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What real use are in/out points, for sequences?
My first post (this, below) was moved to the basic forum, but reading here and there I don’t think this is really a newbie question (though *I* am). Pardon the cross post.
My question: why don’t in/out points in a sequence constrain what goes onto the timeline, like they do for clips?
I have two 15-minute clips from two cameras that rolled simultaneously during a choir sing. These actually contained multiple “takes”.
I followed instructions in “Classroom” and User’s Guide” and successfully made a multicamera sequence, synchronized by a handclap and edited to A or B roll appropriately. However, I only wanted the middle one-third or so, of these clips, for one particular take of a four-verse hymn (BTW I had only one good synch point, that handclap, at the beginning). So I set the multicam sequence’s In and Out points for the middle section I wanted to actually use.
But when I drag this sequence into a different bigger sequence on the timeline, the entire 15-minutes is there, not just the part I want (as marked by in/out). This behavior is different from dragging clips onto the timeline, where the only stuff that “ends up there” is the part between in and out.
Sure, I can instead REMOVE (with lift/extract) from the multicam sequence before and after my desired in/out points. But then I can’t easily go back and change my mind, like for instance use an entirely different “take” from the clips. I thought that was one main purpose of in/out points, namely that you can go back and fiddle with them in various ways, while still preserving the entire clip for easy viewing in the source monitor.
Seems I have to do “hard-to-redo-or-fiddle-with” removes, where I really want PP to make some use of my in/out marks in the multicam sequence. Or else I’m misunderstanding something fundamental. Why don’t in/out points work the same way for sequences as for clips, namely that they constrain what drags (and hence, renders in the project) to the timeline?
BTW I do understand that even the above removal still isn’t quite an actual physical deletion of media. But my point is that frames once removed from a multicam sequence aren’t easily returned, with switched edits and synchronization restored.
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5 Replies
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If I’m reading your post correctly, I think you missed something about multicam editing. The purpose of syncing the cameras is to allow you to easily switch cameras from the multicam view. You can always go back to that timeline view, and select a different camera shot without worring about ins and outs. You can also go back to the sequence after switch and change transition paramaters. Where I beleive you got into trouble is by having multiple takes after syncing cameras with handclap. If you did not leave all of the cameras rolling during the record times, each camera would need to be clapped for multiple takes. Maybe you did that, but I,m not sure.
Regards
Gene -
[Gene Colburn] “Name: Gene Colburn
Date: Jun 7, 2006 at 10:48:24 pm
Subject: Re: What real use are in/out points, for sequences?If I’m reading your post correctly, I think you missed something about multicam editing. The purpose of syncing the cameras is to allow you to easily switch cameras from the multicam view. You can always go back to that timeline view, and select a different camera shot without worring about ins and outs. You can also go back to the sequence after switch and change transition paramaters. Where I beleive you got into trouble is by having multiple takes after syncing cameras with handclap. If you did not leave all of the cameras rolling during the record times, each camera would need to be clapped for multiple takes. Maybe you did that, but I,m not sure.
Regards
Gene”Thanks for the reply, Gene, but my question still stands.
Regarding your last point, I never said I “got into trouble”. True, I did have multiple takes, with only one handclap, but I left all (both) cameras rolling the whole time, and had no problem.
Regarding your first point, I understand exactly the purpose of syncing, and how to switch cams in the multicam monitor. I did all this, and it worked just fine. And I do understand that I can go back and change the camera switching. That’s not the problem.
The fact that I have multiple takes from each of my two cameras is a bit of a red herring to this discussion. It’s NOT the problem. It happens to ILLUSTRATE the ISSUE more obviously, but the issue is there even if there is only one take.
Here’s my feeble try to restate the problem:
Regardless of what’s in the multicam sequence, we can agree that eventually one would want to somehow USE (i.e. not transfer into the timeline) such stuff as the handclap, right? But when I drag the multicam sequence (after syncing and switching), the ENTIRE sequence ends up on the timeline, including all the junk that precedes and follows my desired portion. That despite the fact that I only “recorded” (i.e. switched) the good stuff. And there’s no way I can affect this behavior, even with in/out points on the multicam sequence.
If I had a plain old clip with in/out points, and dragged it to the timeline, the only portion that is “there” on the timeline is the part between the in and out points. That’s precisely what makes in/out points so useful. See what I mean, about how this differs from what happens when I drag a multicam sequence? The clip-drag, but not the multicam-sequence-drag, “respects” in/out points.
So a workaround is to REMOVE chunks of the multicam sequence, so that the only portion remaining is what I will want when I drag it onto the timeline. HOWEVER that approach does not allow me to easily go back and change exactly where I did those removes.
I get the feeling that I may be naively applying a paradigm that’s not applicable, or something. But if I understand the BEHAVIOR right, then it seems to me that in/out points work entirely differently in these two cases, and there’s no way to do what I think I’m reasonably trying to do, i.e. mark a desired “use-this” portion of a multicam sequence.
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OK
Why not try to create a new sequence. Razor ins and outs on your existing multicam sequence, copy,… undo razors,… and paste to a new nested sequence. Work with that sequence doing this where ever needed to build a new timeline, using the elements you need. I am at home, and not in front of a multicam project, and haven’t tried to do this, but I somehow feel confident that it works.If not, I’m not sure what to tell you. I would rather offer no comment than to give you bum suggestion However another option is skip the multicam feature, and place your sync’d cameras on progressive tracks…2,3,4,5 razor, or double razor,trim, cut, dissolve, copy, move etc. as needed. This is how we used to use the timeline before the Multicam feature was released. I have one 4 camera show edited with multicam this year, and was extremely pleased with how it works. We do two to three multicam shows a year. As time goes on, I may run into a brick wall, just as you have.
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In/Outpoints do work on sequences. In fact, they’re functionally equivalent to in/outpoints on clips, because a sequence is basically a clip itself.
Case in point: Create Sequence A. Drop in something like a Universal Counting leader clip so that you have something obvious in terms of footage cues. Now drag Sequence A into your source window, and set an in & outpoint for it. If you then drag Sequence A from the source window into a new Sequence B, you’ll see that the clip representing sequence A is indeed trimmed as per your sequence points.
I think what’s tripping you up is that you’re probably marking your in/outpoints on the timeline. However, in/outpoints in the TIMELINE are not the same as in/outpoints in the SOURCE window. When you set in/outpoints on the timeline, they’re generally used for setting up reference points when doing 3/4 point insert/overlay operations; in the source window OTOH, they are used for trimming the start & end of actual media.
Does that help at all?
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[__Wil__] “In/Outpoints do work on sequences. In fact, they’re functionally equivalent to in/outpoints on clips, because a sequence is basically a clip itself.
Case in point: Create Sequence A. Drop in something like a Universal Counting leader clip so that you have something obvious in terms of footage cues. Now drag Sequence A into your source window, and set an in & outpoint for it. If you then drag Sequence A from the source window into a new Sequence B, you’ll see that the clip representing sequence A is indeed trimmed as per your sequence points.”
Well, I agree that’s true for regular sequences. BUT here’s what I’ve learned:
Multicam sequences behave differently from regular sequences. The diff is in this treatment of in/out points. As I said at the start, when an MC sequence is dragged into a sequence, the WHOLE thing goes there, irrespective of the in/out points of the MC seq.
When you nest an MC seq into another, it doesn’t look like regular seq’s when nested. You lose all visibility of interior clips, the whole timeline for that seq just looks like a blob. Furthermore, if you drag a two-sided transition to an edge of a nested MC seq, you don’t get the usual options as to whether the transition starts/ends at either edge or straddles the edge. Instead, the only choice is that the transition ends before an MC seq, or starts after an MC seq. In other words, the transition won’t “enter” the MC seq. So it seems that MC is special in other ways too.
Anyway the trick to “reusability”, that I’m looking for, for an MC seq, lies in realizing that an MC sequence inside another sequence on the timeline is an INSTANCE of its source (project) sequence, and therefore trimming on the timeline is limited to that instance. That means that I can trim an MC on the timeline to the exact locations that I wanted to put my in/out points, and I get the same result WITHOUT actually trimming anything from the source. Therefore, I can drag another INSTANCE of the MC somewhere else and trim to the location of a diferent take (for instance), without disrupting the first trim.
The only trouble with this workaround is that you’ve got to trim the (entire) MC sequence in its “blob” appearance on the timeline inside another sequence, without seeing its in/out points, let alone its internal camera switches. I did this trim by manually translating my in/out numbers(MC sequence-relative) to timeline numbers. Some pain.
PART of the reason why I didn’t see this approach at first was that I have until recently been hung up on a probably common newbie paradigm. Namely, that I thought I could make a bunch of clips pretty with proper in/out points, then just stack them together on the timline and I’m done. So a logical extension would be to do the same for an MC seq, i.e. treat it like a big clip and set its in/out points. Turns out this does work for sequences, but doesn’t for multicam.
Truth is, I see it now, duh, in addition to the worthy process of chopping raw clips with in/outs, there’s also a lot of editing work that belongs on the timeline, and so this is just an example of where it must be done this way.
Thanks, all, for your input and suggestions.
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