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Final Cut Pro Multi-Cam Alternative?
Hi there,
I have a shoot with 6 video sources that start and stop, as well as 4 channels of audio recorded separately. Each camera is timecode-slated, and it’s no problem to line them up on a timeline.
However, I’m running into the (really stupid) Final Cut Pro issue that multicam can only be based on single clips. That’s not possible, my sources start and stop all the time.
I’ve read the responses that everyone gets when they ask this question, which is to render each video track out to a separate file from a common in-point and use them to create a multiclip based on these (now) single clips.
But I absolutely refuse to do that, because it’s a massive and grotesque workaround for the sole purpose of getting around what I consider to be a needless limitation of the software that they could design around in 10 minutes if they felt like it.
Moreover, my sources are about 5 TB, and this would result in another 5 TB of duplication, which I’m just not going to do. I would also have to add 2×5 TB to the offsite backups, and suddenly this become absolutely unworkable.
So my question is, has anyone come up with a way to do this? Is it possible for example to make a dummy multiclip sequence and then sort of hack your footage into it to get FCP to treat it as a multicam source and allow you to switch between it?
Otherwise, until the FCP developers realize how multi-cam shooting is done in the real world, it seems that the only way is to always edit all 6 (or 9 or 14) sources into the timeline on top of each other using the lined-up sequence as a source, and then cut all sources at the same timeline points, and use enable/disable to select which camera you want.
That’s about as unintuitive as it gets, but at least it allows you to edit based on a sequence with lined-up clips. Real world multicam shooting always has an ad-hoc element, and by insisting that every single camera should be represented by a single clip is just wild. If you’re shooting 4K, how long can you go before you need to stop? Even on DV, the maximum take is an hour. It’s like Apple fantasized some ideal shooting scenario and decided to exclude every scenario that is not ideal and utopian, which is pretty much every scenario.
I have yet to see a multicam shoot that fits into Apple’s fantasy — unless you shoot in small chunks of 5 or 10 minutes for all cameras, because certainly you can keep a camera going for 5 minutes. But that forces ALL cameras to stop, and for example a reality show can’t sync like that — it’s a matter of capturing an event when it happens, and forcing the event to stop so the technology can figure itself out, is just not going to work. You have cameras that turn on and off *all the time*, it is not possible to stop everything for it, or it damages the event itself!
It’s so easy to line them up on a timeline. The software already knows how to multicam edit, and the underlying data structure is already some sort of sequence with multiple clips on their own track. There’s no logical reason to shut out real-world multicam shoots. The constraints placed on the shoot via Apple’s multicam edit feature are unrealistic for MANY shoots. Rendering out and re-importing is equally unrealistic for any large project.
So, if anyone has another workflow, I’d love to be your student. And if by chance there’s a super multicam plug-in out there that does this, I’m first in line to get it.
Sorry about the tirade.
Thanks,
Per
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49 Replies
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Download the demo of PluralEyes and watch their demo video at https://www.singularsoftware.com/autosync/. It’s just the thing for you.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Yes, I’ve looked at it, I believe you recommended it in another post. But as I understand that forum user’s response, this software only helps you line up the clips, but multiple recordings from the same camera still become separate angles. So if you start camera C 3 times, you’ve created 3 angles.
As I explained very clearly, lining up the footage is no problem whatsoever. I have proper timecode slates on the first frame of every single take of every camera. So again, lining up the clips is no problem. And by the way, I have no audio on most clips, the main audio comes from a proper 4-channel sounds recording that is common to all angles.
So can you explain how this software helps with multiple recordings in the same angle? I’m not seeing it.
Thanks,
Per
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It’s been many weeks since I last used the PluralEyes demo myself, and honestly I can’t remember precisely what I was doing at the time, but it sure seemed to ma at the time as if it would be very useful in a situation such as the one you’re in now. Sorry I can’t help further.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Hi there,
I studied up on this, as Pluraleyes does not help. While it certainly helps line up multiple cameras that turn on/off and put them on a timeline — one angle on each track — it doesn’t help to work around Apple’s design limitation in the Multiclip feature. The makers of the software therefore merely recommend that you export each track into a separate file and re-import them into a multiclip.
So we’re no better off. I don’t know if Apple reads forums, but the fact that you can find this same question asked ad nauseum should tell you something as a developer. The export/import workaround might work for a small thing, i.e. a song performance or a quick interview. But I consider that a fantasy situation unless you’re working under highly controlled circumstances, like a TV taping in a studio.
As soon as you’re out in the real world, people need to change batteries, and sometimes nothing interesting happens for a long time in one camera so you stop it for a while. I have a 12 TB RAID 5 set up for this project, and even though that’s quite a lot of space for 720p 24fps video (many hundreds of hours), I can’t afford to duplicate all that media for the sole purpose of working around something that can best be described as really stupid.
It would take almost no effort for the developers to allow cameras to start and stop. They could even just start honoring the Angle field that they tell everybody to fill out. If the same Angle appears at a different timecode, simply honor that this is the same Angle, and don’t label Take #2 on Camera A as Angle #54.
But given that this feature seems to have been around in FCP for several versions without getting a look at, it seems that Apple is happy with the multicam feature as it is. Too bad, there’s no possibility of using it if cameras start and stop unless you’re willing to double your media usage.
Has anyone heard of some sort of camera switcher plugin for FCP? I wouldn’t mind having a timeline 5-10 clips tall, if only there was a simple way to switch between clips, besides cutting all 5-10 clips at each edit point and enabling/disabling clips, which is sure to drive you mad.
It really is a bummer.
Thanks anyway!
Best,
Per
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Wait a minute, I read someone saying you can use reference movies as multiclip sources. I’ll have to test, and I’ll be back with an update.
Best,
Per
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Why not get the software that does what you want? Instead of complaining how FCP doesn’t do it and how backwards and awkward it is, go get the software that does exactly what you want?
Avid MC is only $2500.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Hi,
OK, that doesn’t actually work. I can’t tell if FCP is physically exporting all the media regardless of the Self-Contained setting or if it’s just rendering the black, but these files are huge.
However, posters in other topics have correctly pointed out that if your files contain renders, you’re linking to the render, which might change. And regardless, if your media ever changes location, which it might on a large project as this, your QT Reference will break down.
So this is not a viable solution.
All right, it seems I’ll have to suck it up and go back to simply stacking 5 to 10 layers in the timeline and turning them on and off.
It would be so awesome if FCP got a multicam feature! 🙂
Best,
Per
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Yes, I own an Avid MC with SD Out. But I couldn’t swallow almost $8,000 just for HD output for the Avid, and given that many people I know edit FCP at a high level, and a Kona card is just $1,500, I decided to take the plunge and changed my platform — because even with a brand new Mac Pro and Kona card and 12 TB of storage, I still haven’t spent the $8,000 I would have spent just on the HD output for the Avid.
I’m very impressed with much of the development that has happened for FCP, and now that they’ve finally copied Avid’s trim mode, which is simply a fantastic way to edit, frankly FCP feels a lot like an Avid. If you divide your project into many sub projects, you can even get bin-like behavior, and at the same time not freak FCP out by having very large singular projects.
But this multicam feature seems to have been designed purely from theory. You have to be UNBELIEVABLY LUCKY to end up with a multicam shoot where no single camera starts and stops. Yet, this is the only scenario that FCP can accomodate. That’s just wild, and it’s a problem that pretty much anyone who does multicam will run into, so I assumed that if there is a solution that doesn’t involve simply stacking all the clips and turning them on and off, the Creative Cow forum is surely the place to find out.
I guess I can work it out. On the upside, this particular footage doesn’t require me to experiment a lot with the editing, so the 5-10 track timeline is not as painful as it would seem. Annoying, you bet! But it’s not impossible.
Anyway, if anyone has solved this frustrating problem, I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks,
Per
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Creating a QuickTime reference movie should be fast and will not create huge files. It’s the only way I know to get sensible multiclips in FCP when there are many clips on one track. As noted earlier, you can’t have any filters or resizing going on or it will do a full render. This video tutorial shows how.
Bruce
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Hi there,
Yes, I realize that I have an issue with the format, which is why my Reference Movies want to render.
I’m running into probably a more legitimate limitation in the multiclip functionality, that all my footage is not in the exact same format. Everything is 720p at 23.976, and all sources play in real-time on a ProRes 422 timeline, but fact is that some of my sources are HVX/P2, and some are Sony (don’t remember the codec). And that’s probably a real problem that Apple could be fully justified in not solving, since it’s probably hard enough as it is to play multiple streams. Although, it would be possible for Apple to see if the resolution and frame-rate match.
I unfortunately have no way around this, because it would limit the people I can shoot with, and above all else, as long as I can play and edit all sources in real-time on the timeline, I’ve probably reached the most important goal, as rendering raw footage just to view it would be spectacularly obnoxious.
So even if this issue were resolved by Apple, which they really ought to do, I possibly wouldn’t benefit from it anyway because of my multiple formats. Instead, I’m looking into whether I do some funky keyboard stuff with QuicKeys to perhaps automate the Solo selection and the chopping up of clips and enabling/disabling them to create a semblance of angle selection. This is probably unfortunately the way I’ll have to go. I’m not a fan of recompressing media for the purpose of bringing it into multiclip, image quality should trump my personal convenience.
You sound like you’ve put some thought into a solution, so I’ll take that as an answer.
Thanks!
Per
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