MultiCam on an iMac

[Steven Davis]

Ok, so last year I bought a new iMac 27 inch computer. For the past 8 years, I've done all my video editing with Vegas, but I wouldn't mind doing some on the mac, however, multicamera editing is a must for me. The price of FCP has always put me off, so where is the development, I heard FCP is going out. If I sound ignorant, I am, other than my iPhone and iPad, I only use my iMac for Photoshop/Lightroom. Thanks in advance.

[William Hohauser]

Try the demo of Final Cut Pro X on the Apple web site. It has one of the best Multi-cam implementations on the market. If you like it, it's $300, a very reasonable price. This program is not "going out".

[Steven Davis]

Hey William, I think I checked it out when it first came out and didn't have the multicam thing down, thanks that's good to know now. I may give it another whirl.

[Chris Hurd]

Run, don't walk, to our article by Bill Davis about MultiCam on FCP X:

Serious Multicam at DV Info Net

(Thread titled edited to avoid ambiguity, sorry Steven)

I'm about to drop some coin on a 27" iMac myself... too bad the orders are 3-4 weeks out on shipping *sigh*

[Chip Gallo]

[I just switched from Vegas Pro to FCPX. This is a post I made elsewhere today summarizing my experience on a 3-camera ice skating event at a local rink in Frederick, Md.]

A quick wrap up of my first multi-cam edit with FCPX -- I made a multicam clip with the output of 3 cameras; an HV40, a HF-G10 and (I think) an XHA1. Angle editor displayed on a 2nd monitor was used to select shots. Two of three operators stopped and started their cameras several times but I was able to re-sync in the multicam clip and have it show up in the resulting projects that used that content. For some reason the XHA1 camera did not match so I eventually purchased the HyColor plug-in and worked on color after the edit was done.

Audio was sourced from a wireless mike into a Marantz digital audio recorder and an H4N for audience. Each skater provided a CD of their music. I attempted an automatic sync of these elements in the multicam clip with the cameras but eventually had to sync by hand (well, eye) and ear. I think the audio levels on the cameras were not strong enough to support auto sync. There may be a way to do this in a compound clip with fewer elements which can be a future experiment.

The complete event ran 2 hours 20 minutes and I spread it across 2 DVDs with a project for Disc 1 another for Disk 2. I made compound clips of these and did a 3rd project for the Blu-ray version.

Now that I have learned where things go in the event and project model, I feel that I will save time on the next edit versus Vegas Pro editing. The quality of the video is good for my purposes and the final audio seems cleaner than earlier efforts on the Windows system. Nothing can really fix something like a wireless mike coming loose on the talent and she eventually got it clipped back on.

A footnote to the above is that I shot two of our club's synchro teams competing in Lake Placid last week, using the new refurb HF-G10. Videos are on my Vimeo site. These were shot hand held and sweetened with CD track music.

Here is an excerpt from the December multicam event and you can browse to http://vimeo.com/chipgallo for the other stuff.

Sparklers OJ Silver Mirror Mirror on Vimeo

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Steven Davis

Hey William, I think I checked it out when it first came out and didn't have the multicam thing down, thanks that's good to know now. I may give it another whirl.

As said, RUN to FCPX for multicam.

I've personally edited an 8 camera shoot with 4 additional audio sources with no problem on a MacBookPro.

I've also edited 4 camera multicam from an external USB2 drive (5400rpm!) using FCPX and proxy media with zero problems, smooth as a baby's bum.

Depending on how your audio is configured there are some little gotchas and tricks to getting it right, but once you've bumped in to the gotchas feel free to come back and ask!

[Steven Davis]

Well, I was going to download the trial, but it appears their weblink is messed up, it doesn't have a download button. I sent apple a tech request.

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

As said, RUN to FCPX for multicam.

I've personally edited an 8 camera shoot with 4 additional audio sources with no problem on a MacBookPro.

I've also edited 4 camera multicam from an external USB2 drive (5400rpm!) using FCPX and proxy media with zero problems, smooth as a baby's bum.

Depending on how your audio is configured there are some little gotchas and tricks to getting it right, but once you've bumped in to the gotchas feel free to come back and ask!

Hey Dave,

One of the benefits of Vegas/with Excalibur is that I can 'hit play' and switch cameras by hitting buttons, I downloaded the demo, but I'm getting that FCPX doesn't have that capability, it's more of a drag overlay type of editing?

[William Hohauser]

No, it's a simple matter of hitting the number keys. You must place the multi-cam clip in a timeline to do this.