Search the forum on tips for shooting for a multicam edit; most important thing I've found is, once everyone starts shooting, don't stop unless you have to change tape, and then make sure one cam is locked down while a tape is being changed. Each scene break in a tape requires another sync point in post. If you are capturing audio separately, such as with wireless mics or from a house mixer feed, if you can feed it direct to one of the cams that is more time you'll save in post.

I try to quote based not on a fixed bid, but on an accurate, good faith, best guess estimate. I charge per camera per hour at the shoot, and then a lower rate per hour in the edit, and estimating 1 hour post production per finished minute is a good rule of thumb for me.

Let me emphasize that this is the way * I * try to do it. This way, if the estimate that I come up with is way high for the group I'm doing the work for, it's easy to come down or "throw in the second camera", or what have you. But, one of the hardest things for a small video shop to learn is to not undervalue their work and to charge for their time.

The very, very nice thing about Ultimate S is that it makes the multicam edits a flippin' breeze. You'll spend more time ingesting tape and marking sync points than you will on the cam switching. Although Vegas Pro 8 includes multicam natively now, I currently still prefer Ultimate S. Maybe I'll force myself to use the V8 version one of these days.

I don't use Ultimate S and I'm not a paid pro
But I edit 3 or 4 camera music shoots all the time.
I stack the 3 or 4 camera tracks and sync them
then I copy and paste to a track above them all, (looping from the end of a cut to the beginning to keep the cursor in sync when copying) overlapping edges for fades or not. You can always make sections longer or shorter, once copied, by pulling or pushing the edge
I just get a flow going and use my imagination and pick a track and copy to the top.
Every so often, I check to see what I've done and if I see something that doesn't look too good or think another track might work better, I'll switch out that section. I pan & zoom about 90% of it and I still keep a pretty good pace. Of course, I'm not working under scrutiny so I don't worry about the finished result as much as a pro would, never the less, I can do about 1 min. per hour of editing or better.
I should also point out, all my cameras are stationary, so I can use my imagination to get a good idea of what to expect without looking.
All within Vegas.
You will probably need Ultimate S to see what's on the mobile cameras
(Mobile cameras would really slow me down, as I'd need to check each one for each shot, which means I'd be moving compositing lines or the solo buttons a lot)

I can't quote prices, but I'm only showing a way of working fast when needed.

You start off being very artistic and slow and work your way into becoming fast, so don't expect the 1st job to give you a good indication of how long it will take. It will take a couple to a few of these type of jobs to get a good feel.

K

I shoot 2-camera "live to tape" editorial board interviews for a newspaper to use on their web site and for the area cable system.

Time for just the editing is near real time, in that you can switch in real playback time if you choose. I, however, find I sometimes prefer to scrub to the camera take. Fabulous to switch on first word of question and first word of answer Also great for quick reactions and fast back and forth vollys. So it may be 1.3 to 1.5 real time depending on how fast I am finding my camera switch points. All camera "takes" are moveble like any cuts.

I feed audio to both cameras, mostly for sync but also as audio backup. I also put inteviewer on left channel and reporters on right channel.

For the interviewee camera I use both tape and the DR60 HDD so I don't have to worry about running out of tape. If I do run out on the interviewers camera, I swap quickly between questions and keep running.

The big time consumption is ingest from the tape and HDD. But that's break time for me. I turn around 60 minute interviews into the full interview and 4 or 5 "cuts" of up to 10 minutes. in under 18 hours by 6 or 7 in the morning. I add lower thirds titles and render all twice (for Flash). Then upload them to the newspaper's servers, all in under 18 hours by 6 or 7 in the morning. During the day following (after sleep) I put titles and credits onto the full interview, render and burn to DVD and hand it off to the area cable system for broadcast several times over the following month. Same time I make 6 to 10 copies of the DVD for the newspaper and the interviewee. I also render the shorter clips to WMV and upload to YouTube.

I started multicam editing in Vegas 7 using Ultimate S and I have stayed with it. I, too, will force myself to learn Vegas 8 Pro multicam soon.

David S. Calef
www.EventVideoTeam.com
www.youtube.com/SentinelSourceDotCom