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create a multiclip with one long A cam clip and multiple short DSLR B cam clips
I’ve come across this issue in different incarnations a few times before and I can’t quite figure it out. I’ve only ever needed multiclips when in this situation or similar and discovered I couldn’t get it to work how I wanted and so have never used them before so it may be a lack of understanding on my part.
As near as I can tell it’s only possible to make multiclips that all synch at the same point, that is 2 or more video sources covering the same action at the same time. However, what I frequently have is a situation where one source (A cam) records a long duration of something and a second (or more) soure(s) capture short bursts of action at different times within the same single recorded duration from the A cam.
In my particular circumstance now, we have an interview whose entirety is covered from one angle (A cam) and which has alternate angles like hands and profile etc covered in short bursts at different times with the B cam. Therefore multiple B cam clips, take place chronologically over the same space of time as a single A cam clip, however there will be gaps between the button-off (or clip limit) of one clip and the button-on of the next. On a timeline it would look like V1 having a single long bar with V2 having occasional shorter ones intermittently spaced above the V1 clip. While I can manually place the clips in this manner in a sequence, I’d like the ability to have a single master multiclip (preferably the long A cam clip) which has had the B cam clips synced at their various coincidence points and which therefore when placed on a timeline will automatically appear as I described above. I’d also like the split screen viewer options of FCP’s multiclip functionality, with the tiles representing the B cam simply turning off when there is no media coinciding with a point in time of the A cam clip and then flicking back on when there is a clip which does.
Can this be done?
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3 Replies
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in FCPX… yes
in FCP7… no
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I seem to have sort of accidentally figured out how to do it in FCP 7. Basically the answer, as it seems was pointed out by Larry Jordan and others is: use Plural Eyes.
I thought I may as well at least sync all the shots first while I tried to get an answer to my question and then I saw there was a ‘make multiclip’ option in plural eyes. Somehow Pluraleyes seems to have figured out a workaround to FCP 7’s limitation with respect to non-continuous and continuous multiclips; generating a working multiclip which simply switches on and off tiles when media ends and then starts again.
The workaround is not perfect though, my A cam tile (for some reason not always the upper left tile though usually despite the synching being done exactly the same way for every interview) will occupy 1 space in your split-up viewer consistently as expected, however different cameras will appear to occupy different tiles in a rotation for each occasion that B cam clips end and then start again. In my 2 cam setup where the footage is primarily A-cam except when occasionally switching to the B cam for cutaway, this isn’t a big problem, though if I had more than 2 cameras this would get really confusing since they’d be constantly swapping positions making reliably switching from B cam to C cam for example really hard since B and C could be in different tiles to where they were a second ago.
I’m lucky though because for the situation I’m in now, this is perfectly fine and completely solves my problem.
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FCP X has the same functionality as Pluralyes:
it can analyse & sync by audionick
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