[Dan Riley]

Weird things do not happen on my system using multicam.
I’m in the middle of one right now. Been working on a 4
camera edit since a week ago Thursday. NOT A SINGLE CRASH.
This is 7, 60 min reels times 4 cameras over two days of shooting.
Hundreds of gigs of captured material. Then add in all the
b-roll and testimonials and you’ve got over 500 gigs of
DV level material for this edit.
Why is my system different than yours? I have no idea.
But as I said, I capture at DV level for my offline and multicam
then uprez to uncompressed and output to DigiBeta for the final show.
I’m using a G5 dual 2.5 gig with 4 MB ram.
I’m using a SATA RAID with 4, 400 gig drives,
connected via a Sonnet 4 + 4 card.
FCP 5.0.4. OS 10.5.4.

I wish I could help you have a more stable system
because I know how great that can be, and how lousy it is
when things are strange. But I’m at a loss at the moment.
I still think DVCPRO 50 is pushing it for 5 streams…
others think not. So there you go.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Well, you can do two streams of DVCPRO HD on a dual 1 gig G4
Powermac. I’ve done it. So as far as the new laptop, who the heck knows
until we all get um. But All the stuff you mention is doable with fast G4
and G5 Powermacs now, and the Intel stuff is faster not only because
of the chips but the pipeline in and out of them.

I wasn’t at NAB this year (had a shoot dang it) but from what I’ve read,
they were demoing 4 streams of HD multicam running on the
17 inch Macbook Pro. Edit layers, well we just don’t know until
people get their hands on them.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

5 Streams at that data rate is pretty intense.
I do 4 camera multicam edits all the time with FCP
but I use DV level for the offline. They are solid.
No crashes. Doing one right now with the software versions
you listed. I uprez to 10 bit uncompressed after the edit is approved.
No problems there as well.
AVID editors do the same with multicam.
You are pushing the tech using full rez video for multicam streams.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

What about Flip for Mac.
https://www.flip4mac.com/mxf.htm
They seem to have a plug in for Quicktime that does
something or other for MXF files.
Do you know if this works or not?

For my workflow, it won’t make any sense to go to this
new format unless it’s a file transfer situation that gets
me away from real time transfers like you are doing with
HDSDI. I can do that now. I don’t want to do that anymore.
I do 4 camera simultaneous timecode studio shoots
and want a more efficient way of preparing for the edit.
I could buy 4 Powermac G5s and slap AJA cards in them
and feed them all with the output of the camera CCU,
hit capture now and I’d have hard disk files of my
4 cameras. Simple actually, but costly unless I did
shows every week, which I don’t.

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

When in log/capture, in the capture window is a place to put the angle.
Use either 1,2,3,4 or A,B,C,D. etc.
Or you can put the number in the column in the browser
after you capture. If you have 20 clips for camera 1,
just enter the number in the first clip, then select all
and click the next one down and hold down the control button
and click on the angle and select 1 from the numbers available.
This will put 1 into all the clips. That menu you see when you
hold down control and click, it will add the next number you use
so it will be available for your next set of clips.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Never mind.
I googled and found the answers.

I also found out the XDCAM HD 350 camera can be fed timecode
like the other Beta/Digibeta cameras. This sounds like what I’ve been hoping for
to speed up my multicam productions. I didn’t read whether
it can be attached to a remote control or CCU for shading though.
If anyone knows that answer, chirp up.

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

I also use the Aurora Pipe Studio and it works great.
I use it with inputs from DigiBeta SDI, DVCPRO SDI,
BetaSP component. Makes nice pictures.
Runs well with FCP. Has all outputs running simultaneously
which is nice for monitoring.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

500 CUTS….how long is this uncompressed multicam project?
That is one sequence?
Non linear editors, even AVID, are not made to do 10 streams
of uncompressed editing with effects/transitions, graphics etc.
You use the multicam section of any non linear editor
to make your camera decisions at lower rez.
It’s a replacement for live switching. Then
use media manager to uprez to a single camera shot
in those timelines. Now add your effects and graphics
and titles etc. You will have no slowdowns.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Uncompressed multicam? Geez Louise.
We don’t even do that with the big AVID.
You should do your offline multicam in DV/DVCPRO
then uprez. You are pushing the technology,
not just FCP technology, but the whole read/write,
bandwidth thing too far.

Also, project sizes get bigger because of the number of
sequences, not the number of cuts. If you are making
lots of sequences and even nesting them, you are
asking for trouble. Keep your sequence number down
and the project size will be lower.

Still, you really should not be doing uncompressed
multicam. Multiclips are for rough cuts…making your
edit decisions. Then you uprez.

Good night Gracie
Dan

[Dan Riley]

OH, I see on down the forum page you guys already posted that
in general, it seems to be fine.

Thanks,
Dan