Nesting/Merging For Multi-Camera Edit

[Mark Suszko]

1Just throw all the clips for camera 1 on the timeline, and export> quicktime movie> with a new name an no other setting changed, be sure it is self-contained. We call that a reference movie. Bring that back into the actual multicam edit, same with the other two cams, now it should work, though the time codes may not relate anymore, so synch by hand or by audio in the multicam setup. Anyhow, that’s my first instinct, someone else may have a better way.

[Chris Trainor]

I asked a very similar question earlier this week, well, sorta.

Essentially I did a multi cam shoot, and some of the other photogs started and stopped recording during the shoot.

I posted on here to see if there was a work around to get FCP to work with multi cam editing.

Here is the original thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1171909

Essentially ended up rendering out each track to a new complete mov, then bring them all back in and they’ll all be the same length and complete, with black where the cams were started and stopped. Then I could use the multi cam editor.

Was initially using ProRes Proxy, but now I am just rendering out each track in it’s entirety using prores 422.

My question:
Now that I am rendering out each track, is it better to do as a self contained file, or does it matter? I totally understand about any original source material changing and you’ve got big problems when not self contained, etc. my question is more about resources.

Since I now have 3 or 4 1080i video tracks, each about 1.5 hours long, its going to tax my machine when I go to the multicam edit.

So I was wondering if it would be easier on my machine and its limited resources to do the stand alone self contained files, or uncheck the box and do them as ‘reference’ files. Or does it matter when it comes down to the resources needed to play it back smoothly?

That is my main concern, getting the files to play back smoothly enough that I can utilze multicam. Hope this makes sense….