Editing a multi-camera sequence

Jonathan-Burnett wrote on 8/6/2022, 1:59 PM

I've only ever edited a single media source, slicing and dicing, moving parts as necessary. But I recently shot a 3-camera project that I want to be able to cut from one camera's view to the other as the scene dictates.

I have no idea what the process is for doing that beyond laying out all three camera tracks and aligning them on the clapper board clap.

What exactly is the process to cut back and forth between these tracks? I hope it's not by doing the same old slicing and dicing!

Thanks for all tips!
Jonathan

Comments

j-v wrote on 8/6/2022, 2:26 PM

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 8/6/2022, 2:53 PM

@Jonathan-Burnett There's a short summary and illustrative video on the Vegas page:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/ca/video-editing/how-to-multicam-editing/

If you're already synced up, you're most of the way there.

Jonathan-Burnett wrote on 8/6/2022, 10:27 PM

Outstanding Howard, thank you!

Jonathan-Burnett wrote on 8/7/2022, 8:18 PM

So, I got to this step where I CTRL-select each of the tracks and when I went to the Tools menu, the option to CREATE a multicamera track was greyed out.

I tried selecting the tracks different ways, but every attempt just led to the create option greyed out.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks,
Jonathan

j-v wrote on 8/8/2022, 5:36 AM

DId you select the trackheaders?

DMT3 wrote on 8/8/2022, 7:41 AM

@Jonathan-Burnett

You have to Enable Multicam Edit before you select the tracks.

jetdv wrote on 8/8/2022, 7:45 AM

I still use Excalibur for this... 😁

Jonathan-Burnett wrote on 8/8/2022, 8:30 AM

OK, I was doing all of this and still wasn't letting me click on create, but then j-v's question about trackheaders, had me change what I was clicking on, and it finally worked. No, I wasn't clicking on the track header (where the mute controls are) but I was CRTL-selecting the track by just clicking "in" the track, not "on the first frame of the track". And THAT made all the difference. In both cases the entire track was being selected but it made a difference to the enablement of the create multicamera track.

Many thanks for the great suggestions!

Jonathan

Peter-Riding wrote on 8/8/2022, 1:18 PM

Jonathan, since you are new to multicam you may not yet be aware of this gotya:

In Howard's link to multicam which lists what to do it ends with "And when we’re through, you’ll be ready to edit your own multicamera projects in VEGAS Pro"

The "ready to edit" bit is crucial because if you try to edit clips whilst in multicam you are likely to lose those edits and find you've wasted an awful lot of time which you must then repeat. So don't be tempted to do a few edits part way through - finish the multicam phase first.

Not all NLE's work like that. For example Davinci Resolve Studio 18.1 which I also use can be edited on the fly part way through your multicam work. There are pros and cons for each NLE e.g. compared to Vegas DRS is relatively messy to sync even using Pluraleyes in my view

Synchronising tracks can be relatively straightforward even without the Vegas built-in method and even if you don't want to use a clapper board or if its undesirable to make that huge racket at e.g. a wedding, or you simply forgot. You can find similar waveforms on the various audio tracks and when someone speaks with a word starting B or P their lips open immediately so you know for sure that is the point at which to sync.

I use Pluraleyes in Vegas (and in DRS) as its quick and accurate, but it is pricey now.

I think there is a Happy Otter script for Vegas syncing but I haven't tried it.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 8/9/2022, 3:12 AM

@Jonathan-Burnett Maybe the Vegas how-to doesn't make it clear but you 1st have to select the left-side headers of the video tracks to be able to create the combination multicam track. Then you can go into multicam mode to do the cuts while it plays. When done I expand the multicam back to its original tracks so I can put fx and grades on for each camera. Note that I only use the camera audio for alignment purposes. Then I mute it and get it out of the way to use external audio recorded with a flash recorder and better mics instead. And I only select video tracks and no audio to make the multicam track.

ps: just upload a short illustration of how I do it with synthetic narration: