then you just don’t wanna go back.”
That’s sort of self defining though isn’t it. I know editors who gave what they thought was a reasonable amount of time to learning X who never did like it and don’t use it. But by definition they didn’t stick with it.
I don’t want this thread to get bogged down in this sort of dialogue. In this thread I’m asking for someone to show me how X can help me improve my efficiency in cutting multicam. In return I will endeavor to explain how other systems might improve your multicam work. Let’s keep it simple and open to all possibilities.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
I get you.
I’m not qualified to proffer an opinion but will read with interest thanks.
Apart from in FCPX every video cut in a Multicam clip is also an audio cut and there is nothing you can do about it apart form drag out the audio from one of the clips containing your master audio and deleting the rest. So if PP just cuts the video and leaves no invisible edits in the audio that would be one to you.
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“So I duplicated my sequence and you come to realize that if you change anything in that multicam, it’s going to change the original version”.
I had no idea you could not duplicate a Multicam project and not make changes without it affecting the original. Is that what you are saying? Even as a snapshot?
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That is an excellent suggestion/idea. I think that would be the solution. This was before I was using snapshots and realized their usefulness. I use them now assume that would work in the same way it locks in a compound clip. Someone should test it for me. 🙂
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