Dude... I make music videos with multiple camera shots too and I'm about to make your life easy as hell. Study the following webpage:

http://www.martyhedler.com/homepage/Multicam.html

As usual, this technique was hard for me to grasp at first... but after I set aside one evening to follow it step by step, a whole new video editing world opened up for me. This tutorial will show you how to:

1. Open all 7 camera shots in the preview window at once.
2. Mark and record your cut points on the fly.
3. Cut your video into sections extremely quick using shortcut keys.
4. Splice the final video together on one track so fast your head will spin.
5. AND, the video will be set up in such a way that at anytime... you can switch out different camera shots so fast without having to re-sync anything.

With this method, if I really needed to, I could literally edit a 3 1/2 minute music video with multiple camera shots in less than 30 minutes. I do spend more time making my videos, but that's because I can get so picky sometimes. I just wanted you to know what is possible with this method.

Good luck!

When you say open all 7 camera shots in the preview window, are you just adjusting the window size for each track so you see all 7 in the preview window? What are the specs of your computer (processor, memory, hd)?

Thanks,
Ron

Yes. By using the Track Motion feature, I resize and reposition each video track so that they all fit in the preview window. I must admit that the most I've ever worked with are 4 at a time and to put 7 in there at once would really be crammed, but it is possible. You'd just have really tiny windows.

My system is:

Windows XP Home
Pentium 4 - 1.7GHZ
256 SD RAM
40 GIG HD
64 MB Graphics Card

Very clever approach. I would not have thought of using a mic and making the call while watching. Thanks for sharing.

Dave T

Awesome approach.

I'll try it and let you know how it goes.

Thanks!

<< Very clever approach. I would not have thought of using a mic and making the call while watching. >>

Yeah, using the mic really speeds up the process. I experimented with using the mic and it did work well... very clever, but I don't use the mic anymore because I need more time deciding which camera shot goes where. I do everything else in the tutorial EXCEPT for using the mic now.

What I do now is this: I watch the video and when it comes to a point where I want to use a scene, I press the pause button and hit "M" to set my marker. Instead of speaking which camera shot to use, I just type it in.

Takes longer, but considering all the time I save by using this method, it is still the best way to go for me.

I agree with Vince and fitting the 7 cameras views would be tricky. This is where an external monitor (TV) would be great. I havn't done it yet, but will soon.

I didn't use a microphone either. I started too, but it was impossible to keep up with seven cameras.

I ended up just inserting markers at about every 4th or 8th beat in the music, and at some other key points. Then I just went back to each marker and copied the most appropriate camera video into the new empty master track. Roughed out the whole five minute song in about 3 hours.

FYI: Seven video tracks slows things way down on my 1.4gHz Athlon, but it's do-able. It brings my preview frame rate down to about 5fps even in draft mode.

Thanks a lot for the help! It made cutting the piece a very good experience.

<< I ended up just inserting markers at about every 4th or 8th beat in the music, and at some other key points. >>

That's similar to what I do as well. I try to insert a marker on a drumbeat around every 6 seconds (give or take a few seconds). That makes for a really nice, fresh MTV looking video.

3 hours editing your video this way is really fast and I'm sure it produced great results. Trying to do it any other way, I believe... would take up much more of your time and the results would not be as good.

Glad I could help.

> 3 hours editing your video this way is really fast
> and I'm sure it produced great results.

Check 'em out here.

Each took about 3 hours of actual editing (not including the time it took to get the DV into the computer and synced up in VV3.)

Tim-

My, my, my... you caught on quickly. Great videos dude! I enjoyed watching both of them. Those are some heavyweight cats playing the instruments. I also checked out some of your webpage designs. VERY GOOD! You are definitely a PRO at whatever you put your mind to.

Keep up the great work!!!

>> 3 hours editing your video this way is really fast
>> and I'm sure it produced great results.

>Check 'em out here.

I'd love to check them out.
But unfortunately my WMP crashes when I try to view them.
This happens sometimes when viewing online wmv (and now also wmx) formats, but not always.
If someone can help me fix this on my PC I would be very grateful. Could it be some settings (registry?)?
I'm running Win98SE (Norwegian) on an Athlon 1.33/512MB DDR RAM and an ATI Radeon AIW, and I'm online via ADSL. But I had the same problem before I got that ADSL line.

BTW, I tried to download the videos, because I have no problems viewing wmv(wmx files from my own HDDs, but I only got a small 1KB file.

I did a bit more testing and found that those wmx files were actually some sort of HTML file (ASX?) with a link to a wmv file on an mms:// (whatever that is.. MultiMediaServer?).
When I enter that URL into IEs address field everything works fine and I can view the video.
I would still love to get my system fixed though :)

BTW, very nice videos :-)

Hey, VinceG, I tried to view your web page at http://www.martyhedler.com/homepage/Multicam.html (Using cut and paste for the address) but I got a "Cannot Find Server" message last night and today. Is there another web address to use?

There is another link that jimcho posted, but it doesn't work either (creative cow or something). Try again later....??