Drifting ISSUES with multicam

[Jerry Hofmann]

Shot in the dark: Might try capturing the HDV material using the intermediate codec… that way it’s captured with all i frames. Maybe sync would clean up…?

Jerry

[Duncan Craig]

How long does it take for the drift to become noticeable? Is it losing frames after a few minutes or half an hour.
For what it’s worth any two cameras which a locked together while shooting will drift. But only after a fair few minutes! If it’s going adrift after just a few minutes then you do have something badly wrong somewhere.

The multicam system might not be the best solution for you, perhaps if it is just a conference with two static angle it will work, but for proper control you might want to try layering one camera on top of the other and simply chop out the layer on top when you want to see the other angle. I’ll say now I’ve only touched on the new FCP feature but it appears a bit limited and flaky.

Here’s a huge load of waffle about how I do it, read at your peril… you have been warned.

I’ve just finished 2 jobs, both concerts shot on 5x Sony Z1’s. both +100 minute music concerts all in one run, no breaks. (I finalising the DVDs for sale now) Both were shot on really hot nights, 1 wide locked off, 2 on tripods, 2 handheld. The cameras all drifted at least 4-6 frames over this period. Of course it’s impossible to tell which is right and which is wrong, so I lay down the wide camera first with camera audio, then adding the next camera on the layer above, listen to this audio mixed with the wide camera audio in the timeline to get rough sync. Then get rid of the new audio leaving only the wide sound.

It’s worth saying also that I only over grab 15 minutes at a time from the rushes tapes (shot HDV PAL and downconverted in camera). it makes managing the edit easier. I sometime take chunks of rushes home to edit on an iMac, so I just take a section of the timeline, and reconnect the latest project the next day, in my online suite. This assumes the audio has captured correctly and there’s no audio delay between the cameras at the back and the handhelds on stage. The gigs both have crowds that take photos all night, so I use the camera flashes to match precise sync. (The flashes need to be viewed on an interlaced monitor, as they don’t always show up on the FCP canvas)

Repeat the proceedure for all the camera in 15 minute chunks on the timeline. It takes at least a couple of hours! Of course the sync may drift back and forth, and one 15 minute section may get drift in that section, so I’ll chop it up even more and move the sections around. The only way to see all the cameras to match the camera flashes is to DVE them down, so my first assembly timeline has 4 boxed down cameras over the wide camera full screen. I use this timeline in the viewer ganged to a copy of the sequence where I remove all the DVE’s, this copied sequence is the one I then chop into as the proper edit, while I can still see what all the cameras are doing in the ganged DVE’d version. The sound is recorded multitrack and a basic mix always arrives after I have finished the edit!, and that’s needs another mess around and a few 1 frame chops to get it to run in sync.

Of course I can only see what they are doing when the timeline is stopped, as the ganging doesn’t give you real time moving ganging. That’s an advantage of the multicam feature. But it no use to me, I can’t expect to switch to a camera and it will always have a perfect shot. I do a lot of superimposing of cameras, and long mixes on slow songs. Using the layered method is great for this.

I don’t use the multicam feature, if I did I guess I would have to create multiple multiclips for each section where the clips are in sync, then edit them and drop each multicam edit back into a master timeline. That sounds like hard work. And something is bound to go wrong. For the moment, I prefer to work the layered method in FCP. I can get precise control of switching between cameras on turns of an artists head, or certain words in a song. Also the handhelds (I was operating one of them) often have to whip off the artist to reposition themselves, or find a shot but can’t hold it. Editing these sorts of jobs need constant reviewing over and over to make sure you have the right feel for the song. From what I can see if you go back amend a multicam timeline, it adds extra cut points, but then jumps back to the old ones, (I guess it would have to really) so how do you then force it to overwrite. Lots of dragging and repairing in the timeline, well by the time I have done this, I may as well have worked my usual way.

If FCP allowed me to take my properly synced layered timeline and create a switching system where I simply play the timeline. I can see all the angles in another viewer. I press buttons 1 to 5 (or whatever) or clip on the angle in the viewer, I see that camera cut up full screen on the canvas viewer. When I stop the timeline, FCP has left my timeline layered, but removed layers where they were not cut up. Then I could drag layers back to get cuts exactly where I needed them, as well as adding effects and superimposing, grading etc.

Of course I won’t get this exact feature, and maybe everyone else is shooting on full size locked together cameras and overjoyed with the multicam system. I dislike it, but I’m really happy with FCP anyway, and I love to work the way I do. If I was editing an event shot in a OB truck with 8 referenced isolated time of day OB cameras with huge box lenses and most importantly a director in the truck! I would probably use the multicam feature. I used to do those sorts of jobs in Avids, but times have changed, and a client who I met through editing those proper jobs, now insists I tech. manage, operate a camera and edit, because he knows the quality can be almost as good, and it’s a lot lot cheaper! Still I get paid a lot more, and the OB company loses the job, Oops.

All the best, Duncan.

P.S. The Z1’s are fantastic cameras. No artifacts, operated with 9dB of gain, all on tungsten preset, and looked so much better than the 2x Sony 570’s I used last time. Handled the concert lighting really well, great black details, the camera operators had to rack themselves, but they needed very little grading, as the screens on the Z1’s are so good.

AJA IO, FCP Studio, Dual2Ghz, Huge Dual Max, Tea, Coffee, Biscuits, Henry (The Hoover)

[Les Kaye]

[Duncan Craig] “I’ll say now I’ve only touched on the new FCP feature but it appears a bit limited and flaky.”

In what way?

[Duncan Craig] “If FCP allowed me to take my properly synced layered timeline and create a switching system where I simply play the timeline. I can see all the angles in another viewer. I press buttons 1 to 5 (or whatever) or clip on the angle in the viewer,”

5.0 does precicely that.

[Les Kaye]

[Les Kaye] “5.0 does precicely that.”

make that “precisely that”

[Duncan Craig]

Well flakey, because it crashed and locked up my FCP time after time, attempt after attempt.( This was the first feature I tried after a clean install of 10.4 and FCP5 on a new HD ) I reinstalled everything and it still had problems, but that it only half the story.

After another read through the manual, it seems still that FCP doesn’t let me take a Synced up timeline and cut with it. The multiclip sequence feature only works if the rushes timecodes all match.

As I explained that’s not what I am talking about. The thread started here because of drifting cameras, the multiclip system in FCP doesn’t help you if your cameras drift. You would have to build lots of separate multiclips then drop them into another sequence, trying to match the bits back together again.

It’s no good for me.

[Tom Wolsky]

“After another read through the manual, it seems still that FCP doesn’t let me take a Synced up timeline and cut with it. The multiclip sequence feature only works if the rushes timecodes all match.”

I’m not sure what this means, but the second sentence is obviously incorrect. You can match in points and make them a multiclip regardless of timecode.

If the cameras are drifting that’s a different issue and has nothing to do with multiclip. Is it a non-drop/drop error. Two different counting systems will cause slow drift.

I didn’t seen anything on how the timecode was set, but you might be able to sync up, modify the timecodes and then the multiclip sequence function.

[Duncan Craig]

Hi All,

Firstly, I’m very happy with FCP and have now cut 3 concert productions all over 100 minutes, the first job was last year on 7 digbeta camcorders, all running free, with no timecode match or genlock/reference. And two jobs recently on 5x Sony Z1’s. But FCP does not do what I need it to for my type of multicamera shoots…yet.

Nothing to do with Drop/Non Drop, I’m working PAL.
If you read my thread you’ll understand I’m talking about 5 or 6 frame drifts over 100+ minutes of rushes. That’s just normal drift, on 5 separate cameras in a hot environment, where the tape is digitise on a different machine weeks later. Sure I can use auxiliary timecodes to use multiclip sequences, but it will still drift and need more fiddling.

I do understand how Multiclip can work, but on a job with unmatched timecodes, and shortish digitise clips it needs a lot of messing around to get it to work. And of course when I come to make a HDV version in the future, who know if the media mangler will work out multiclip originated timelines?

What I want as I have said (although I don’t expect it to happen) is to build a layered timeline ( lots of chopped up resynced bits) and simply switch between layers, I don’t want to build a multiclip. Why should I ? ,What’s the point? I don’t want a new clip that contains other clips, just let me switch between what is already on the timeline please. It really very simple. To have this function in addition to how multiclip works now would be spot on.

But it a bit like OSX. What are permissions all about? Why do we want them. The answer is we don’t, they are another silly nag. A Unix thingy. How many of us have multiple users on one Mac in a professional environment, very few. They need repairing all the time, and it’s a pain. Apple should give us the option of a single user OS install when we set up a mac without permissions, I don’t need them on any of my Macs, or any other FCP systems which I maintain for other companies in my city.

All the best,
Duncan.