Brand new to Vegas.... easy to multicam?

[Bruce Pelley]

I just downloaded a trial exclusively to see what it could do in regards to multicamera editing and see even if a newbie could handle it.

I want to be able to toggle live between video clips being played (which were placed on different tracks) and take the each cams video as selected and output the results to a combined multicam file.

Is there some resource (on the web preferably) that will thoroughly explain the whole entire series of steps that needs to occur form start to finish once the clips are placed on the timeline? A video would be great (if it was large enough on the monitor to easily follow it) however... text would work well too!!

You can safely assume the clips in question were already synced precisely.

I do appreciate any helpful information,suggestions and advice available to get me sucessfully jump started.

Thanks so much.

Bruce

[Jim Snow]

This will give you a good overview.

Adrian's Journal: Sony Vegas Pro 8 Tutorial - Multicamera Editing

[Seth Bloombaum]

That overview tutorial looks pretty good.

One addition - usually, you'll want to duplicate all your tracks before selecting the tracks and creating the multicam track. This gives you easy access to synced clips in isolation. The issue this addresses is that once the multicam track is created, it's no longer so easy to pull a clip out of sync for b-roll, or to replace a series of edit decisions with one long clip.

Um, trying to be clear here:
3a. Click on the track header of each of your (now synchronized) tracks, and select "duplicate track". Select and drag these copies to the bottom of your timeline window.

4. Now, continue with the tutorial - select your original tracks and create the multicam track.

Just let the duplicate tracks sit at the bottom there, minimize them if you want. You'll know what to do with them if you end up needing them.

[Jim Snow]

Also, it usually is best to not include your audio with the multicam video clips. Leave you audio synced on the timeline. If you need to have the audio for each cam included with your multicam clips, you can but that is a more unusual requirement.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Jim Snow

Also, it usually is best to not include your audio with the multicam video clips. Leave you audio synced on the timeline. If you need to have the audio for each cam included with your multicam clips, you can but that is a more unusual requirement.

while i liked the vegas built in multi-cam, I went ahead and purchased a 3rd party plugin. I highly suggest you check out the fully functional demos of VASST's Ultimate S and Excalibur These tools do multi-cam better than Vegas, and also provide other handy scripts to speed your post production

[Chip Gallo]

You don't tell what kind of event it is, so this tutorial may be off base since it describes a multi-camera edit of an ice show with music. It also assumes some familiarity with Vegas. If you are in the Washington, DC area there is a Vegas users group meeting on Saturday, September 12 at the Sony office on K Street, N.W.

Document Index: Mindtography Multi-Camera Edits Using Vegas and VASST UltimateS Pro

[Bruce Pelley]

Thanks so much gents for all of your kind, informative and thoughtful responses thus far.

Your warm reception and thoughtfullness heartens me.

The event itself was a sermon preached where I attend church. I had two Canon GL-2's set up in the back posistioned so that they covered the preacher when turned towards the audience whether it was to his right or left. I recorded the whole thing alone with no help.

During the actual presentarion, I shuttled back and forth between the camcorders zooming in and out to various distances/perspectives every couple of minutes. So now I want to "marry" the foottage acquired from each station.

First off, I need to ask a dumb question. I explored/researched both Excalibur and VSS.
I installed Excalibur, however, how I do I access and use it as the demo is its only for a few days? What happened to it after it was installed? Is it accessible within Vegas? Scripts are completely foreign to me!

Next, I'm curious if you all are satisified with the quality of the encoding and rendering.
Do you use the onboard/included encoder or did you go out and purchase a standalone one and if so which one did you pick and why? Final quality on dvd is very important to me as I put a religious show on cable tv.

The Adrian's Journal source and the subsequent follow up commentary and suggestions looks to be outstanding. I've just gotten up for the day but it's high on my list of things to do today or tommorrow!

It may interest you that the only NLE I've used thus far had been various versions of Adobe Premiere and Premiere Pro. There are things I like about Vegas.

Any further discussion would be greatly helpfull and informative.

[Danny Fye]

Originally Posted by Bruce Pelley

The event itself was a sermon preached where I attend church.

I do Church services all of the time and I use Infiniticam. Extremely easy to use! Costs less than than Excalibur and Ultimate S and you don't have to pay for a bunch of stuff you really do not need!

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Bruce Pelley

First off, I need to ask a dumb question. I explored/researched both Excalibur and VSS.
I installed Excalibur, however, how I do I access and use it as the demo is its only for a few days? What happened to it after it was installed? Is it accessible within Vegas? Scripts are completely foreign to me!

View - Extensions - Excalibur (assuming Vegas Pro 8, 8.1, or 9 -both 32 and 64 bit).

Once opened, Excalibur will automatically restart each time Vegas is restarted. Plus it runs in a docked window making it easy to go between it and your other docked windows and the timeline.

There's a demo video on using Multi-cam at Excalibur

[Jeff Dillon]

I'm getting a bad link when trying to preview the demo video of Exalibur

Jeff

PS - Actually, right click on the link and Save Target As..works for me

[Bruce Pelley]

Jeff, I'm totally with you on that!!

You were kind enough to bring it up first.

I didn't find a video to play either.

Bruce

[Jim Snow]

Originally Posted by Jason Robinson

while i liked the vegas built in multi-cam, I went ahead and purchased a 3rd party plugin. I highly suggest you check out the fully functional demos of VASST's Ultimate S and Excalibur These tools do multi-cam better than Vegas, and also provide other handy scripts to speed your post production

Does Vasst Ultimate S have good documentation or do you have to hack your way through it to familiarize yourself with its various functions? One of my pet peeves is a feature-rich application and lousy documentation. It looks like there are quite a number of nice features in Ultimate S. The price is well worth it if there is a decent manual (even if it's just a .pdf)

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Jeff Dillon

I'm getting a bad link when trying to preview the demo video of Exalibur

Jeff

PS - Actually, right click on the link and Save Target As..works for me

Here's a direct link to the file:

http://www.jetdv.com/excalibur55/vid...r5MultiCam.wmv

[Edward Troxel]

Jim, both Ultimate S and Excalibur have full documentation. Excalibur is in the form of a PDF file. I believe Ultimate S is as well.

For the record, I wrote/own Excalibur.

[Don Bloom]

I'll say up front that I have never tried UltimateS although I did review the features of it and it looks like a very very good program.

I have been a very long time user of Excalibur, since it first came out and even beta tested newer versions for Edward as they came out. Personally I love the program and would be very lost without it. I have many of the tools in it on the tool bar and have buttons set for cameras for cutting. One button editing. Very easy and I can tell you from personal experience that Edward is spot on as far as support goes.

Now again, I have not used Ultimate S although I do have and use a couple of other products from Vasst and they work great. I'm sure Vasst supports UltimateS very well too.

I'm only speaking from my experience with Excalibur.

Whichever you choose you will find your editing time will go faster. One button, done!