Multi-Cam Large Event

Hey FCP.co community,

I have been an FCPX user for a while but haven't had as much experience with Multicam Projects as I would like. I recently took on a new project that I shot over the weekend and I was hoping to get some help with how to manage my media and sync properly.

The event was a large university singing competition that was 2.5 hours long. We used multiple cameras (4 total) to get everything from the performers to the judges critiques. The four cameras were: WIDE, GC, DANNY, MIKE. The Audio was recorded straight from the sound board to a Tascam digital recorder so we have a nice clean feed of the whole night that ended up being two audio files.

For organization purposed I used Automator to rename all media so that the file names included the name of the camera operator, and has a sequential number on the end. I also in FCPX once imported changed the camera name for all clips to match the appropriate camera name and everything has been key worded and organized.

Now for the SYNC..

My first attempt involved taking all 117 clips and 2 audio files and telling FCPX to make a New Multicam clip. While ti looked like it started strong, the bar got about 70% of the way across and then froze. 8 Hours later I decided it was a lost cause and cancelled. It seems this may have been too much for FCPX to handle.

My second attempt was to group together clips to be synced by camera. I selected the two audio files and ALL of the clips fro Mike and then told FCPX to make a new Multicam Clip. This worked, in fact in worked perfectly and only took a few minutes! I continued and repeated the process for the other camera angles and all worked without hiccup or issue.

This left me with 5 Multicam Clips, one for each camera. Even though it was multi cam it was really only two tracks (audio and camera.

My thought was that now I can take the 5 Multicam clips and the two audio clips and create a new Multicam clip. To my surprise this was not the case! Apparently FCPX won't let you make a multi cam clip with a pre-existing multi cam clip. I guess this makes sense, but now that has me stumped on where to go next.

One thought was to make 5 projects, drag each multi cam clip to the project in its entirety and export it all full res and then re-import. This however would take a LONG time as I mentioned this video is 2.5 hours! Thats alot of media.

My next thought was making each of the 5 Multicam clips into a COMPOUND clip. And then taking the 5 compounds and the audio and making 1 Multicam clip. This seems like it would work in theory, but it didn't seem to work either, it just hung up a little bit.

Does anyone have any ideas on where I should go from here? I usually use multi cam for small thing like a short 2-3 camera 10 minute interview, but on a project this scale I'm wondering if I need to think differently.

Mike

stay away from compounds! … just as a personal note.

a) In FCPX' Prefs/Playback, did you check/uncheck 'optimized for Multicam'?

b) if yes - is all your material optimized BEFORE making it MC? ... 10h needs some time for conversion ...

c) if no: all material is on some external, fast connected, multi-platter RAID? ....

d) give FCPX a lil' slap:
find a point in all sources to set a Marker; in the MC making dialogue check 'on first marker'

e) sounds crazy but: try to UNcheck synch-by-audio! ... my experience (using various formats in one MC!), that the 'clock' synchs good enough; and: MC-making is done in seconds!

f) all this renaming stuff ignores the powers of FCPX' internal tagging system... file-names are useless, use the meta-info features of FCPX ...

Thanks for the reply!

I had a feeling compounds would slow things down too much. Everything was shot on Canon 7D and 5D MIII DSLRs, so i don't have them optimized and had that option unchecked. I tried again with only Syncing all of the shots from ONE camera to the main Audio at a time. This left me with 4 clips (one for each camera that had good audio). I then made a Multicam Clip that incorporated all 4 SYNC Clips and the good audio and it pairs no problem.

All is working!

If I may interject regarding compound clips. Signifigant work was done on compound clips in 10.0.6 as well as 10.1.2. They are actually more efficient (take less memory), so you don't need to stay way from them, but as Karsten noted, you'll probably want to avoid nesting multiple multicam clips within more compound clips. That is just alot of nesting.

I have had a very large multicam project not sync on the first try, but what I have done to remedy it is to turn off "use audio for synchronization" perform the sync (which will happen in an instant) and then, once in the angle editor, I made my "master" the monitor angle and then synced my angles one at a time from there.

Also if you find yourself doing alot of multicam syncing, especially with very iffy audio, Plural Eyes from Red Giant is a stand alone syncing app that does a very good job with problem clips. Personally I have never needed it, even though I own it, but my audio is typically pretty decent.

When you say you "synced your angles one at a time" do you mean manually sliding and lining up waveforms yourself. I had to do this for a few clips, but I didn't know if maybe you were referring to a way to highlight two clips and say SYNC where it will line it up for me without the manual dragging till it sounds right method.

tpayton wrote: If I may interject regarding compound clips. … you'll probably want to avoid nesting multiple multicam clips within more compound clips. …

Yeah, that "Evil Thing" is meant just 50:50 as a joke :woohoo:

For sure, there are (rare) occasions, compounds are necessary /not to be avoided in FCPX
But in many cases, compounds are a habitual from the past - think of Magnetic Timeline....
And, a Multicam IS a special breed of compound, what else?

... but:
esp. 'nested' compounds are/were a real problem!

And reg. the OP: I don't see any need to 'pre bind' a+v of just some material, and finally mix&staple all together! That IS the feature of Multicam!

As mentioned above: I synch up to 7 cams, all diff. formats (AVCHD, mov, mp4, 1080/30p, 720/60p, 1080/50p) - WITHOUT 'music', just yelling soccer-fans!

Again, mentioned above, a trick I saw from Steve&Mark from rippletraining.com:
find a synch-point in all angles (here: referees whistle), set a marker in all angles (no need for frame precision) - MultiCam synchs all angles, all clips! for a while, I paused my 'main cam' here&then - so, this track was made of dozens of clips, with gaps! It just needed to mark ONE, all others were synched perfectly just by time-stamp.-

The whole trick is:

• naming the cam angles (NOT the files - file names are useless ... <<< another 50:50 joke)
• giving FCPX a clue by markers
• use optimized media OR fast, multiple drives

Another again: multiple streams - as in a MC - ask for
a) 'simple' files = optimized
or
b) fast delivery = a Raid ...

Since using my <100€ Raid0 + two usb3 drives + a smart allocation of source, project, cache... , I do NOT optimize anymore (on my underpowered system, optimizing needed literally hours!) - MultiCam is done in seconds (5-7 tracks each 35min) ... on a MacMini i5 ...

no need for compounds, the Source Of All Evil! :evil:

.... ok, perhaps, I should give compounds another try <shiver>, with FCPX10.1.2 ... :lol:

btw @tpayton:
Many thanks for your tutorials! Very informative, and 'hit to the point' .... excellence!

It is still "automatic" you just do one angle at a time. Can be a little tricky some times, here is quick look at it with something I shot yesterday.



More info is here:

help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.1/#ver23c76b1a

OMG This is amazing! I had no clue that the "Sync Selection to Monitoring Angle" sub menu existed! This is exactly what I was looking for!