Multicam edit

Hi everyone,

i filmed a 3h concert with five cameras and separate audio. The result is 200GB of footage that I now have to work with. I thought I could just import, create proxies and then do a Multicam edit. However, my new MacBookPro 15" seems to be struggling with the data. When I imported the files I had some issues so I didn't do the proxy transcoding right away, instead I wanted it to do it later. The "issues" I had were, that the drive (USB 3.0) was disconnected after importing but while analyzing the videos. Now when I am in the viewer, FCP X takes forever to just show the still image and playback is only possible after minutes of waiting, but then it is fluent, so it seems like the drive is too slow. I tested it and it gets up to 300mb/s read and write (old SSD).
My question: How can I do a smooth Multicam edit? Is transcoding the media to proxy the solution? (I did it with one clip and the speed improvement is nearly unnoticeable) Should I reimport everything? And whats the easiest way to synchronize all the clips - I feel like FCP X will take forever to do that.
Thanks for your help.


EDIT: The issue was not importing the AVCHD file but the .mts videos - caused FCPX to always load the full 200GB data...

It's normal that FCPX (or any NLE) will be sluggish if editing multicam H264, especially 4k. Your best approach is transcode that material to proxies, which can be done after import. Just select the clips in the Event Browser, right click, select Transcode, and pick ONLY proxy, not optimized.

After transcoding you must place the viewer in proxy mode. Click the drop-down menu in the upper-right of the Viewer: View>Proxy. When you are finished editing it must be set back to View>Optimized/Original or the export will be proxy resolution

Syncing multicams is easy, provided all cameras and recorders have decent audio. However -- you must first tag each batch of clips (including audio clips) with a camera angle or camera name. After doing that, select the clips in the browser, right click and select "New MultiCam Clip", using the default options.

Review of prep procedure required for effective multi-cam sync. Note this requires the clips from each camera have camera-specific file names. If they do not, it's important during data offload to place the clips from each camera in a named folder, e.g, JoeA7RIII, KevinA6500, etc. Then during import use the FCPX preference "Use keywords from folders" This automatically keywords each batch of clips with the camera or operator name. That in turn allows easy metadata tagging of all clips from a given camera with the camera or operator name.

1. Import all clips
2. In Event Browser at top right, select List View icon, or use OPT+CMD+2 to toggle between list view and filmstrip view.
3. In Event Browser, click on clip name column heading to sort by name. All the clips from each camera should be grouped together.
4. If camera filenames are not unique to each camera, then click the keyword you generated from the folder name during import. This selects only the clips from that camera or audio recorder.
5. Select a group of clips from one camera/recorder (Click on 1st, go to last and Shift-click).
6. In Inspector at upper right, click on Info button. If Inspector pane is not on, turn it on with Window>Show Inspector
7. At bottom of Inspector Pane, click the drop-down box and select "General". This shows more details.
8. In the Inspector Pane, enter a camera or angle name. When you press Enter it will add that camera/angle name to all the clips you have selected in a single step.
9. Repeat step 4, 5 and 8 for each camera/recorder.
10. To create MC clip: In Event Browser, select all clips from the cameras & recorders for a particular multicam interview or event.
11. Right-click on the selected group and select "New Multicam Clip", then set checkbox "use audio for synchronization"
12. Double-click the MC clip to open it, enable Angle Viewer with SHFT+CMD+7 and verify synchronization. Switch the audio to the main source and disable camera audio.