Need multicam organization advice

I recently recorded a dance recital. Two performance, two different days. Each performance was two acts, with multiple dances per act. I recorded each act as a complete clips using 4 cameras. The cameras were moved to different location between days giving me essentially 8 angles for each dance.

My first thought was to multicam each day/act , using audio (separate clean audio track available). That would be easy seeing as there are essentially 4 complete clips and 1 clean audio track to sync. I could then apply color corrections/etc to each clip in the resulting multicam. I would do this for each act for each day. I could then select and cut the multicam by dance, add titles, etc. and be done.

However...

I need to reduce the two days performances into one composite one (taking the best parts, angles, etc. from each day). The problem is that while the dances are essentially the same, the timing between dances across days can be off (e.g. more gap time between dances) so I can't just take all the act 1 clips from both days and multicam them together. The first dance would be in sync, but subsequent ones wouldn't.

What I'm tackling now is to keyword identify each dance for each day across all the clips. I can then collect those keyword clips into a multicam since they can now stand apart from the overall performance timing relative to other dances. I'd end up with 50+ multicam clips that I could string together in a separate project to make the final video.

The problem is that doing it this way, I can't apply a color correction across a complete act clip. Rather, I'd have to apply it to the clips within each of the 50+ multicam clips. With each of those consisting 8 angles, that's a lot of time making corrections.

I'm looking for any advice how I might tackle/organize this such that I can apply corrections more broadly and still be able to multicam sync across the two days worth of clips.

Thoughts? Much thanks.

Maybe this picture can help...then again maybe not! :ohmy:

Day 1/Act 1

Angle 1 | 1 | X| 2 |X| 3 |XX| 4 |X| ...
Angle 2 | 1 | X| 2 |X| 3 |XX| 4 |X| ...
Angle 3 | 1 | X| 2 |X| 3 |XX| 4 |X| ...
Angle 4 | 1 | X| 2 |X| 3 |XX| 4 |X| ...

Day 2/Act 1

Angle 5 | 1 | xx| 2 |x| 3 |xxx| 4 |X| ...
Angle 6 | 1 | xx| 2 |x| 3 |xxx| 4 |X| ...
Angle 7 | 1 | xx| 2 |x| 3 |xxx| 4 |X| ...
Angle 8 | 1 | xx| 2 |x| 3 |xxx| 4 |X| ...

X and x represent gap times between dances. They will be consistent for a given day/act, but not across days. Dances themselves will be the same length due to using the same audio.

If this makes any sense...

One option is to cut each individual dance number in to its own physical clips. Range, export as a ProRes, reimport and do each dance as a stand alone multicam. Use any footage in beween as filler as needed (keyword that stuff).

Or do a multicam, put a marker at the start of, let's say dance 1 for all days, for each clip, multicam it to the merker, then, in your Project, you can simply cut off the before and after stuff that doesn't pertain.

Several ways to approach this. Will be interesting to see what folks recommend.

When I've done similar events, and it's been awhile, I had myself and my assistants quickly stop/start each camera between presenters, acts, etc, just so we could do each segment as its own multicam in FCP7. Trick is to never let any two cameras make that cut at the same time, so you always have some running of the in between stuff to use as filler as needed. But, that doesn't help your OP. Just mentioning it for the future.

Yeah, cut it up and only do one dance number at a time, then you an use the filler stuff to control how much time you, as editor, want to have between those dance numbers. You get to control the pacing.

May be I miss the problem in your discription, but....

A) each dance has 8 angles (great, by tthe way )

So, make a rough selection for each dance, keyword Dance #1 -#50..
Select all clips from a kw collection, create MC synch by audio, ediit each dance from that source.


B ) do you want to grade each dance? Apply a Adjsument layer over your timeline, grade, done

Or do you have to color correct each source? Double click MC, apply corrections to each track,

I think you did well to understand my problem, despite how awkwardly I may have stated it...

I'm currently going down your A path...segmenting each of the 8 angles by individual dance using keywords. I then planned on creating MC's for each dance from the keyword segments. That would let me get around the sync problem between days. This results in having to scan each of the 8 clips 50+ times to keyword the dances, then produce 50+ MC's from those and then (and this is what prompted my question) to go into each of those 50+ MC's and correct each of the 8 clips. That's a lot of work.

Had I needed to produce two videos for each dance (1 per day) I could just MC the 4 angles for a given day, apply color corrections, effects, etc. to each clip in the MC, then dice and slice to produce the final video. I'd only have to CC 8 clips and then one pass to edit by dance.

However the need to combine into a single video makes the problem hard due to the out-of-sync between days. As I understand FCPX, there is no way to CC an event clip; it can only can be done after it's been added to a timeline (e.g. MC). If I could CC event clips before keywording I could make this work.

Alternative ideas I've come up with so far...

Based on BenB's comment above, I could try CC'ing the 8 camera/angle clips and exporting them as new video clips. Then import them (now corrected) and then begin keywording by dance leading to 50+ MC's.

Another idea would be to MC the first 4 cameras (day #1), then manually add new angles for the second 4 (day 2). I could then CC all the angles. The initial sync would line up dance #1, but subsequent dances would be off. To get around this I could Blade each of the second 4 videos by dance and resync (each dance segment) to the primary 4.

gfedor wrote: I think you did well to understand my problem, ... This results in having to scan each of the 8 clips 50+ times to keyword the dances, then produce 50+ MC's from those and then (and this is what prompted my question) to go into each of those 50+ MC's and correct each of the 8 clips. That's a lot of work....-.

no, still don't get it a 100%:
tagging 400 clips is done in minutes :silly: , cause you JKL fast thru each camera, hammer I and O (really rough selection), and then add your keyword .... which is, per camera, 1, then 2, then... you got the idea: the sequence is in all 8 cameras same ...

When done, you create the per-Dance MCs#1 to #50, that is literally done in minutes ...

And still a bit vague is my impression, what exactly you like to 'color correct' ... short segments, e.g. cam points into light (=single adjustments)? the whole dance (=Adjustment Layer)? the whole each 8 cam streams (=create 8 subProjects, unedited cam stream, CC it, ex/reimport, then Multicam it) ...


... and btw: you have to watch all 400 clips anyhow ... by keywording (which incl. rejecting!) and MutliCam-ing it once, it's pure fun to edit, like in a truck "angle #2, fade to #5, aaand back to #1", I LOVE to edit just by hitting 1,2,3,4 ...

Hi,

As I understand it you only want to colour correct each camera once? And all cameras kept recording throughout the performances?

An alternative workflow would be:

1. Sync all 8 angles into a multicam clip, putting markers on each camera clip at the first reasonable sync point so that the first dance lines up on all. (You can still use audio to do the sync but the markers will tell FCP where to focus.) This will create a multicam clip where all 8 cameras are in sync for the first dance (only).

2. Open the angle editor and colour correct all cameras to match.

3. Find the end of the first dance and, using the range tool, delete the first gap between dances 1 and 2 on the 4 cameras from the second (or first) night.

4. Repeat for all of the other gaps between dances on the same angles.

5. Set one of the other angles as the Monitoring angle.

6. For the first camera with gaps in the track, select all of the clips except the first one.

7. From the drop down menu in the track header choose "Sync Angle to Monitoring angle". Each of the selected clips will now be shifted to sync (individually) with the monitoring angle.

8. Repeat for the other three cameras.

You should now have 1 colour corrected multi-cam clip with all 8 cameras in sync to edit your dances from. Four of the cameras will have material between the dances but the other four will only be available during the dances.

I've tested this with a copy of a multicam clip and it appears to work - if you choose to try it let us know how it turns out!

Ian.