MultiCam Editing in Vegas 8 Pro

[Roger Shealy]

I often need to perform multicamera editing in Vegas 8, but I have one issue that I can't find my way around. I would like to color correct, crop, and pan each track before multi-cam editing. It seems that you must combine tracks into one track to multi-cam edit, and it erases any changes to that track before it combines the multi-channel track. I know I can manipulate a track and render it to a new track, but that is way too time consuming. Manipulating the multi-cam track segments (color correcting, pan, crop....) is also time consuming.

Is there a way to either adjust the individual tracks and keep these changes before multi-cam editing without re-rendering the tracks?

[Dale Guthormsen]

gOOD EVENING,

I would do all the color correction to individual tracks. then render the file in whatever format you desire with a new new name,

open up the new media and multicam edit.

Pretty easy really.


I have also used two cameras that were slightly different color wise (wedding video) corrected the first clip to match the other camera, then copied attributes and pasted to all the other clips (before I got smarter). this works but is slow in comparison.

maybe some others have better ideas.

[Paul Kellett]

Easy.
Do the multicam edit first, then disable multicamera editing so you back to the finished track.
Next do the pan/crop, here's how, let's say you had just 2 tracks originally, one of which needs to be cropped .
>Go onto the new multicam track
>find one of the clips that needs to be cropped
>crop it as needed
>right click on that clip>copy
>right click on the same clip again>select in project media (or something like that)
>this highlights the clip in the media bin
>go to that media bin clip>right click>select events in timeline,all the instances of that clip are now highlighted
>go onto one of the highlighted clip>right click>paste event attributes, all the clips should be cropped.
If you have more original clips on the now finished multicam track then do the same with those clips.

Next you can do the same with the colour correction.

Note. You must do the crop first, if you do the colour correction first, then pan and crop, when you crop the first clip and then copy paste etc etc you'l also paste another instance of the colour correction, so the clips would be cropped once and colour corrected twice, so crop first.

I use the above technique all the time.

Paul.

[Roger Shealy]

Paul,

I do a lot of keyframing in my crops and color correction. The technique you describe seems to be limited to a static crop/color correction (copy to all clips). What if I want to move the frame around during the track, or adjust the cc throughout the piece (say lighting changes....).

[Paul Kellett]

Ah yes, for instance if the lighting changed during a long clip, ie shooting speeches near a window, daylight outside, speeches go on for hour(s) and it goes dark outside so the interior lights take preference.
In that case, i'd cc the whole clip using keyframes, then render that clip and then bring the cc'd clip into the project.

Paul.

[Edward Troxel]

If you use one of the scripts for multicam (i.e. Excalibur or Ultimate S), this becomes more flexible. You can color correct individual clips on the timeline and even crop them and the Pan/crop and effects will follow to the Master Track.

In older versions of Vegas, the Pan/Crop settings would not be copied but in Vegas Pro 8, scripts can control Track Motion to create the PIP view so any Pan/Crop settings will be maintained to the Master track.

(disclaimer: I wrote Excalibur)

[Roger Shealy]

Edward,

I've got to meet you sometime! I haven't tried a script yet, but I'll have to take a look and see if I can understand what's going on.

I wish Vegas would let me just keep the tracks individual, highlight them and choose multicam, have all the tracks show in the preview, and not have to drag them into the timeline. Maybe your script does this very thing.

Thanks for responding.

[Edward Troxel]

There's a video on my website which shows how Excalibur's multi-cam works. You can look at VASST to see how Ultimate S works.

Going to NAB? Would be happy to meet you there!

[Ian Slessor]

Paul!

Thanks so much for the guidelines for altering edits after multi-cam.

You saved me a ton of time!

sincerely,


ian

[Paul Kellett]

No problem, you can also apply effects to clips in the project media which will then effect the clip(s) in the multicam edit..
For example, shooting speeches during the wedding, locked off camera, locked iris, starts out okay, then during the speeches light fades, you can brighten the single long clip in the media bin, gradually with keyframes, the effect is that the long clip which is now multicam edit multiclips, those clips brighten each, individually, bit by bit, Hope this makes sense.

Paul.