Two MultiCam questions

[Edward Troxel]

First of all, if they’re ALL running ALL the time, the “Holes” should be the same length on every one of them (i.e. there was a five minute pause, all cameras have a five minute pause). So, you should not have a problem cutting 5 minutes from one, 6 from another, and 10 from the third – they’ll all have 5 minutes cut.

I leave ripple editing turned off. Do what I said in the previous post to get everything synced. Now to remove the sections, simply put a selection area around the section to remove, press “Delete”, and then CTRL-Shift-F (post ripple edit mode – ripple everything). Now everything to the right will fill the “hole”. So there will be NO holes on the timeline once you have removed all of the unwanted sections.

Edward Troxel

[Ted Snow]

I know Ed has much more experience at this than I do…plus the fact that he uses the Excaliber program…but the way I have found that works best for me is to put each camera on a seperate track, get them sync’d up (I use the audio to sync the tracks with), if you have “dead” spaces in the ceremony that you want to cut then you have to do as Ed stated and cut them from all tracks at once (with either auto ripple or post ripple). Then I insert a blank video track at the very top and turn off auto ripple. I Then “cut” the sections of video I want to use from each individual video track and drag it to the top track. Then I pick the next scene from the best video track and repeat the process of cutting and moving to the top track. This way I can see exactly where each section came from (which camera track). If you want to do a cross fade transition instead of a straight cut you can drag the edge of either adjoining clip to create the cross fade. Once I get the video portion the way I want it I then work on the audio. You can even edit the audio in the same manner if you choose to but using the volume envelope on the audio tracks works fine.
The reason I started editing this way is because the very first mulit camera wedding I did I ended up having to re-edit the whole project because I was trying to use the opacity envelopes on each video track to fade in and out for the edits. For some reason this created a very “choppy” looking final video even though I made sure that the level of any video track that wasn’t being used in a particular scene was pulled down to zero. Once I changed my way of editing to my current way everything comes out great.

[Ted Snow]

I forgot to mention that once I get all the video edited the way I want it I mute the original video tracks.

[Edward Troxel]

[Ted Snow] “I Then “cut” the sections of video I want to use from each individual video track and drag it to the top track. Then I pick the next scene from the best video track and repeat the process of cutting and moving to the top track.”

That’s basically what Excalibur does – except it does all the hard work for you. You can always tell exactly which track is active via the tally system. Here’s an overview of how Excalibur 3 worked (but the principles are the same for Excalibur 4 – it just has more features!)

https://www.jetdv.com/vegas/ExcaliburOV.wmv

For an overview of multiple ways to edit Multi-cam video, look at Vol 1, #9 of my newsletters.

Edward Troxel

[Edward Troxel]

[Ted Snow] “I forgot to mention that once I get all the video edited the way I want it I mute the original video tracks.”

That’s really unnecessary unless you’ve lowered the opacity of some of the events on the Master track.

Edward Troxel

[Gary Kleiner]

[Ted Snow] “If you want to do a cross fade transition instead of a straight cut you can drag the edge of either adjoining clip to create the cross fade.”

…Or put the cursor at the junction of the two events and hit the / key on the numeric keypad which, in one stroke, creates a cross fade of the duration set in Preferences>Editing>Cut to Overlap.

Gary

[Margie Marfi]

Thanks Edward,

I had to go to work work yesterday so had to leave. Today I don’t so can work on this more. Some of the audio that I want is under the video that I don’t want so if I cut the section then the audio will be gone too. Don’t know if I should do a cut paste on all three videos and audios so they are all made up with more of what I want and all more equal in length .. and then run the sync for the multi cam?

Then, when do I do any special effects that I might want. ie Chroma Keyer ..etc. After I get done with this part (the camera switches) and it’s rendered out as a single piece ie one video and one audio? Or do I do special effects before all of this?

Thanks again,

Margie

[Edward Troxel]

Make a selection area around the part you wish to remove. Press “S” to split on both sides. Move the audio you wish to keep somewhere else on the timeline (outside of the selection area) for “safe keeping.” Manually delete everything else in that area. Now “Post Ripple” it closed.

Also, remember you can always bring back ANY audio at ANY time using the Trimmer. What audio you place under the video really doesn’t matter in terms of Multi-Cam editing. Bottom line – the “blank” areas have to be removed from the timeline to simplify the multi-cam process. Then bring any audio you want to suppliment that video.

Edward Troxel

[Margie Marfi]

Thank you Ted,

Probably I should’ve or should take a short piece and do it your way then do it with Excalibur to see how it works. Between Vegas and Excalibur there are a huge amount of tools. Just takes time to learn. This support group helps a HUGE amount.

Just wondered, for you, after you have the top tracks .. your master track, can’t you just delete the source tracks rather than muting them (not from the project but just from the timeline). Does that make a difference in lightening up the project when rendering? Or just not so much to look at? I repaired a multi frame drop out with a recapture that happened to have a good piece in it to replace the bad. When I was done, I deleted the “donor” from the timeline and rendered out the good intact one as an AVI to use in this project. That was per help from Edward!

Thank you again,
Margie

[Ted Snow]

Yes, you can delete all the source tracks once you’ve finished editing. I usually just mute them just in case I need to refference back to an edit somewhere. If you delete them, then save your work, your original layout of tracks will be gone. As Edward stated, Excaliber does in essence what I am doing but does obviously save some time by doing the work for you. I just don’t have Excaliber “yet”.