Holiday Cabaret de Noël - Virtual Show Production in Final Cut Pro

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Nicely done. You must have the patience of a saint.
"Anyone who thinks this is simply a matter of recording a massive Zoom call is in for a shock!"

*Everyone* thinks that, until we set them right. Even then, they still aren't sure if we're telling the truth...

I have enough trouble with two or three people on zoom calls I have to record as interviews for TV. That is a scary massive project. Do you still have any hair or resemblance of sanity?

Hair!? Ha! Well, some. It helps that this sort of a project is also done at a distance with the luxury of a little time. So no client in the room watching the clock. Once you figure out the best way to start, then the pieces fall into place. It's just doing it. It was also great that most are professional entertainers at various levels, so the challenge of singing well and being in time is less of an issue than with pure amateurs. But it's always dicey. One of the standalone videos in the full show is a duet, also done remotely. Fortunately that turned out well, given that they aren't in the room to play off of each other live.

Love it! A lot of work, but worth it for those lovely happy singers.

Thanks. Of course, it wouldn't have happened without Katy's (producer) vision. And naturally the talent of the performers. Certainly a silver lining to a stressful period. Glad it's still floating around after 2 years at this point.

You obviously have access to some serious horsepower! I made this free offering at the beginning of the pandemic:
fcpxtemplates.com/sc-multiscreen/
All the videos I made relating to it are also on that page. It may or may not be easier. I wouldn't know because I can't push my hardware that far, but I believe once you get the workflow going...

...You may find it interesting.

I made another effect (I just released: AutoCrop — not free) — all you have to do is draw a box - the media automatically centers within. It has a few other features, like an option to draw a border, panning, etc. With a decent grid, laying out multiple clips is rather quick. It could be complementary to multiscreen, and it can be used to resize clips (with or without scaling) while they play. If you're interested, you can look over the details here: fcpxtemplates.com/autocrop/ . [I'm not trying to sell you something here - it's just that it may be related and something to consider.]

Very nice work BTW!

Thanks for your comments. Serious horsepower? Well, maybe. This was all done on a 2017 iMac Pro, 10-core, 64GB RAM, Vega 64 16GB GPU. Subsequently, I tested this library when I reviewed the early base model M1 Mac Mini ( fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/2364-apple...iew-by-oliver-peters ) and got pretty good performance on it, too. Performance would have been even better on the iMP had the media been on a fast local drive or RAID. I had it all on a 10Gig NAS.

Part of that was to standardize everything as ProResLT files with a common frame rate. Otherwise, I would have been dealing with a wide range of consumer video camera, webcam, and smartphone video files. That would have been a lot more taxing, so my first step was to transcode. Then I also handled any mixing externally in Logic. Generally this was singer plus backing track. The final virtual choir finale was mixed by an outside composer.

I actually did first look at using a motion template for the finale, but ended up chucking the idea for 2 reasons. First, the producer wanted to change the number of boxes, aspect ratios, arrangement of singers, etc multiple times throughout the finale (it's a medley). The second reason was that I needed to be able to slip sync of individual elements when I got the final mix back. Trying to do that with drop-wells just felt too cumbersome. So I decided early on this needed to be done the old fashioned way But thanks for the suggestion!

PS: The template wasn't yours, but a different product.

Last night I posted a response... don't know where it went.

I made this to demonstrate the process I was suggesting:


No drop zones. Different aspect ratios can be worked around.

FWIW

Cool. Looks good. Thanks.

sc_fox wrote:

I made this to demonstrate the process I was suggesting:

A few suggestions:
1) Ditch the annoying music. Better yet, ditch ANY music. It almost never adds anything positive to the experience unless it's a music video. I muted it 4 seconds in. A voice over describing what's being done is more beneficial, but again, WITHOUT any music bed. There hasn't been a tutorial video yet that's jumped to Oscar level contender because of the accompanying music. If you've never clicked away because there wasn't any music at all to a video it reasons that nobody else does, either.

2) Why not select all vids in the stack and scale in the inspector since the placement fields are identically sized? Then all that's needed is dragging them into position without having the viewer painfully watching them being resized one-by-one-by-one-by-excruciating-one. A reason that the 'scale all' suggestion wouldn't work could be explained in an informative voice over that no doo-wop or bump-thump music by itself could ever convey.

3) I believe those lurking here are generally an intelligent bunch and would grasp the concept if not by watching the first example would certainly catch on by the time the second video is placed. But 12 relocations? This video is easily explained and understood in one minute. Those extra five minutes are not only superfluous but torturous as well. Salesmen learn early on to 'stop talking after the close'. Editors should too. 

Reviewing my own stuff I'll step back to admire what I've done but then realistically critique its' four minutes run time and question if the point can be made just as well in three. If it can be watched 1.5x or 2x speed then clearly the answer is yes. 

Here endeth the lesson... on Christmas.

Maybe you'll like this one better:
Merry Christmas
No audio. 1 frame long.
(Made in Motion.)