Working with Multiple Cameras

[Harold Brown]

If you have 2 videos shot at the same time from different angles then the words should be perfect once you sync the 2 videos. You do that by picking a frame that is easy to aline. I just did one where someone had taken a flash picture and I alined the 2 videos by the single frame that had the flash. I dragged the second video track until the “flash” frame was under track one “flash” frame.
I have Excalibur 4.5 and that makes the job of switching between the 2 videos very easy. Excalibur can also be used to aline the video which is easier too. If you have have a lot of multi camera shots buy Excalibur. I did a 18 minute 2 camera video with 72 angle changes in less than 1 hour.

[Alan Roth]

If you have audio for each camera you can use that for aligning – sync at one point (a loud noise that you can see in the waveform on the audio line) and as Harold says everything before & after should remain in sync (if all minidv anyway). I have minimal experience w/ vegas, but selecting everything and making a new group should help to keep things in sync. You can use the new “sync” feature in vegas 6 if things go out of whack. Also you can copy and paste the takes you want to a new video line at the top (excalibur does that i think) or you can use opacity envelope or what i do – put the most used video at the highest track and then split and trim it where you want the lower (2nd camera) shots to show through.

i have no idea on color correction – would like to see responses!

best of luck…

[Michael Legel]

I do multi camera performance videos on a regular basis. I would highly recommend Excalibur for slicing and dicing the two camera tracks. After the tracks are synced it is really a lot easier to watch two at the same time, decide which is the better shot and add a marker for a cut.

I also have problems with color correction – different cameras operated by different people not having been white balanced properly or difficult lighting situations – high school auditoriums, gyms, or fields under the bright field lighting.

The HSL filter or the color correcting controls in Vegas will help fix these problems. Others in the forum can give specific instructions but remember to do the correcting before making the cuts on the original video tracks, this will save the effort of doing each cut seperately.

Good Luck

[Don Bloom]

https://www.wideopenwest.com/%7Ewvg/tutorial-menu.htm

Billy has some great tutorials on color correction on his site.

I agree Excalibur is the way to go for multicam work!

Don

[Juan karlo De guzman]

But the plugin thing is expensive!

[Edward Troxel]

Not considering the amount of time it saves. I can say that it has easily cut my editing time on multi-cam sections in half. So the question becomes… how much is your time worth? Most people say the plugin pays for itself in the first project. After that, it’s just gravy.

Edward Troxel

[Michael Legel]

At under $100 it is well worth the money. My projects ( high school marching band performances and practices) are for nonprofit so I do not get paid. The ability to turn out a quality multi cam project the same day it was taped and deliver to the kids/directors the next morning is well beyond the price.

Add in the photo montage capabilities and there is great value.