[Herb Sevush]

“Multicam is nicely implemented for picture, but until the audio side is fixed, it’s unusable for some projects, like reality TV shows.”

… and cooking shows, at least the way I work. Which means X is definitively out of the running for me. Thanks for the review Oliver, saved me a lot of testing time. Now the big wait is for Adobe’s next move.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Someone experiences an unwanted divorce and yes, grief is natural and accepted. Maintaining the shrine in the back bedroom and visiting it daily – once inevitability is fully established – is a sign one is having trouble moving on.”

On the other hand, even 5 years later, a couple of beers might provoke a line like this –

Woody Allen claimed he read that his ex-wife had been sexually assaulted outside her apartment and the newspapers reported that she “had been violated.” In response Allen said, “knowing my ex-wife, it probably wasn’t a moving violation.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[David Roth Weiss] “it’s too bad FCP didn’t get mentioned in the In Memorium section of the Oscars”

great line – and why not, everyone else was, including some guy from marketing. The memorium segment is getting as bloated as modern film credits. Jane Russel and Farley Granger didn’t get anything more than a mention so they could list some guy in marketing – what next, every dead auditor who ever worked on a film budget, every teamster who ever ate a doughnut on a set?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Alan Lacey] “you imply that multicam can do more than effectively operating as a ‘live’ switcher to recorded clips. What am I missing here?”

A well designed multicam feature should create a “clip” that behaves exactly like any other video clip with the addition of having multiple video angles to go with it’s multiple audio channels. Any program that limits you to working on a special timeline, or using markers instead of cut points, or anything else like that, is going to provide much gnashing of teeth.

Let me give you a typical scenario. I work on a 5 camera cooking show. My first assembly will typically be about 75 – 90 minutes long for a show who’s content is 23:40. Lets say I have a scene where one of the 2 chefs is talking about the different types of carrots you can buy and their different cooking properties as he starts dicing the carrots.

In my assembly I use the “show mix” for my audio: camera B channel 1 (B1).In my first pass WS on chefs talking (camera B), cut to CU carrots chopping (camera C) – simple use of multicam to switch angles. On my second pass I lose the WS to save time and move the sync under the shot of the carrot chopping. It’s now VO and I want to use that Chef’s iso mike to minimize the chopping sounds, which I have on channel o2 of camera C (C2) instead of the show mix from B1. The multicam feature had better make this possible or I’m going to be unhappy. Third pass I decide the chopping is going on for a little too long and I want to bring back a CU of the chef talking in the middle of the action, and I’m tight enough on camera D that you don’t notice the chef’s not really chopping in sync. To do that I have to match the video back to the VO audio but now use a different angle from that audio, which by the way is no longer on the main audio track.

Using shots out of order and out of sync intentionally and then needing to re-establish either audio or video sync, not only from the original angle but from any of the angles in the multiclip is an essential feature for anything beyond basic live switching.

Try this on something like Edius, Vegas or Media 100 and you won’t be very happy. Try it on Avid or FCP7 you’ll be all smiles. PPro will have you smiling as long as you’re using 4 cameras or less. As for FCPX, though I haven’t tried it, it seems like an excellent implementation of multicam except for the fact that apparently X itself is limited when it comes to dealing with using audio split out over many cameras, so the limitation comes from the entire program, not the multicam feature.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Geoff Addis] “Its multi cam editing is very good.”

It’s very good if your cutting a simple music piece, or anything where you merely want to be able to change camera angles, but it’s totally inefficient if your looking to cut with any degree of complexity. Wish it wasn’t so, I would absolutely give it a look if it’s multicam were more capable.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] ” this opinion only has weight for those who are coming to X from a very particular mindset – that of the professional video editor working in a high-volume, complex workflow professional practice who is accustomed to having access to specific tools that address common problems faced at the highest level of “sound for picture” practice.”

Splitting your audio over multiple sources is hardly the provenance of high end video. I’ve done it for years back when I was making corporate videos. You may not use that technique, but it’s very common, no matter the budget, and any NLE that can’t handle it is seriously lacking.

PPro version 1 was very clumsy dealing with this back in 2005 which is why I chose FCP over it 7 years ago. I was shocked that PPro couldn’t deal with this properly then, I’m more shocked that 7 years later it’s a problem for FCPX. This is very basic stuff, even if it means nothing to you.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Craig Seeman] “It does kinda make you wonder about FCP7’s iChat Theater”

I’ve used Ichat theatre a number of times. When it works, it’s excellent for collaborating with someone remotely. it won’t work with high bandwidth timelines and even on it’s best day it’s performance is spotty. I’ve also used Skype successfully for remote collaborative workflows. At the moment I don’t see the need for any remote sharing that doesn’t flow from an NLE timeline.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[David Lawrence] “It appears that each angle gets its own independent “track”. This makes sense given what you would be doing with the tool. Anyone who’s actually used it — please let me know if this is correct or not.”

I’ve looked at the longer demos, and the image your looking at it is, I believe, the angle tool construct, where you can revise the layout of the multi-clip.

When actually using the multi-clip in the timeline it’s all on one “track” or “rail” or whatever the f*** they are calling it, no matter which angle you choose.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[David Lawrence] “Look at the new multicam Angle Editor. Note the frame-of-reference. Why did they design it that way?”

Can you elaborate on this, I haven’t tried it out yet.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Walter –

Thank you for the, as always, enlightening explanation of 32 bit vs 64 bit.

Follow-up question, is the 4 GB limit per application, or is it 4 GB per core or per thread? Also, Would you care to speculate about why Legacy could playback more streams of the same data from the same raid on the same computer?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf