[Reg Wrench]

Yes, it does seem to behave strangely if you have an audio-only clip in the group. Because of Avid’s old bug of not being able to export an audio OMF if the audio was part of a group I always got into the habit of laying the mix into the timeline as a clip and not as part of a group before cutting anyway but if you want it to be part of the group, instead of exporting it with a slug there is a function called ‘Merge’ either in the File or Edit menu, I can’t remember – just find the sync of your main camera or linecut with your desk mix and mark an in point on each and ‘merge clips’ using in points (if they have the same timecode even better). That’ll give you a new clip with the pictures from one and your desk mix as new audio tracks attached to it (still maintaining original audio t/c and reel). That’d should work better in the group…

[Reg Wrench]

Have you tried merging the audio and video clips before grouping?

[Reg Wrench]

Hi Tom,
Sorry didn’t see your last post before I replied. Oh well with my work around and your work around together it still gets the job done, but if there’s any apple software writers with nothing to do today maybe they could have a fiddle!
FCP has other advantages over Avid’s Multicam so I’m happy to work on either except for the really quick turnaround jobs. But if this were fixed there’d be no reason not to use FCP all the time for any multicamera job.
Thanks for your help and time Tom,

Reg.

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Ohhh I got all excited then , that sounded like a solution! Unfortunately I just did a test and it doesn’t run the cameras in real time, only updating when stopped. Liking your train of thought though, there has to be a way!….

Cheers,
Reg

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Hi Tom,
Thanks for the reply – Yes that’s what I’m trying to do, a live cut on the first pass and then go through the cut with the open gang on to see what’s happening on the other cameras, using the keyboard to cut or switch them in. The trouble is without changing each edit’s selected angles in the viewer first you can’t see the other cameras. On Avid you just change the angle arrangment in the group and the sequence references that new arrangement for all edits but FCP references a different arrangment for each edit. It’s really hard to explain without actually having a go, and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do! It’s kind of a vital function for editing big multicam jobs as it gets embarrassing when the director wants to, say, check the wides on a song and he has to sit there while you rearrange the groups for a couple of hundred edits first! I’m just hoping somebody knows a trick or someone at Apple can implement a “change angles for all selected instances” feature.
Thanks for your thoughts, if you get time have a go and see if I’m missing something!
Cheers,
Reg

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Hi
Am I right in thinking that Aux tc in FCP affects the master clips ie it writes itself into the original QT files, therefore your original files won’t contain the Aux tc so it will disappear. If you copied the files from System 2 to system 1 (ie. copy your copies back) then the aux tc should appear. Hopefully.

Hope that helps…

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Hi,
Thanks guys, I knew I hadn’t explained it very well! I don’t actually want to see any more than 16 at a time, you’d have to have eyes of a fly to see all those at once! I need to edit the first 9 of the group and then go through the edit again with the next 9 etc. If you reaarange the group it doesn’t affect all the instances of the group already edited into the timeline, or at least I can’t find a way of making it do that without going to every edit and rearranging that instance of the group. Without doing that, playing the sequence with open gang on just pulls up the arrangment of that instance as it originally was.
I hope that makes more sense! It;s easier to show someone than to write it down!

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Hi,
Have you looked at Editshare, it’s relatively cheap and can work with Avid and FCP. It’s more like lan share than Unity and uses ethernet to distribute the media. I recently worked on it with four FCP suites and three digitising stations making two one hour music shows for CH4 in the UK.( You can have more seats than that without extra licence fees). We were running multicam with 6 – 7 cameras at DV quality in all the suites and had no problems at all. The project management is the trick to make it like unity, each suite has it’s work space and you have a central workspace to keep the main projects. If you treat FCP projects like avid bins and just move the project from the main workspace to your suite’s workspace to work on it and put it back when you’re done, then anyone else can grab that project (bin) from the main workspace when they want to work/take something from it. Like unity but using humans to do the management, and those humans are tired editors so you have to be careful, but what do you expect for 10 grand!
As for sharing media with Avid, I was told by the Editshare technician that avid could use the FCP QT movies as Quicktime reference files and work with them but I’d like to see it work!
Hope that helps…

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Yes that’s fine until you play through to the next edit in the timeline when the group in the viewer jumps back to the selection of cameras you had when you last looked at it. In Open Gang it’s pulling up the instance of the group in the timeline into the viewer so you need to arrow up or down for each cut individually.
What I’m doing is a pass on ,say, the cu cameras then going back to the beginning and doing a pass on the wides, so a way of selecting the wides in the viewer for all edits in the timeline is what I’m after. It does sound confusing when you write it down but if you have a go it’ll be more obvious what I’m trying to do.
Hope that’s clearer!
Reg.

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS

[Reg Wrench]

Hi Jerry,
Thanks for the reply, I’ve had another read of the manual but it kind of skims over this bit really, saying “if your multiclip has more angles than are currently displayed you can scroll up or down in the viewer using the multiclip scroll arrows that appear when you place the pointer in the Viewer”(II Ch16 p267) This is true but I need to do it for every instance of the group in the timeline so I can do another real time pass with the next selection of angles. It would be great if the scrolling would affect all selected edits in the timeline, but it doesn’t. Oh well, it gives me a chance to check the sequence for flash frame edits I suppose!
I can run 9 angles on my system which is great and maps nicely onto the number keypad for live switching.I have worked with drives that run 16 but that’s just too much to look at at once! Often it’s only a couple of passes I need to do but I have 30 cameras on the project I’m working on at the moment so a solution would be great if there is one.

Reg
2.7 Dual G5
FCP 5.1.2
OS 10.4.8
4Gb Ram Kingston
750Gb Graid SATA
500Gb Graid Firewire 800
Kona LS