Multi-Cam Editing (3 Cams)...

[r]Evolution wrote on 3/1/2008, 4:45 PM
I'm currently capturing 12hrs from a 3Cam shoot from a performance at the House of Blues.
Cam 1 = 5hrs
Cam2 = 4hrs
Cam3 = 3hrs

When I was asked about the project I was thinking 'No Problem... I can just sync the Cams and edit them same as a Live Switch'.

Now that I've received the footage and I have captured the MainCam1 & started capturing StgRT CAM2, I am noticing that the Timecodes are NOT Synced. -Apparently the Cameras were not linked together in any way. (I'm used to linking via BNC's & using Free Run with 1 Camera setup as Master to Generate the TC) When I asked about the Time/Date of the Cameras I was told that they may not be synced either. Also, it looks like the Cameras were not allowed to run Non-Stop. Scene Detect is breaking them up into Clips.

Q's:
Do I need to Manually Sync all clips then Multi-Cam?
Am I totally screwed from using Sync via Multi-Cam or Script?

While I capture... I'm off to try and figure this out on paper.

All thoughts and Ideas are appreciated.

Many Thanks in advance.

Comments

TGS wrote on 3/1/2008, 5:08 PM
It's too bad they stopped and started the cameras. That's going to make it time consuming. I have no work around for this, maybe somebody else can help.
Syncing 3 non stopped cameras is easy. Even if they drift from each other.
Next time, supply the tape and tell them not to stop no matter what. Of course tape changes require a stop, but a few stops isn't that bad. Numerous ones...... OMG!!!

All I can suggest, is if you know the song, you can find the general area of each camera. Then you can zoom in on the audio in the timeline and you may instantly recognize the same peaks and valleys, which will make lining up easy. But sometimes Camera audio is so compressed, it's hard to see. Especially from different areas of the building, the peaks and valleys can be a little different. Try different zoom ratios, when looking at the audio in the timeline, it sometimes makes a difference.

Good luck. I don't think there's an instantaneous way of doing it.
UlfLaursen wrote on 3/2/2008, 9:21 AM
I just did a 2 cam edit with 2 tapes on each cams at a concert, and I forgot that I by accident stopped the camera I operated in the very beginning for a few sec. and it took a while to realise that. It can be tough to sync if there has been stops.
I am no expert on this, but maybe you could cut it into sections, and make more multicam edits?
I had to sync the two cams up with 'real' audio from a mixdown of the feed from the mixer to a harddiskrecorder too, and I found it very easy to do.
I first put cam 1 on the timeline, then cam 2. I found a spot on the sound for cam 1 (while cam 2 was muted) that was clear to hear and to see in the waveform and made a marker there.
Then I found the same spot in Cam 2, while cam 1 was muted, and I then moved cam 2 in place, played back both tracks and finetuned the placement.
Finaly I did the same with the mixdown audio.
I selected the all (ctrl. + a) and the deselected the mixdow track (to keep it out of the mulcam track) and created my multicam track via tools/milticam/create... (don't recall the shortcut).
After that selecte multicam mode and voila...

There might be better / different ways, but at least this one worked for me :-)

/Ulf
Rob-Candlelght Prductions wrote on 3/2/2008, 9:10 PM
I've done *lots* of multicam using Vegas for the past 5 years. Most of my shoots are between 3 and 6 cameras.

- Vegas built-in Multicam has some neat capabilities.

- The "Excaliber" plug-in while not being as integrated (click on preview), gives far better control IMO, and doesn't mess up your source tracks.. *well* worth the $$$ for it, and the other scripts it provides... (SONY Hint: you guys should pay attention to Excaliber's implementation and real-world workflows when building your next version of Multicam)

- Synch-to-audio.. Yup.. that's the way to go. Even if there are multiple stops, it's still the same process.. just have to do it a few more times. Is it a pain in the butt? Yup... just part of the job.

- Sony supposedly did something neat in their implementation.. the ability to get the tracks in "approximately" the right locations, if the *clocks* (not relative timecode) on the cameras were set the same... I didn't realize the time gets recorded onto the tape?! You might want to check that out.

Well, that's my 4 cents... hope the project works out for ya! Of course, once it's all lined up it sould be fairly straight-forward.

Oh -- one other thing. If you find yourself synching with a CD mixed by someone else (e.g. from a multi-track board recording), and it seems to be "slipping" a bit (this happened to me).... don't waste your time cutting the CD audio periodically and trying to realign. Just "stretch" the audio track the few milliseconds... works great!
Rob-Candlelght Prductions wrote on 3/2/2008, 9:12 PM
Related question back at ya...

Is there a wireless way to synch the timecodes on multiple cameras, say SONY PD170's and Canon GL2's (I've never paid attention to real-time synching, but I could see the benefit!)?
baysidebas wrote on 3/3/2008, 7:57 AM
I developed a trick to aid in synching audio when the peaks are compressed and not really helpful. I pan the audio of the two events ,one left, one right. Then I listen carefully for the resultant echo when the two events are close but not exactly synched. Then it's an easy matter to slip one of the events forward or back to the point where there is no [or minimum when using quantize to frames] echo. The slipping may be done while in playback, so you can actually hear the two audio tracks merge. Of course perfect alignment is most apparent as the audio merges and appears to emanate from the center.
Former user wrote on 3/3/2008, 8:04 AM
Building on Robs idea. Use the Timedate stamp and figure any offset. Then when the camera stops, you just need to resync using the timedate offset.

Dave T2