Multicam edit – with sequences not clips

[Allynn Wilkinson]

I’m with Alex on this one…

QT ref movies work just fine with Standard Definition files. I have often strung together more than three hours of footage from a three camera shoot; synced it all up on a timeline, added slug to cover tape changes, cut the head so everything starts at the same time and output each track as it’s own QT ref. Then I bring the refs in as files and put them into a multi clip. Works like a charm

HOWEVER….
When I tried to do the same thing with a one hour, three camera shoot on Sony HD last week I got as far as making the multi clip. The refs were under a gig a piece so I had hopes but, no luck. Final Cut could not play all three clips simultaneously. It just gave me a black screen.

To be fair… I’m using an older machine with less RAM than it should have. It probably would have worked with 16 gig of RAM or so. Still… playing 3 HD clips simultaneously is asking a lot of any machine

Allynn

[Dennis Benti]

Hi, I have a similar issue, but I am dealing with HD footage (1920 x 1080)… now I had 4 primary cameras covering a concert. 1 jib that returned AVCHD codec, 1 5D, and 2 7D’s if I remember correctly.
I log and transferred all the footage to ProRes 422 so I could work with it in FCP 7 without bogging down my system (Quadcore Macbook Pro w/ 16gigs of RAM). I was able to get pluraleyes (in a couple of different batches) sync up all 4 camera angles, with multiple cuts due to the dslr’s only recording so long, keeping in mind overheating problems encountered by others, etc. Thankfully I did have the jib footage go all the way through as a reference.
Well now I’m down to where I need to make the multticlip, which FCP 7 wants in/out/or timecode to sync… I’m looking for a solution to this that doesn’t degrade my quality out when everything is said and done, and that doesn’t require me to start over somewhere (God willing),
so I thought:
1) If I could add timecode to my whole timeline/each clip easily, that may be a solution, but haven’t dealt with that.
2)I tried using the multiclip selection using Pluraleyes (not the new fancy version), but that only starts the multiclip, but when there are larger gaps between DSLR footage, it doesn’t include the rest of the footage… I thought if I insert slugs to close the gaps with black footage, then perhaps it would successfully do the multicam (which is what I’m going to try next)
3)I considered editing a lower resolution version and referencing back to the better quality footage, but I don’t really know much about that, or how to pull it off easily without getting mixed up, etc.
4)Another consideration was to export each camera angle as a single clip, so there wasn’t a bunch of cuts anymore, then starting the multiclip at the start point

Any advise on the better route to take would be greatly appreciated.
This is for a gig that is a favor, but may end up paying, but money aside… I just want to do a good job, and figure out this workflow for future reference.

Thanks guys,

Dennis