MultiCam – Multiple Clips for the Same Angle

[Bruce Sharpe]

The original poster’s question is not about how to sync the clips but how to get a multiclip with one angle per camera instead of one angle per clip.

Since the cameras were all jam-synched he can use SequenceLiner or PluralEyes to do the sync. And he seems to be past that. The problem is that Final Cut treats each clip as a separate angle in the multiclip. He wants three angles, corresponding to three cameras, but he’s getting eight angles, one for each of the clips.

The only way I know around this is to take the synced sequence and make a QuickTime reference movie for each camera. Then use those ref movies as the input to a multiclip. It’s a little fiddly but it works well.

[Andreas Kiel]

Hi all,

I jump in too late. But it may help to understand the problem if it will happen to someone at another time.

I’m the author of sequenceLiner, so let me say some words about it.
The app assumes that you’re running TOD TC or free run TC while recording. It doesn’t matter whether you synched the cameras to each other or not – as long as you don’t shut down the camera or change batteries. A real helpful thing would be to have one common sync point/clapper for all cams at one point.
It’s a pretty easy principle – after you captured or transfered the files. Just put all clips which belong to one angle into a bin. Take external audio – if you want – in another bin.
Then create a sequence which matches your final settings and export the the project as XML.
SequenceLiner will interpret each bin as a track and lay down all clips in the according track based upon its timecode, the resulting XML will be imported into FCP.
Now in the sequence take one track as a ‘master’ and go to your sync point (or find one) and add a marker or just make a note of the frame number, do the same thing with all other tracks.
Then match the markers by moving all clips of the tracks to match the master marker. Another option is – as Jeremy did in his presentation – to write down the frame differences of the track/angles and type them into the offset settings of sequenceLiner add re-run the export. This will give you a complete in sync sequence within seconds.
From there you can either export each track as ref movie or self-contained to create a new ‘master tape’ which can be used to create a huge multiclip. You can also trim the overlaps of the clips (clip by clip) manually and create multiclips step by step using the ‘In’ option for sync.

The PluralEyes app uses a totally different approach – which by the way it is totally cool, as it handles audio delays in way I’ve never seen before. It uses audio to sync the files and automatically creates multiclips. So no TC needed at all.
The setup is pretty similar though you start with the clips in a sequence instead of bins. The advantage is that you get ready to go clips as long you got a decent good audio on each camera.

With Jeremy’s example that wouldn’t have been possible to have a ‘some kind’ common audio and so he decided to go the sequenceLiner way. In other cases it will be easier to use PluralEyes especially with no useful TC.

As Jeremy mentioned I know Bruce from Singular Software and we are working on common products.

A totally different option starts during the setup of the shooting. You may take a ALL601 for each camera. Jam sync those to each other (and the audio HDR) connect them either to the Lanc of your camera or the TC Out or the TC In (you can use any kind of TC including record run) or the Audio In.
This little box records each start stop of the camera into a file a bit similar to an ALE. When work is done you connect those boxes to your machine via USB and transfer those log files (there is one per camera, no matter how many tapes you used). Then capture/transfer your files. For each camera create create a bin as you normally would do. Then export each bin as XML.
From there use my auxApp to import both the log file and the matching bin XML. The app will compare the log file’s TOD and the cam’s source TC and write an AUX TC to the QT movies, which will automatically update in FCP. From there you can go to create multiclips based upon AUX TC.

If you used the Audio option there is a great tool from VideoToolShed to convert LTC to QT TC. This allows to sync the clips based upon LTC within FCP.
I know Bouke from VideoToolShed pretty well for quite a long time. As Jeremy said ‘one big happy family’ — something for everybody.

Finally not to forget Philip Hodgett’s Sync’n Link, which can be helpful here as well.

And not to forget the good old Lockit to sync the cams, hmm sometimes cables are enough to sync TCs of the cameras. Many options to save time in postpro.

Regards
Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Cheyo Masters]

Thank you for creating such great little app.

Does anybody know what I can use to link the audio and video (aka merge) tracks that come out of SequenceLiner?
My video and audio is not linked and I know this is a feature that has not been implemented yet but i was just wondering if anybody know of another plug in or a trick in final cut to link all of clips up. (merge)

Thanks