A brief outline of 4 way split technique

[Mike Kujbida]

Harry,
Use the multicam feature that’s been built into Pro since version 8.
It does exactly what you want with very little fuss.
The online help menu takes you through it step by step.

[Harry Putnam]

[Mike Kujbida] ”
Mike Kujbida Re: A brief outline of 4 way split technique
by Mike Kujbida on Jan 2, 2011 at 12:50:06 pm

Harry,
Use the multicam feature that’s been built into Pro since version 8.
It does exactly what you want with very little fuss.
The online help menu takes you through it step by step.”

Thanks for the tip, but it looks like your notion of very little fuss is a bit different than mine. It sounds confusing as heck after perusing awhile and near as I could tell, none of it leads to a 4 way split screen where 4 tracks are running in the viewing area as I described.

Sorry to snivel so loudly, but maybe there is something online somewhere that tells how its done but is designed for a novice, not a seasoned vegas hand.

I’m sure the lack of ability to make much sense of it from the help file is my own shortcoming. And I doubt the technique is really all that difficult… for me the help file seems to make it so.

I’m googling now for a tutorial but I had hoped to gain a rough idea from someone here.

Ahh found a nice one for describing multicam editing
HERE

Only problem is that I see no evidence that any of this results in a quadrant view.

[Mike Kujbida]

Here’s a condensed version of what the tutorial is telling you.
Import all your video clips (I’ll use 4 for this example) and drop them on the timeline so that they’re stacked on top of each other.
Choose one track as the master (preferably the top one) and sync everything else to it.
Delete the unneeded audio tracks.
Click and Shift+click all track headers so that they’re all highlighted (this is an important step!!).
Tools – Multicamera – Enable Multicam editing.
Camera 1 will be outlined in the Preview window.
Tools – Multicamera – Create Multicamera Track.
You now see a quad split with camera 1 highlighted.
Play the video and, at the appropriate time, press the desired number (1 to 4) on the numeric keypad.
If you want to, you can just place your cursor at a specific point and press the desired number.
When you’re finished this step, you’ll see a series of camera cuts on the video track.
2:23 in the tutorial you referenced shows you what this looks like.
Because these are takes, you can use the ‘t’ key to switch to a different camera cut if desired.
Tools – Multicamera – Enable Multicam editing one last time to complete things and go back to a single screen in your Preview window.

Does this help?

[Harry Putnam]

[Mike Kujbida] ”
Mike Kujbida Re: A brief outline of 4 way split technique
by Mike Kujbida on Jan 2, 2011 at 4:29:03 pm

Here’s a condensed version of what the tutorial is telling you.
Import all your video clips (I’ll use 4 for this example) and drop them on the timeline so that they’re stacked on top of each other.
Choose one track as the master (preferably the top one) and sync everything else to it.
Delete the unneeded audio tracks.
Click and Shift+click all track headers so that they’re all highlighted (this is an important step!!).
Tools – Multicamera – Enable Multicam editing.
Camera 1 will be outlined in the Preview window.
Tools – Multicamera – Create Multicamera Track.
You now see a quad split with camera 1 highlighted.
Play the video and, at the appropriate time, press the desired number (1 to 4) on the numeric keypad.
If you want to, you can just place your cursor at a specific point and press the desired number.
When you’re finished this step, you’ll see a series of camera cuts on the video track.
2:23 in the tutorial you referenced shows you what this looks like.
Because these are takes, you can use the ‘t’ key to switch to a different camera cut if desired.
Tools – Multicamera – Enable Multicam editing one last time to complete things and go back to a single screen in your Preview window.”

Mike, You’ve made a really nice tutorial here… and vastly superior to the help manual as an overview… its really good.

I feel well prepared to do multicam stuff now.

You’ve taken a bit of time to write that, and I am very grateful, thank you.

Am I wrong in thinking the end result would be a full screen view (to the end user) that changes in accordance with how I have clicked or other wise selected from the various tracks? That is each selected bit will be full screen to the end user?

I hope I’m not missing something achingly apparent here.

—————————————————–
However, my original post was about having a 4way scene in my production, featuring all 4 quadrants in their entirety. No need to pick and chose which is to show. But the end user will see a full screen split in 4 ways where a portion of the dance is playing in each quarter, for however long the segment is setup to play.

In my original post I imagined it would be done by setting keyframes and muscling the various frames into the right size and position, over time, in some kind of measured and pleasing way, then back again to a single view. (That’s what end user would see)

I think I am seeing how to do it using the pan and crop event dialogs for each bit of video. But even there, I’ve run into something I don’t understand and have posted a different thread regarding those event dialogs.
Thanks again for the excellent tutorial.

[Mike Kujbida]

[Harry Putnam] “Am I wrong in thinking the end result would be a full screen view (to the end user) that changes in accordance with how I have clicked or other wise selected from the various tracks? That is each selected bit will be full screen to the end user?”

You are correct.

[Harry Putnam] “However, my original post was about having a 4way scene in my production, featuring all 4 quadrants in their entirety.”

My apologies for misreading your original question.
After syncing up your clips, use Track Motion (it’s the best tool for this purpose) to shrink and position them as desired.
Set each track to a width/height of 360/240.
For position, use -180/120, 180/120, -180/-120 and 180/-120 for top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right.
Assuming you want the top right track to go full frame at the end, use keyframes to do the move at the appropriate time.
Once you’re happy with it, I would render this sequence (DV-AVI in Best mode) to a new track so that you don’t have to keep rendering it over and over again.

[Mike Kujbida]

p.s.
Feel free to add a border of some kind to each clip so that it stands out.

[Harry Putnam]

[Mike Kujbida] ”
Mike Kujbida Re: A brief outline of 4 way split technique
by Mike Kujbida on Jan 2, 2011 at 5:47:40 pm

[…]

After syncing up your clips, use Track Motion (it’s the best tool for this purpose) to shrink and position them as desired.
Set each track to a width/height of 360/240.
For position, use -180/120, 180/120, -180/-120 and 180/-120 for top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right.
Assuming you want the top right track to go full frame at the end, use keyframes to do the move at the appropriate time.
Once you’re happy with it, I would render this sequence (DV-AVI in Best mode) to a new track so that you don’t have to keep rendering it over and over again.”

Another excellent little walk thru and lots of exact details.
Well appreciated here.

Can you tell me how `vegas’ users might handle the kind of problem mentioned below:

Say you have work going on in the timeline, but you find a clip you would like to overhall a bit. Maybe take some excessive motion out of it, but you don’t want to work on it at the place where your work is going on. You don’t want to risk messing up other work there.

In Premiere I would create another timeline ,do the work there, then just copy paste it into the first track where I want it.

Does `vegas’ have any facility to create more than one timeline,

Or do you just fire up another instance of vegas?

[Mike Kujbida]

“Does `vegas’ have any facility to create more than one timeline,”

Nope.

“Or do you just fire up another instance of vegas?”

Yes.
Work on the clip, render and save it under a new name and import the fixed clip into the other version.