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So long, and thanks for all the fish
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[Alan Lacey] “you imply that multicam can do more than effectively operating as a ‘live’ switcher to recorded clips. What am I missing here?”
A well designed multicam feature should create a “clip” that behaves exactly like any other video clip with the addition of having multiple video angles to go with it’s multiple audio channels. Any program that limits you to working on a special timeline, or using markers instead of cut points, or anything else like that, is going to provide much gnashing of teeth.
Let me give you a typical scenario. I work on a 5 camera cooking show. My first assembly will typically be about 75 – 90 minutes long for a show who’s content is 23:40. Lets say I have a scene where one of the 2 chefs is talking about the different types of carrots you can buy and their different cooking properties as he starts dicing the carrots.
In my assembly I use the “show mix” for my audio: camera B channel 1 (B1).In my first pass WS on chefs talking (camera B), cut to CU carrots chopping (camera C) – simple use of multicam to switch angles. On my second pass I lose the WS to save time and move the sync under the shot of the carrot chopping. It’s now VO and I want to use that Chef’s iso mike to minimize the chopping sounds, which I have on channel o2 of camera C (C2) instead of the show mix from B1. The multicam feature had better make this possible or I’m going to be unhappy. Third pass I decide the chopping is going on for a little too long and I want to bring back a CU of the chef talking in the middle of the action, and I’m tight enough on camera D that you don’t notice the chef’s not really chopping in sync. To do that I have to match the video back to the VO audio but now use a different angle from that audio, which by the way is no longer on the main audio track.
Using shots out of order and out of sync intentionally and then needing to re-establish either audio or video sync, not only from the original angle but from any of the angles in the multiclip is an essential feature for anything beyond basic live switching.
Try this on something like Edius, Vegas or Media 100 and you won’t be very happy. Try it on Avid or FCP7 you’ll be all smiles. PPro will have you smiling as long as you’re using 4 cameras or less. As for FCPX, though I haven’t tried it, it seems like an excellent implementation of multicam except for the fact that apparently X itself is limited when it comes to dealing with using audio split out over many cameras, so the limitation comes from the entire program, not the multicam feature.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Many thanks for taking the time to explain this Herb, it’s much appreciated. As you may well guess my use of, and knowledge of, multicam in both FCP7 and Edius is limited to just the one pass. To be honest it never occurred to me that multipass was even possible. What a numpty!
Cheers Alan
FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP -
[Michael Sanders] “I know its all been said before – I’ve said it here and other places over and over again. “
Repeating ourselves from slightly different directions is what we do all the time, in every aspect of our lives. It’s part of the process of deepening roots. No need to point this out as if it was a bad thing.
There’s certainly not been a single topic I can think of that’s not revisited on a fairly regularly basis (how much should I charge, et al). That’s how it happens when two million people visit a forum every month, and especially in this case, when stakes are so high.
More important, there are literally tens of thousands of brand new people finding their way to this forum every month. I predict that the number is going to explode soon…if you know what I mean. 🙂 To all of these folks, the discussion is brand new, and it’s not reasonable to read all of the thousands of posts that go up in this forum every month. In fact, we’ve gone through phases where posts were going up every few seconds.
So I’m asking now, please, stop stop stop saying “we’ve talked about this already.” This is all brand new to a huge number of people all te time. They’re going to be blowing off as much steam as you did. Give ’em room, give ’em help, give ’em hope….
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine -
[Alan Lacey] “Avid bought the Liquid line, to kill it,”
Okay, I tried to not respond to this for a couple of days, but once again, I fail. 🙂
I was at Avid when Liquid came in, and became part of its product marketing team. I can assure you most strenuously that it was not bought to be killed. Quite the contrary. Avid Xpress Pro was killed two years BEFORE Liquid…which was only EOL’d as the software-only Media Composer was given free rein.
In fact, right here at Creative COW, you can see a post from our old friend Gary Bettan at Videoguys.com in 2006, promoting an interview I gave in support of the first new version of Liquid under the Avid banner. As I said at the time,
“Gary, you’ve been talking to me about Liquid for as long as I’ve known you, and some of the features you’ve been most excited about – thousands of real-time GPU-accelerated effects, background rendering, instant auto-save updated 30 times a second, 5.1 audio mixing, and DVD authoring directly from the editing timeline – are exactly the same ones that excite us at Avid.
Avid Liquid is unique: video, surround audio, DVD, and effects in one application. Not one application for each of those tasks – one application that does it all. Nobody else can say that.”
Videoguy Interview: Tim Wilson of Avid tells all about Avid Liquid 7
There was nothing else like it then, and nothing else like it now.
When Liquid was first featured at NAB, it was featured very prominently indeed as the only product in the company that supported uncompressed video — back when people thought that that was a good idea. 🙂
Avid — including me personally — spent considerable time and money building the Liquid dealer channel, including training existing Avid dealers on selling and supporting Liquid. I hosted a very-well attended webinar rolling out Avid Liquid, I traveled from Avid HQ in Massachusetts to Cali to lend my experience in title animation software (from my days at Boris FX) to help develop the next generation of Liquid CG….as well as to try to find ways to incorporate that technology into legacy Avid titling. I also traveled to meet with Liquid customers and user groups, and was only one of a large group of people travelling across this great land to ensure Liquid’s growth.
Now, of course Liquid was EOL’d in 2010, but its growth over that 5 year span at Avid is far different than “buying it to kill it,” especially when it outlived a much older legacy Avid product that might be considered to operate in the same market space. Xpress lost. Liquid won.
Despite my respect, and, yes, love, for Liquid, I have to agree that Avid renewing its focus on Media Composer was the right thing to do…especially in light of recent events.
All of which is to say that I completely agree with everything you said — except for the part I completely disagree with! 🙂
Whew! I feel much better now.
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New Features in EDIUS Version 6.5 Strengthen Grass Valley’s “Edit Anything” Reputation
San Francisco, Calif. February 24, 2012 — Due to its advanced codec, multiformat file support and unparalleled speed, the Grass Valley™ EDIUS® high-definition (HD), nonlinear video editing software is quickly becoming one of the dominant solutions among editors working in the digital news and professional video production industries. At NAB 2012 Grass Valley will demonstrate the latest version (EDIUS v.6.5), with a comprehensive 3D editing workflow and native support for raw footage captured with digital cinematography cameras from RED Digital.
“The Grass Valley EDIUS system continues to increase market share, due to its growing reputation as a fast, reliable, ‘edit anything’ editing solution,” said Charlie Dunn, Executive Vice President of Products for Grass Valley. “As the market has demanded new features to accommodate new file-based formats and even 3D production, we have kept pace and want to ensure our users that we are committed to the platform and will continue to add new improvements and the most critical features as they become available.”
Grass Valley is also making its renowned intermediate codec technology freely available to other applications. As well as the PC-based HQ/HQX codecs, a QuickTime version of Grass Valley’s HQ and 10-bit HQX codec (for Windows and Mac platforms), will be available for free download.
read the full press release here
Gary
COW members get 5% OFF with Coupon COW5OFF
https://www.videoguys.com 800 323-2325 | We are the video editing and production experts!
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Tim is 100% correct. I spent may hours with Tim, before after and during the time he was at Avid singing the praises of Liquid. It was WAY ahead of it’s time. Avid gave it a great shot, but they never really had their heart in it. When they decided to make Media Composer a stand alone NLE that didn’t require any special hardware, it marked the end for Liquid. That said, there is a lot of Liquid technology inside MC now, under the hood.
As for Edius, it also is ahead of it’s time. While Avid and Adobe now brag about native format editing, it’s been in Edius for years. Even more important, Edius handles formats like AVCHD & DSLR footage much better on a less powerful machine. Edius gets more performance out of your computer.
Videoguys is selling Edius 6 crossgrades for $399.
Grass Valley just announced Edius 6.5 and it will include broad 3rd party hardware and plug-in support.
Gary
COW members get 5% OFF with Coupon COW5OFF
https://www.videoguys.com 800 323-2325 | We are the video editing and production experts!
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[Gary Bettan] “Grass Valley just announced Edius 6.5 and it will include broad 3rd party hardware and plug-in support. “
According to some official posts at the GV forums their HQ and HQX codecs will indeed become cross platform, encode/decode on both and it does stereoscopic. That’s a big one for me. Very much looking forward to hearing more details about the next version as NAB comes closer.
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Tim, I didn’t realize this. I suppose I considered the writing was on the wall for Silver once Fast sold out to Pinnacle. I take back my sentence.
Cheers Alan
FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP
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