Multi Track cross fade

[Manohar Hegde]

I am using vegas pro 10 64 bit. I have already edited 1 hour long video with two cam videos. I kept on adding one clip at a time from both the videos and in the mutli track editing used the crossover fade using ctrl+x. The problem I have is when I added the next video clip and used the multi track editing it removed the cross fades from the previous clips.

My question is how do I go back and change the fades back to cross fades.

Any help as I have to finish this video tomorrow.

Thanks in advance

[Allan Black]

All of them? So everything is just sitting as cuts on the timeline? Not sure you can recover them.

To get it finished in time just drag the new clip over the end of the previous one ..?

Cheers.

[Manohar Hegde]

All of the them except the last clip.

[Manohar Hegde]

I think I found the solution. I knew I had done this before long time. To go back to cross fade all I have to do is click on the split and press the forward slash key in the numeric pad that is above the 8 key. The bad part is I have to do this manually at all the splits.

Thanks for everyone

[Peter Riding]

Are you referring to the actual MultiCamera editing feature? If so I think I'm right in saying that crossfades and some other edits are not remembered when you come out of multicam mode. I always do the multicam edit in full, then expand to multiple tracks then do transitions etc.

Pete

[Edward Troxel]

This is a very confusing post to me. First of all, if you create a crossfade, it will NOT go away unless you do something to make it go away. Secondly, CTRL-X is CUT - not create a crossfade. Based on those two things, I have no clue what is even being done let alone what would be happening.

[Garrett Low]

Like Edward I too am a little confused about your process. If you are using the mulitcam edit why are you adding clips one at a time?

[Manohar Hegde]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

This is a very confusing post to me. First of all, if you create a crossfade, it will NOT go away unless you do something to make it go away. Secondly, CTRL-X is CUT - not create a crossfade. Based on those two things, I have no clue what is even being done let alone what would be happening.

First of all it is not CTRL - X as I wrote. It is CTRL and click on the track in multi camera edit mode. That gives the crossfade between two tracks. I did the editing in mulple phases. First I sync the audio track that was recorded seperately on a digital recorder with the first camera track. Once I finished editing and syncing the whole video on first camera and audio track then I started adding each clips one at a time from the second camera. This is when the cross fades that I selected disappeared on the previous clips. I know it had happened to me in the past and I was trying to remember the key to get the cross fade back.

All I had to go back to each and every cut and use the / on the numeric pad and get the cross fades back and it worked fine.

Hope this clarifes some of the confusion.

Thanks

[Manohar Hegde]

Originally Posted by Garrett Low

Like Edward I too am a little confused about your process. If you are using the mulitcam edit why are you adding clips one at a time?

The reason I was adding clips one at a time is because of the length of the total video. The total video was 2 hours 20 minutes long. I had to split the video into 2 DVD's for the final product. I had arround 300 clips in total from first camera and almost the same amount from the second camera. This was a live concert video. That is why I started with camera 1 clips and did the edit and sync with the seperate audio track that was recorded on a digital recorder that was plugged into the mixer. Once I had the whole 2 + hour video edited and synced I started adding the tracks from second camera, edit and again sync with the first camera and audio. Once I got the second camera clps synced I used the multicamera editing to mix with the first camera track. This where the cross fades started disappearing to straight fades when I added a new clip to the multicamera editing.

[Garrett Low]

I do a lot of live shows with multi cams and to me it seems like you may be going about it in way that makes it more difficult for yourself. This is just what I'm thinking and there are a millions ways to skin a cat as they say. But here's a couple of observations and how I approach these types of edits.

For multicam projects without a world clock that's synching everything to a universal timecode I would only stop the cameras at long breaks like intermissions. Having 300+ clips from one camera and having to just synch that to audio is bad enough yet along multiple cameras. If all you had were say two continuous clips from each camera (act 1 and act 2), then you would be able to synch the cameras and audio very quickly.

Rather than editing camera one then go back and add clips from the second, third, cameras, I place all of the footage on a timeline with each camera occupying a different video track/audio track. Synch all cameras and then add the audio from the separate audio recorder to another audio track on the timeline. Then select each video track and create a Mulitcam track from them. That will compress all of the video track into what seems like a single video track but when you go into mulitcam edit mode you'll see that all of the cameras come up on the preview screen. Then I start to edit switching between cameras. The downside is that you cannot go back and separate the clips and you have to add all transitions (cross dissolves) after you have created the cuts to the various cameras. But for me, I strive to have an edit where I only have cuts that are not noticeable. To me that represents the best edit so that the audience doesn't even know that the cut exists.

There are several ways to accomplish the same thing but to me it would be difficult to compare the various camera angles without having them up on the screen playing through in real time and being able to compare them side by side. My first pass is usually almost like live switching. I either take one number at a time and completely go through without stopping and just switch between cameras, or sometimes I go through the entire act without stopping. This allows me to establish a rhythm to the edit. Then I go back and reanalyze each cut and make fine tune adjustments.

Like I said, that's just my way of approaching a mulitcam edit. YMMV.

-Garrett

[Manohar Hegde]

Thank you Garrett. You gave me very valuable aproach to get the editing done. I think next time I will try to keep the camera rolling to cut down on the clips. This will save a ton of time at the editing.

Thanks

[Garrett Low]

Manohar, like I said, there are many ways to attach any task. This is one that works for me and I'm sure you'll develop your own workflow that works best for you. A couple things to note about Vegas' mulitcam editing. Once you create the mulitcam track you cannot undo or separate them back out. For this reason I usually save a version of the project once I get all of the clips synchronized, I also duplicate all of the video tracks on the timeline before creating the mulitcam track. Then I only select one copy each video track to make the multicam track. that way I retain a separated version of each video track that stays synched to my mulitcam edit.

I know your pain about synching hundreds of clips. I had one mulitcam edit job where the director had each camera stop after every number. There were 3 cameras for a 3 hour long dance recital. When I got all of the footage I couldn't believe how jumbled things were. The person who hired me was almost blown away when I told him how long it was going to take me to just sift through the raw footage and basically log every clip so that I could figure out what was on each one. I told him he could do it himself first then give me the info so I could start to line up and synch the clips. He tried for one day and decided that it would be "better" for me to do it. I laughed because I know he got about 15 minutes into it and decided that he'd go crazy having to do it himself. At least I made a good fee.

Good luck and happy editing.
Garrett

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Garrett Low

Like I said, that's just my way of approaching a mulitcam edit.

Sounds like a very good approach to me. I have never used multicam yet, but if I ever do, I’ll do it your way.

[Peter Riding]

I edit in a very similar way to how Garrett has described. It certainly makes life easier if you have at least one track that is longform even if its only audio. I do the initial syncing using Pluraleyes. Pluraleyes is very effective in syncing - the only time I've experienced a struggle with it is where I have lots of very short clips and those clips include music (trad jazz in the case I'm thinking of); but that may have been user error.

Once you create the mulitcam track you cannot undo or separate them back out
I'm confused by this. When you've finished you have the option to "Expand To Multiple Tracks" via the Tools menu. Then you choose whether to keep or loose the edited out portions. If you choose to keep them in it can be confusing as the unused portions have a slightly different appearance to the used portions in each track. If you choose to loose them its much easier as you only see the portions of clips you've actually used.

Multicam editing can be very fast. If you use the Ctrl+Z function you can race through it and use that function to reverse any changes in takes that you may have jumped the gun on. Of course you have the JKL keys as well if the shoot is such that you don't need to watch it in real time.

There are some articles on Multicam editing in Sony's training area.

Pete

[Edward Troxel]

The option to expand the tracks back out was added in Vegas Pro 11 so "Once you create the mulitcam track you cannot undo or separate them back out" is no longer true. Technically, it could be done in older versions via a script but it's now built-in.

Personally, I still prefer Excalibur for multi-cam editing! :-)