tracks slipping in multitrack editing

[Stephen Mann]

“…one of the tracks on the multitrack moves as expected and the other one stays put and extends from that point as if I was dragging it from the edge of the track”
“… get part way through editing and suddenly one of the two tracks in the multitrack simply disappears.”

Do you mean “one of the takes”?

I don’t like working with takes preferring to expand the multicam track to individual tracks. I suspect that your first problem has to do with the takes being grouped.

Your second issue begs a question – is it repeatable?

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Stuart]

Yes, the second problem seems to be repeatable, but in a very random fashion. No idea what causes it. Perhaps a stray brush on the keyboard, though I have no clue what keystroke it could be.

As for the first… I create a multicam track in order to quickly edit with both streams in the preview window. I love being able to click from a to b and such in order to do the quick rough edits. How can you “expand the multicam track”? I thought that once you started editing the multicam track, it was locked and could not be turned into separate tracks again. Can you still do multicam editing afterwards? Sounds like I’m a newbie, but I’ve been using this program for five years… just not as deeply as many I guess as I’m more of an advanced hobbyiest, than a video pro. Thanks for the help 🙂

[Stuart]

Okay, I looked online and found out how to expand my original tracks again. Very cool. I was able to expand it and then fix the take that got corrupted and recreate the multicam track and continue. At least I can complete act two. I rendered act one separately so as not to lose my envelopes and effects when doing the expansion. Still like ot know what this is happening in V10, when I’ve never had a single error in multicam editing in the past. I used to do the old school editing with many tracks stacked up, but I love how simple this is… when it works 🙂

[Stephen Mann]

“Yes, the second problem seems to be repeatable, but in a very random fashion. No idea what causes it. Perhaps a stray brush on the keyboard, though I have no clue what keystroke it could be.”

Repeatable and random are contradictory. Can you make it happen whenever you want to demonstrate the problem? And, are you referring to takes, not tracks?

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Stuart]

Okay… random. It has happened repeatedly, but I can’t make it happen. if I could, I’d have a way better idea of what the heck is going on.

I guess I am talking about takes. I always referred to one video source as a track, but I guess Vegas calls them takes. So an actual row on the timeline is a track, but one individual source is a take.

I am doing multicam editing from two camera angles (takes) and one of the takes within the track (that contains two takes) slips when I move the multicam track along the timeline. Not sure I can describe it any better than that. Five years of using Vegas Pro and I have never seen this kind of behavior. I am wondering if it is connected with the new ability to be able to expand the multicam track into it’s original component takes. It’s not project specific. I have tried test by closing the program ,rebooting the system and starting a brand new project with different source files and the same thing happens. So THAT is very repeatable, but it gets repeated by doing the same editing procedure I have been using for years. I even removed the software, scrubbed my registries with ccleaner and re-installed… no improvement.

Really don’t want to go back to the dark ages with two track editing and no ability to see both tales simultaneously as I edit. Didn’t want to make the switch to Premiere, as I find it cumbersome to work in compared to Vegas, but I’m getting close to the tipping point.

[Stephen Mann]

You can have multiple takes on any track, but you can only see the one on top. Which is why I don’t like working with takes.

I do my rough-cuts using the multicam track, then I expand the events that need minor tweaks to finish the project. I do not go back to a multicam track after this.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Stuart]

Hmmm… That sounds like a good way of getting the job done. Until last night, I didn’t even know you could now expand the multicam tracks now. Have to get me a new paradigm. I agree that working with the expanded files has it’s charms that I missed, but the ease of the rough cutting was so strong. I guess I’ll have to give that a whirl and see if I can avoid the problems that cropped up since installing V10 last week.

Thanks

[Al Bergstein]

I’ve been working a lot with multitrack “takes” in Vegas lately, and unfortunately agree with Stephen, that keeping the takes grouped like you describe leads to problems,like you describe, or worse. I can repeatedly create a crash in Vegas 10.d when I end up getting part of a take show up in front of another (though quite how it did that I can’t for the life of me understand, I did not make it do that). When I try to slide the take back into ‘place’ to the right, let’s say, it crashes Vegas. When I ungroup the multicam project, into the way that Stephen describes, I can work without crashes. My guess is that Multicam is buggy. It’s so bad, and Stephen’s way is so labor intensive, that I have switched back to FCP to do my multicam projects this week, where I can work without crashes in the stacked way that you describe Stuart. I’ve decided that this is just a limitation of Vegas at this point. A place where it leaves off and a competing product picks up. I’d love someone to tell me the secret here. I hate having to move content and transcode, but even with transcoding, I save time on the multicam edits.

A wild card in my setup is that I’m working with different footage, AVCHD, Canon 7D H264 MOV files, Canon mxf files. I even tried transcoding some of the clips using Cineform, but it didn’t fix the problem. I’m lucky I have an alternative tool to switch to, but wish it weren’t necessary.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

So today I spent most of the day editing a multicam shoot. No problems. After reading up on Final Cut Pro’s multicam issues, I thought about Stephen’s ideas. While worth considering, I’m wondering this. In FCP, you want to collapse all the tracks into a multitrack for rendering, as it apparently does it much faster than when you expand them out.

But is the recommendation in Vegas to edit the multicam as collapsed, then expand for fine tuning, i.e. transitions, then collapse again to render. That’s how I handled it today, and while not scientific, it seemed to go much more smoothly. Vegas did not crash at all this time…whereas last week if I did this it crashed a lot. But I was moving thing around on a collapsed timeline then. That’s the one main difference.

thoughts?

Alf