how to do multi cam?

[Steve Eisen]

Did you check out the manual?

G5 Dual 2.5 160GB System 400GB Media Drive ATI 9800 256MB 6 GB RAM
Dual Gig Quicksilver 1GB RAM 80 GB System drive (3) 250 GB internal media storage
15″ Al Powerbook 1.25 1GB RAM
OS 10.4.2 FCP 5, DVDSP 4, QT 7.02, Boris Red 3GL 2.45 TB External Stor

[Dan Riley]

Really dude..
we’ll help you out if there is an issue but you’ve got to do some
of your own work first. Read your manual.

Dan

[Chris Babbitt]

FCP 5 comes with a great tutorial for multicam. I suggest you do it. It works great on my 1.5 ghz Powerbook.

[Andy Edwards]

You could download some multicam tutorials at:

https://www.macprovideo.com/MPV/html/fcp-mastering.html

The multicam section is pretty clean in explaining your options with your footage if you find the manual cryptic. Some people are manual readers and get it, some do better by seeing instructions in a visual way.

Andy

[Dean Sensui]

Here’s a basic outline I wrote for one of the the guys who co-produces our show:

— Select clips for each camera angle.
— Find “slate” points and cut the clips there.
— Move clips to a bin.
— Highlight clips.
— Go to Modify dropdown menu and select Make Multiclip
— Select “Sync using in points”.
— Check “on” all clips.

Your multiclip will then be created and can be found in the bin.

Drag this multiclip into a sequence.

— In Viewer: Show Multiclip Overlays; Show Source Angle Effects should both be “on.”
— Go to View dropdown menu — Playhead sync — Open
— Go to View dropdown menu — Multiclip Active Tracks — Video + Audio
— Go to View dropdown menu — External Video — All frames (not sure if this is essential)

When you click on your sequence and hit the space bar, you should see all camera angles in the viewer playing simultaneously and the “program” or selected camera angle should be playing in the canvas as well.

To select a camera, just click on the angle in the viewer.

At the end your multiclip will be cut into their respective camera angles. You can go back and fine tune the cuts, too.

==========

The FCP manual could really use a simple outline like this. I had difficulty getting started as the section on multicam editing is poorly written and disorganized. Hopefully this will help others make sense of it.

Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com

[Andy Edwards]

Dean,

Thanks for the great breakdown. I’ll be sure to save this for future use.

Question for you or any others doing Multi-cam:

Does your multicam viewer play back without stuttering when previewing 8-bit uncompressed footage? Or are you only using DV footage?

I have stuttering on my multicam clips when previewing. I’m using a 4 drive external SATA raid with a SonnetTempo card.

Andy

[Nate Weaver]

Multicam with uncompressed media is probably a bad idea. I myslef would never expect that to work.

I’m in the middle of a 9 camera cut that I did with DV24p source, and then recompressed to Offline RT media. Works great. I’ve also bounced back and forth between the offline and online media about 20 times to make approvals…

[Brian Galford]

Dean,

I followed your instructions and can see everything where it should be playing (timeline canvas and viewer). Pressing the number keys does indeed effect the switching. There are blue markers that appear at the top of the timeline window over the multicam track as I switch. But the switches don’t seem to be permanent. When I stop playiback, or hit the viewer window, the blue markers in the timeline go away camera. Do I have to render the multicam clip in the timeline once I have made all my switches?
Also, is there a way to take audio from just one camera?
How easy is it to change my switching desisions later?

[Dean Sensui]

Hi Brian…

I selected edits by clicking on a specific camera, rather than using the number keys. Made it easier as it’s a simple matter of pointing directly at the desired camera angle and clicking on cue.

As for using a single audio track, One way is to duplicate the desired audio tracks from one camera, then pasting it over the other camera’s audio tracks prior to creating the multiclip.

The other way is to replace the edited version’s audio with the audio from the desired camera.

Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com