Multi Camera with only the one camera.

Horsefly wrote on 6/25/2009, 2:06 PM

Hi,

Editing my second film, I bought a decent panasonic handheld instead of buying another duplicate cheapo I was using previously.
Have been shooting a scene set in some old police cells, 2 police interviewing a suspect, you get the jist......,
Now, having two cameras, with one handling the reverse shot would be pretty helpful, but with having just the one, we have to do the takes over 2 to 3 times to get continuity and enough shots for me to edit with.
Usually I do this by lining up 2 shots side by side and dropping the opacity on one track, so I can do a half decent reverse switch. as you can understand, this can get a bit tricky, and without midi code, surely there must be an easy option.
I understand that you can multi camera obviously, but how can I sync the 2 bits of footage using a dual display in my workflow ?

Thanks

Glenn

Comments

gpsmikey wrote on 6/25/2009, 4:10 PM

For what it's worth, there was an article a while back in Videomaker if I remember correctly where they were talking about the interview thing using a single camera. The suggestion that I liked was you set the camera up to record the interviewed person and asked your basic questions (which they never answer quite right). After you have the interview, you go back and shoot yourself with the camera asking the questions that gets the answer they gave (modify the original question so it fits). Now all the parts fit together. I thought it was a rather clever way to solve the problem (well, I'm the new kid here, but I liked it anyway)

mikey

xberk wrote on 6/25/2009, 4:23 PM

Is it that you want to use the sound from one take over the video from a different take? Vegas will not "sync" this up automatically, but you can do it by hand or if necessary have your actors "loop" some lines to match. I loop in dialogue all the time on documentaries and do a fair job of matching the live sound. .Vegas has all the tools. One good technique is to always get some "room noise" for each scene that can be laid under so that the live sound of the various takes sounds like one continuous live take. Or you can "steal" some room noise if there are some pauses in the dialogue. Editing live action scenes is one of the best ways to learn how to be a DIRECTOR and get COVERAGE and CUTAWAYS.

Horsefly wrote on 6/27/2009, 6:04 AM

Thanks for the suggestions ,
but it was the actual interface on Vegas, where you can see two boxes from each of the angles then I guess, just click the box you want to put into the master timeline ?

I cannot find the correct way of getting this to actual show itself in the workflow.

thanks again,

Glenn

farss wrote on 6/27/2009, 6:36 AM

Vegas and other NLEs can sort of do this via their multicam capabilites. You can roll your own too, just put each angle on it's own track and use track pan/crop to makes each track in its own window in the preview window. It kind of works but it's nothing like real multiroll where each roll has it's own monitor as well as a line monitor.

Of course you can always add the other angle as a take. Advantage here is you can stack several and switch between them to see which works best whilst keeping the timing of a good take of the whole scene. Editing that breaks the natural flow of dialog is one of my pet peeves.

Bob.

xberk wrote on 6/27/2009, 8:05 AM

I've not used this feature at all but I believe you can use the multiCamera feature with any video events. They need not have been shot as multicamera. The thing you might be missing is that you edit on ONE TRACK. This is not clear in the Vegas help. A "take" is really an "event" that is stacked on top of another "event" on the same timeline -- like a deck of cards. You pick the "active" take.

In multicamera editing mode, the Video Preview window switches into multicamera mode, with a multicamera tiled view showing the contents of all

Add your first "take" to a timeline. This is done normally. Add your second "take" to the same timeline right over the first one (need not be the exact same length but make sure you drop the new take at the head end of the previous take). To learn how to work with takes and add a TAKE read the Vegas help under TAKE. When you have a timeline with "takes" on it, with multicamera "enabled" they should show up in the preview window as you expected. Personally I would not work this way unless I really had multicamera footage -- but what ever works. Using TAKES has many other uses and is a great feature as you learn to work with it.

Horsefly wrote on 6/27/2009, 1:33 PM

Thanks for the replies,

xberk, that is bang on the money, and as you explained, it seem the most unnatural thing to do, placing one take on top of another, because your natural assumption is that the latter take will eclipse the first.
The coloured boxes is the thing I had in my head, where you can select whatever take you want into the master edit so to speak, up to now I have had to put the 2 takes side by side on different tracks then lower the opacity in one so I can crudely spot a good switch.
I will endeavour to try your suggestions.

Again thanks for all your help.

Glenn