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Multiclip question
I’m cutting a four camera music show shot with four individual Digibeta cameras. Three were in fixed positions with locked TOD time code. The fourth was a hand held running TOD code, initially locked to the master code. This free running timecode ended being about a second and 26 frames off from the master clock. No big deal. I’ll just use the in points for each clip as the reference in the multiclip and all will be well. This works fine for most of the songs. But old habits die hard and my hand held camera guy accidentlly paused the tape at a few places resulting in a break in the timecode at those points. While capturing the clip FCP broke these clips into multiple clips with a resulting gap in the timecode.
Here’s the problem. How can I sync up these various clips in a multiclip? I can’t use in points for a reference any longer and I can’t use timecode due to the 1 second and 26 frame offset on the 4th camera. Is there any to add an offset to the 4th camera clips after they have been captured or add the offset within the multiclip itself? I could break the song into several multiclip sequences at the points where the camera was paused…but I’d rather not if possible.
Some multiclips would need to have around 8 tracks synced together. Suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Tom(Man, I’ve had a lot of posts this week…whew!)
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5 Replies
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Sync the handheld footage to the rest of the cameras manually, leaving Slug in the places where the camera was paused. Then Export the handheld footage (as a Quicktime self-contained, NOT using Quicktime Conversion).
Import the handheld Quicktime back into your project and use that as your new source for that angle.
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I would suggest making a new sequence and putting just the hand-held camera in it. Start the sequence TC to match the number of the clip’s time code. Then edit in black where the camera was off.
So, for example, if the camera was off for 5 minutes, put exactly 5 minutes of black in there, making sure the TC matches correctly when the clip starts back up again.
Then export this file as a new Quicktime file and re-import it. Use that clip as your hand-held camera in the multiclip. It’ll be like the camera opperator decided to put the lens cap on from time to time, but the sync should work out.
I’ve never done anything like this, but it seems to me that it should work.
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After thinking a bit on this, I just went to Modify>Timecode and subtracted the offset for each clip from the hand held camera then created the multiclip and used Timecode as the reference!
Seems to work fine. Everything’s synced up correctly now.YaY!
Thanks again!
Tom -
You could have tried assigning auxiliary timecode and then syncing the multiclip based on auxiliary timecode rather than the master timecode. I do this all the time for music video work. I create a bin and sequence that I call “sync” with all my camera angles/takes synced in time say where 01:00:00:00 is the start of the concert/song. Then just place all the clips in their proper place along the timeline and go modify, timcode, select the AUX TC 1 tab and give it the value from your timeline sequence.
So say that you had 4 camera angles and 3 are all gen locked and start in the same place as the concert at 01:00:00:00. So you line all those up on the timeline and assign the first frames to be AUX TC 1 of 01:00:00:00. But for the 4th angle where the camera guy stopped and started the camera you have to have these as separate master clips which it sounds like you do. Take these into the “sync” sequence and put them at their proper place in time. For example maybe the first take starts at 01:00:00:00 then he stops the camera and starts it again at 01:02:30:00. Then just slide the clip into its proper place and assign the auxiliary timecode for the first frame of that clip to be 01:02:30:00. When you highlight all the clips and select create multiclip sequence just sync them by auxiliary timecode instead. This way if you ever have to take this into an online you have all the true timecodes properly intact. I hope this helps or is what you were asking about.
-Keith
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Keith, thanks. I have had to do a “poor man’s” version of this a few times in the past by exporting a Reference movie (see my post above), but next time I will try the method you described.
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