Yes, multi-cam in Vegas is great. The takes option is really good.

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Vegas has been able to do multi-cam editing via scripts since June of 2003. It was added as a built-in feature in Vegas Pro 8. So you can either use the built-in method or look at the scripting options such as Excalibur and Ultimate S.

Vegas works great with Multicamera feeds, doing a project as we speak from 3 different camcorders ........Vegas makes it a breeze ...

I personally love it. I make a rough-cut pass in real time, then go through and loop each cut while tweaking on the fly, and a few hours later I'm ready to render a test screening.

I always copy my native video tracks to new ones before creating the multicam track. This keeps them handy If I need something later.

Pls note though, all the clips must be the EXACT same format for this to work. Found this out the hard way after hours of trblshooting and RTFM. Had two different cams that both put out .mov format and it wouldn't work for some reason. Finally, gave up and rerendered both tracks then it worked OK. (:

in Vegas 8c I just made a multicamera project with vary differing media types: HDV, DV, image sequence & generated media.

You select your tracks first, then make a multicamera track, then enable multitrack editing. Crash/freeze free.

Pls note though, all the clips must be the EXACT same format for this to work. It sounds like you had some sort of problem, so I don't doubt that you found some limitation. However, the statement might be a little misleading in that you can most definitely mix formats when doing a multi-cam shoot. I do it all the time and have on many occasions intermixed DV, HDV, and AVCHD all in the same project, with output cropped and rendered to 4:3 SD MPEG-2 for DVD.

I don't have the same breadth of experience with other editing programs that other folks who used to be on this forum had (and have) but it is my impression that multi-camera editing is one of the biggest strengths of Vegas and its ability to intermix just about anything and to sync and then cut between cameras -- either with the scripts that Ed mentions (I use Excalibur), or with the native features in 8.x and 9.x -- is simply fantastic.

I'm not always a fanboy of Vegas, but when it comes to multi-cam, I'm down for it.

" I do it all the time and have on many occasions intermixed DV, HDV, and AVCHD all in the same project, with output cropped and rendered to 4:3 SD MPEG-2 for DVD. "John,

This question is somewhat off-topic, but how do you set your Project Properties for this? Conventional wisdom is to match your source media, but if the source media has mulitple formats, what's the best practice? Output format?

...Jerry

Set it to the predominant format (what you have the most of), and failing that, set it to the highest resolution format you're using. No point in resampling everything to 720 x 480 for output format when all your content is HD acquired.

Yes, I always set it to the highest resolution of the formats I am using. Two reasons for this: First, the playback for high res is faster if the project properties match. Since playback of lower-res is always faster, you need the playback speed optimization to match the format that plays back the slowest.

Second, any generated media (titles, etc.) will be created at the project resolution. In general, generating these at higher resolution and then down-res'ng during the render (remember to use "Best" quality when doing this!) seems to produce better output.

I'll have to continue to try and crack this multicam nut. It's probobly not Vegas but the format my cams are using or I'm not getting a setting right in Vegas, operator head space or all of the above. I'm working w/ .mov and .avi files. Anyway, good to know that the multicam works with multi formats.
Thanks! Byron