It means that the material was shot with multiple cameras. You'll need to put that material in sync (what is sync?) on the timeline, and cut from one camera to another. That's what the script is for. I put a lot of information on it in the file info of MulticamWithTakes.js

Sturm,

I've been reading your posts the past month, and not entirely grasping what you were doing. However, since I often work with multiple cameras, I thought I'd better take a look.

Well, I took a look, and I have a reaction. In one word: briliiant!

In three words: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!!!

My first use will actually not be for multi-cam work, but instead to help synthesize highlights from each hour of sports video. What I've been doing up until now is creating a region for each highlight. Then, I use the BatchGUI script to render these regions to new AVI files. Finally, I then print these back to a highlight tape which I will re-capture at the end of the season to create the highlight music video.

With your script, I can finally eliminate the script render. Instead, by enabling the trim function (another "brilliant" for this one, given the grouping limitations), I can immediately get all my selected highlights on one track, and then simply use the print to tape from the timeline function.

Thanks!

Well tha treally makes me happy. Up to now, feedback on this work has been zero: int=0 (over 180 downloads at sundance though).
This script is my introduction to programming and the version on sundance already makes me weary of all the sloppy code.
There is a defiinite version coming up that I hope will really amaze you ( but because of the amount of time that is going into this, I'm considering to charge a few dollars for it). It's becoming more of a program on it's own now, then a script.

I just spent a few hours last night doing this the hard way, I think(www.limitedwave.com/video/rectify1000.wmv). I had several full length clips for a music video that I was bouncing back and forth between. Once they were all synced up I had to split a million times and create this goofy mosaic(in the timeline) but eventually it worked fine.

From what I've read, I could avoid all of the splitting etc by using the great multicam script. I can't wait to try this out. I had no idea Vegas could be manipulated in such a manner! Now I'm glad my actual j-o-b is in programming!

Oh no! The link on Sundance brings an error! Maybe I'm too late -(

I think the script was updated and renamed. Try here:

SelectionToMultitakeClips 1.3

Oh --- I just tried and got an error. It looks like Sundance has a broken link.

Arthur, if you read this, you might want to re-upload, or contact Sundance and see if they can fix this.

yeah...that's the same broken link.

Still broken :( Please fix

Currently, the only way to add takes to an event in Vegas is to drag something from the media pooll/explorer. If I understand well, this script will allow me to combine different events on the timeline into one event containing multiple takes ?

Sorry, I had no idea this thread was still alive. I'm working in my spare time on a quite ly interesting script, based on the one I posted to Sundance a while ago. Because It's really a lot of work (I have to improve my programming skill as well as I go along), I decided to ask a bit of money for it. That's one of the reasons I took it away from Sundance (other reasons: I got virtually no feedback from it, and the thing I posted wasn't up to the standards I now developped.
It'll take a few weeks before it's ready, and I have made a decent website, manual, ordering procedure etc. If you want to have a copy of the premature version, email me at a.bueno@zonnet.nl

Looks like a very useful script!

Also, just FYI, Sundance doesn't allow direct links to files, etc. You need to go to the main site and navigate to whatever you want. Bummer.

I can't seem to locate this script. Is it still available somewhere?

Thanks

The author pulled it. I think he wants to commercialize it. It is/was an amazingly good script, so I hope he makes it available again at some point.

> It is/was an amazingly good script,

I’ve never done a multi-camera shoot so I can’t appreciate what this might be doing for you. I would assume in the manual process, you create multiple tracks to show PIP’s and then cut the sections you want to use and move them to the top track with the up arrow key on the numeric keypad. I can see the need to run a script at the end to remove all the gaps but other than that you’re done.

Having never done this I’m sure I’m oversimplifying it. I’ve seen the Tsunami demo and to me, in the time it takes to drop all those markers and add marker names you could have just as easily split the clip and moved the section to the top track yourself. What am I missing? (I would think the hardest part is determine which camera angle to use which no script can help you with) ;-)

I’m just trying to understand what a script can do in the way of reducing keystrokes.

> so I hope he makes it available again at some point.

You write a lot of good scripts. Why wouldn’t you just write one yourself? (just curious)

~jr

I’ve seen the Tsunami demo and to me, in the time it takes to drop all those markers and add marker names you could have just as easily split the clip and moved the section to the top track yourself. What am I missing?

Well... actually it's Excalibur. Having done MANY multi-cam project (both before and after Excalibur) I can tell you for a FACT that it is MUCH faster to simply drop markers on the timeline than trying to cut each section and manually move it to the master track.

There are many times when I place a marker where I *think* I want to switch cameras only to find out, a few seconds later, that I should have switch to a different camera or should have waited a few seconds to switch. Using the markers, I either adjust the position of the marker or rename the marker. In the manual process, I then have to either undo the previous change and then move the correct piece to the master track or I add (or remove) another small piece to/from the master track. Much more time-consuming than simply adjusting a marker.

Moving to the marker method practically cut my time in HALF.

> actually it's Excalibur

Sorry Ed, I watched both demos and got them confused. ;-) I agree the “what if” capability is very powerful. Moving all those clips around without a Storyboard view is a nightmare. I know everyone says you don’t need a storyboard but after using an NLE with a storyboard and a timeline I can tell you that there are times you need a storyboard. So I can see that Excalibur helps a lot in this respect.

I guess I was trying to understand why SelectionToMultitakeClips (having not seen it) was so special since I can see what Excalibur does and can’t imagine what this script did differently. Just a curiosity as a script writer. ;-)

~jr

The key is the ability to interactively edit. You can just press a single key (in the multicam script, but I assume you do something similar in Ed's scripts), and cycle through each camera to find the best camera for that moment in the shoot. Interactivity is the essential key to any creative process.

With Excalibur, we recommend that you PIP the various camera tracks so they are all visible on the screen at the same time. I, personally, think that using Takes would slow down the process because you can only see on camera at a time. I've not yet seen the benefit to the takes method.

MultiCam in Xcal is the Dogs B@LL@CKS!

Having completed a number of multicam wedding disco 2 and 3 camera inputs with ON the beat SELECTING complex dissolves on the click of a mouse button after sprinkling markers through the 3 track piece is for me, Grazie, a total pleasure and cinche . . honest! Dead easy AND if I don't like it . . just do undo . . .Oh yes I can save the output if I like a piece of it and copy to new instance of Vegas . . yeah?

Grazie

I think I've gotten the process down to about as simple as it can get with this version of Vegas. I've watched the Excalibur demo video, but I don't think that's any quicker than this process.

I'm working with three cameras. I lay out the tracks, and align them. I align them using the audio track, as it is easy to find places where the waveforms match. If one camera is much more distant than another, there may be a one or two frame lag in the sound that you might want to adjust.

Then I copy the aligned video tracks to three new tracks, because I want to leave the originals intact (mute those). I also create an empty Master track, where the final cuts will be placed.

Then I use track motion with a yellow glow to do a multiscreen preview with outlines. I also overlay text so that each window is marked '1', '2' or '3'.

Once that is set up, I select all three tracks in the timeline, and I play the video (and at least one of the audio tracks). Every place I want to make a cut between cameras, I hit 's' to split all three tracks. These don't have to be exact and they don't all have to be used later. The reason to mark the cuts while the video is playing is that it helps to see the motion to make an effective cut, and many cuts are made in time to the soundtrack, at a certain syllable or musical beat.

Once the cuts are all split, you can copy the appropriate segments up to the master track. I use CTRL-drag to copy the segments. The originals are still there to be displayed in the multi-view window.

The only problem here is remembering which camera you chose at each cut. You can't set named markers while the video is playing. You can either figure it out later, or another way is to record your own voice in another track, calling out 'Two", "Four", "One" at each cut.

After the master track is constructed, you can go back and add dissolves or transitions, and adjust the exact positioning of the cuts by CTRL-ALT-dragging the event boundaries. You can convert a cut to a crossfade with the num-pad '/' key.

I hope that a future version of Vegas allows this to be automated by just pressing number keys to create the sequencing. In a live broadcast, someone is just punching buttons and working sliders, and that should be able to be done in post as well.