[Herb Sevush]

[David Powell] ” the way it cuts angles makes more sense than how PP does it IMO.”

Can you describe. I’ve worked with many NLE’s and they all use a variation on one set of keystrokes to cut to a new angle and a modified set of those keystrokes to do a replace angle. Most also use some sort of mouse clicking to accomplish the same thing, but this is a waste of efficiency IMO. How does it differ in X?

[David Powell] ” The setup process for PP’s Multicam when using multiple start stop clips is a little weirder to me. But I just have to get used to it. I’m still not confident on how the nesting works and adding angles after the fact in PP. X’s implementation is so straight forward, you could figure it all that out fairly easily.”

The nesting in Ppro couldn’t be simpler – right click on a multicam clip in the browser (or selct it and hit OPt+Cmd O) and choose open in timeline. There’s the nest and it looks and acts like any other timeline you have. You want to add an angle – put a clip on an empty track. You want to replace an angle – put the new clip on the track of the angle you want to replace. Everything about the multicam timeline is the same as a standard timeline. In fact there is a way to take a normal timeline and turn it into a multicam source timeline.

With multiple start stop clips, the timeline puts each clip on a separate track, just like Legacy used to do. To consolidate, just drag all the camera 1 clips onto a single track, being careful not to move them out of sync, and do the same with all other clips, each track representing a different angle.

If you have Plural Eyes, you can just throw all the clips from each angle on the same track and then have plural eyes sync them for you, then take the sunc timeline and turn it into a multicam source – voila, automated mulitcam timeline from multiple start stop sources. It would be nice if this could be done from within Ppro, but unlike Legacy there is no “camera angle” metadata in Ppro to align the clips with. I’ve requested it, but I don’t think it’s on the horizon.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Andrew Kimery] ” I came in one day and all my edits from this one source were all off in the timeline. It was driving me nuts until the producer mentioned that he found a missing camera from early that day and added it to the existing multicam (thus shoving every down the multicam timeline to make room for it).”

Thus it was and forever shall be until they come up with an idiot proofing keyboard shortcut.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[James Villeneuve] “It doesn’t matter to me if the multicam function on FCPX isn’t perfectly suited to my needs. I think that any shortcomings it might have are offset by all the other awesome shit in that program (especially the new editing paradigm – metadata/organization – roles). So, no matter what you find out from this very knowledgable crowd, I don’t think you should base any final NLE decisions on just that one function.”

In my case I cut multicam 95% of the time, so it does influence my decisions strongly. From everything I understand Ppro and X are fairly equivalent in terms of multicam, each with slightly different strengths and weaknesses, so a choice between them comes down to “other awesome shit” and how you define that.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Oliver Peters] “But once you go back into the 720p sequence to work with the mcam, the sizing isn’t right”

I have this issue when I use 4K material in a multicam that is being cut into a 1080 timeline. My solution is to copy the 4K clip to a higher track then flatten it, and then you can resize normally while having the multicam link on the track below. Not optimal, but it works. In truth I always have a 1080 version of all my 4K material and put them both in the multicam source. I do all my cutting with the 1080 angle, then replace with the 4k source and flatten only when I need it. I realize not everyone has the time or inclination to transcode the duplicate angle, but either way it’s workable.

[Oliver Peters] “I haven’t done a lot of mcam in X, but two things that bother me are: 1) the fact that audio gets cut with every edit (you have to detach/connect if you want one clean track of audio),”

Which leads me to the question – how easy is it to switch audio sources independent of switching video, assuming you have different audio recorded to different channels on all your cameras? Legacy was very good at handling this, since the multicam mode could be A/V, video only or audio only – although this would not let you switch between different channels from the same camera – I would match back to the original source for that. Ppro has an audio follow video function, but at the moment you have to change video angles to change audio angles, which is a PITA, and like legacy it does not allow you to switch channels without matching back. How is this handled in X?

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Scott Witthaus] “Why don’t you buy it and try it for yourself?”

I’m not the kind of editor that bounces between different systems – one day on Legacy, the next on FCPX, the next on Avid. I’m amazed at people who have that ability. For me I need complete immersion in order to internalize the command structure and not let the tools get in the way of the editing. For this reason I’m very cautious and slow to change NLE’s, but when I do it’s all in – to the extant that within a few months I find it hard to go back to whatever i had been editing on previously, no matter how long I had done it before. For that reason I don’t “try out” anything – I research and learn as much as I can and then commit.

This thread is an opportunity for learning about the strengths of different tools and workflows, centered around multicam. It might help someone decide which tool might be best for them, it might teach them new techniques with the tools they are presently using.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[James Ewart] ” In PP do you have an “Angle Editor” as such, like in FCPX? Double click on Multicam sequence and it takes you to another timeline with all your synched up cameras for fine tuning sync?”

Yes. In Ppro the multicam sequence is a timeline that uses variations on nesting behavior to perform it’s magic in the final editing timeline. At any point you can open up the original multicam source timeline and make any adjustment to the clips that you can do in a regular timeline – nudge the clips, combine clips from different tracks onto a single track, add filters to audio or video, add media at any point in your edit – and all your changes to the multicam source timeline will flow thru to any edit’s you’ve already made using that source as well as any future edits.

It is also possible to take a normal timeline and turn it into a multicam source – this becomes valuable if you ever use Plural Eyes to automate the creation of a multicam timeline when your individual sources have lots of stops and goes. Without Plural Eyes you have to consolidate the tracks manually.

[James Ewart] “But I have yet to hear from anybody who has stuck with FCPX and learnt its “new way” (yes time consuming) who has not had a light bulb moment and thought “this makes a lot of sense” despite the odd idiosyncrasy. And then you just don’t wanna go back.”

That’s sort of self defining though isn’t it. I know editors who gave what they thought was a reasonable amount of time to learning X who never did like it and don’t use it. But by definition they didn’t stick with it.

I don’t want this thread to get bogged down in this sort of dialogue. In this thread I’m asking for someone to show me how X can help me improve my efficiency in cutting multicam. In return I will endeavor to explain how other systems might improve your multicam work. Let’s keep it simple and open to all possibilities.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bret Williams] “I own my multicam. You’re just renting yours.”

Last nite I saw a spot on the news where a financial analyst was making the case that in the modern world renting a house is smarter than buying one. For myself, I prefer owning. I’m not fond of the subscription model, but for me it’s a business decision, not a morality play.

[Bret Williams] “Beyond that, I assumed that everyone had rebuilt their multicam (albeit two years later in the case of Premiere) to the standards set by FCP X.”

You know what they say about assumptions.

[Bret Williams] “I used to assume that Premiere was always just as good as FCP legacy”

Having used Ppro since version 1, I can tell you that was not the case.

[Bret Williams] ” But when CS6 came around and 7 had been EOL’d, I found that, with the exception of format support, it was still lagging behind 7 in feature parity.”

Yes. But they have made huge strides since version 6. I would not have switched to PPro if version 6 was my only option.

[Bret Williams] “But with CC I think it seemed corrected and I hear good things about their multi-cam. I haven’t heard that it’s better than X, but the general feeling that I get through the grapevine is that it works just fine.”

Which is what this thread is designed to explore. I believe there are some real differences between the various implementations but I don’t think there’s any clear cut advantage for either one. I’m not sure if Avid’s multicam, which has always been excellent, has kept up with the other two, and I’d love to hear from some Avid editor’s about that comparison.

[Bret Williams] ” I do know the big complaint is that you can’t finalize an edit. IOW you can’t turn it into straight cuts to better facilitate XMLing it to other apps or media management.”

That is something you can do with Ppro or though it is a non-reversible photoshop type flattening that makes it less valuable than Legacy’s ability to go back and forth between multicam mode and straight cuts with a click of a mouse button. The problem with non -reversible flattening is say you want to export for a color grade. After the grade is finished there is no way to make any further multicam adjustments in case of last minute changes. Best procedure is to duplicate your timeline before flattening it to protect yourself from that sort of situation, but still not as flexible as the Legacy way.

[Bret Williams] ” I personally have had an issue with FCP X’s multicams’s inability to finalize in a music video.”

I have to say you lost me totally in your description here. You needed to have different versions of a music video – I get that. The different versions apparently shared some angles but also each needed some different angles as well. In order to use portions of one timeline to create a second version you chose to add those additional angles to the master multicam. I got that as well, and yes I can see how that might proliferate the number of angles in that multicam clip and make it a bit unwieldy. But I don’t understand the bit about cutting one version affecting another version. The various versions should be related to the same multicam but not to each other, I don’t see why after duplicating version 1 to make version 2, later changes in version 1 would make changes in version2. Can you clarify ?

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Daniel Frome] “Herb…you just don’t “get it.” If you’re still plunking multicam onto “tracks” … then you are a long beaked dinosaur.”

Daniel, while I appreciate the snark, I would really like this thread to be about learning. Teach my something about any NLE’s multicam system, or be gone.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Brett Sherman] “But to the original point I’d say Fade Handles are the tool designed for the job. Superior in precision to transition fades, but inferior in speed. Depends on which you care about more. But I don’t see how this particular issue would hardly enter the equation about whether you go with X or Premiere.”

In my shows there are, I’m guessing, about 200-300 audio edits in the dialogue track. When I’m getting close to completion I select all and place a 3 frame dissolve on each. This takes less time to do then to describe. As I go thru and polish the show I make adjustments on about 10-20% of those dissolves. During that adjustment period fade handles would indeed be faster — better doesn’t come in to it since, as you elsewhere stated, I can get the same results by A/B’ing the audio clips and handling them that way. I am willing to bet that the time I loose on the 20% I more than make up with the time I save on the 80%. You are correct that this is not a make or break feature in terms of NLE selection, but not to acknowledge this inefficiency when it comes to a workflow like mine would be silly.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] ” The trial version is free and there are endless resources on the subject to be had on the interwebs. Not something I need or care to do, thank you. Aside from that being entire OT as far as this thread is concerned, as I said.”

Robin I invite you to join in a specific thread I started about multicam and FCPX. In this thread, this subject will not be OT.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/76770

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