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Setting up a mutlicam edit for a feature
Forgive me, as this will be long. Trying to give you all the info before I ask for help. I’m assistant editing on my first feature in Premiere, done several in FCP7 and Avid. Mostly a 2-camera shoot with lots of lavs so secondary audio has anywhere from 5-9 channels. I was trying to set this up like I’ve done in Avid, organizing everything by scene, take and camera and then creating multiclips that have both angles synced. I’m using Premiere CC 2014 on OS X Mountain Lion (though if that turns out to be part of the problem I do have a desktop running Yosemite and CC 2015).
Here’s my workflow: I dropped a whole day’s worth of A and B cam clips into PluralEyes along with the day’s audio. Got a nice Synced Replaced sequence in Premiere with A cam on V1 and B cam on V2 with all audio on A1-A9. See photo:
I lasso audio for the first take with A cam and drag out to the Project Panel which creates a new merged clip. I call this 14_01A (scene 14, take 01 camera A). I do the same thing for B and create 14_01B. Now I have two merged clips that have all the audio synced up nicely.
From digging through the forums it appears that CC can no longer create a multicam directly from merged clips. You have to create new sequences of those merged clips and then multicam the sequences. For example, if I select the two merged clips in the project pane and right click, the option to “create multicam source sequence” is greyed out. So I have to create new sequences for my merged clips.
So I create a sequence that has my A cam merged clip and I do the same for my B cam merged clip and then select my two new sequences and right click and select “create multicam source sequence.” For the options on this, I choose to sync based on audio. For the audio sequence settings option I’m assuming that “Camera 1” means it will take audio only from the first source sequence, my A cam sequence in this case. I assume “All Audio” means that audio from both source sequences will factor in. Since the audio tracks are the same on both source sequences, Camera 1 should be fine. Now when I create this, I get a multicam clip and if I edit it to the timeline it has 2 channels of audio (more on this below).
If I alter the audio in the source sequence, the changes are apparent in the mutlicam so that’s working. However, when I do a small test sequence with two cuts, and flatten the multicam, the audio stays at 2 channels, it doesn’t flatten out to the 5-9 channels from the source sequence. Then if I export an XML, it doesn’t seem to be referencing all the audio channels properly. I don’t have ProTools to test with but I assume an AAF/OMF would also not give our audio post people the proper full 5-9 channels.
So I guess my questions are, how are you guys handling multicam audio in Premiere? Is there a way to get all of the audio channels on the mulitcam? Is there a way to create a multiclip that’s not a nested sequence? Is there a way to keep this workflow but then get all the audio channels back at the end somehow? What am I doing wrong here? Luckily I’m at the start of the project, but I want to get all this nailed down before I get a full feature’s worth of media linked and start editing only to find out that it won’t pass to audio post properly.
Here’s a separate issue that may or may not be related. When creating the new sequences for merged clips, if I select the merged clip, right click, and select “new sequence from clip” it creates a new sequence with audio set to stereo. I can go into sequence settings but the audio options are greyed out, I can’t change this. All of my tracks are still there in this sequence, but this setting will create a multiclip that edits into a timeline with 2 channels of audio. If I create my own sequences as mono sequences and drop the merged clips in them and then multicam those it creates a multicam with only 1 channel of audio. I tried creating my own multichannel sequence but it created a multiclip that edits into a timeline with one audio channel that automatically creates a new audio track and has a little button that will “open the output channel mapping for this track” if clicked. However when I click on it, it only sees one channel. See pic below:
If your read this far, thanks so much for your time.
Edited for typos. -
4 Replies
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I’ve never worked with merged clips as I’ve only read how problematic they can become down the line. I’ve also never used PluralEyes because I’ve always been happy with PPro’s built-in syncing tool. Multicam in PPro is always a nested sequence and I think it’s a far and away better solution than the clips that Avid and FCP 7 make. I know Adobe redid the audio tools in CC2015 so it might behove you to use that instead of CC2014.
What if you remove merged clips and PluralEyes from the mix and just select a days worth of A, B and Audio and use PPros built-in syncing tool to make the multicam?
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Interesting, I hadn’t thought of doing it that way. I tried it, and while it took longer to process the multiclip this way, it did give me a multiclip with all 5 channels like I wanted.
And then I can go back to my PE sequences and create separate merged clips so that I still have 3 files for each take, the A cam angle synced, the B cam angle synced and the multicam synced.
Thanks for the advice!
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[Luke Mullen] “Interesting, I hadn’t thought of doing it that way. I tried it, and while it took longer to process the multiclip this way, it did give me a multiclip with all 5 channels like I wanted.”
When creating the multiclip in Ppro make sure to use the “Camera 1” option in the audio portion of the multicam setup dialog box. Ppro works great with double system audio as long as this choice is selected, the other choices, “All Cameras” and “Switch Audio” will be more difficult to work with in this situation.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
Thanks for the advice!
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