[Choice49]

[__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.

[Choice49]

[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.

[Choice49]

Just to clarify, I may have misused the term “trim”, near the end. What I mean to say is that one workaround I can think of is to REMOVE (not trim) frames, by lift or extract I suppose, before and after my desired in and out points. And the disadvantage of this method is the permanence of such removal (as compared with merely setting in/out points like you do for a clip).

Thanks for bearing with me, I was accidentally using the layman’s meaning for “trim”, i.e. “somehow cut away or get rid away”. But Premiere’s meaning for “trim” seems to be more like “hide”.

BTW I do understand that even the above removal still isn’t quite an actual physical deletion of media. My point is that frames once removed from a multicam sequence aren’t easily returned, with switched edits and synchronization restored.

All statements of fact are my humble impression based on just starting out. Please correct any errors of course. 🙂