Help with multi-camera file editing

[bbell77]

http://youtu.be/WgQUyipLme4

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about. 1 Audio track, 2-3 cameras shooting footage. One of the camera's obviously has control of the audio track at the same time as well. How does this all work????? Any help is appreciated. As well as a good and easy to use editing software program that someone might recommend to pull this off.

Thanks,

[budwzr]

The video looked fine, but the audio needs mastering. Update: Uh-oh, there's a lot of rumble.

[aedipuss]

budwzr i think he's asking for advise about an editing program not the video. vegas pro is my choice for multicam editing. used to be editstudio back when DVavi was popular.

[Brainiac]

I use Premiere Pro CS6. Syncing audio and video can be difficult, so preplanning is a good idea. For example, if you use a clapper right before filming (or even clap your hands very loudly), the spike in the audio waveform can be used for syncing. Camera flashes work well too.

Brainiac

[DB83]

A method is also discussed here:

http://www.pointsinfocus.com/learning/video/syncing-and-editing-multi-camera-video-wit...emier-pro-cs6/

The bottom line is that 'cheap' consumer software can not really do this. Well it can and I have but it is then all done by your eyes and ears.

[Cornucopia]

...(from the other thread) I wouldn't use Wondershare for ANYTHING. Certainly not multicam.

Camera flash doesn't work as well as you'd think, since they often don't make enough noise to be useful when adjusting the waveforms (+high freq. are very directional)

+1 on Vegas Pro, PP CS, AVID MC, FCP, Edius. All the big NLE players. Most of the "lite" consumer versions don't have any special facility for mutli-camera editing.

Note that for multicamera to really be fully utilized and not take excessive prep time, it requires your clips to have matching timecode. Since many consumer-based cams don't have timecode, you ought to look into tools such as DSLRsync (and the associated products, accessories & workflows). This is true no matter which NLE you end up using.

Scott

[Brainiac]

Yeah, good point about camera flashes. I was thinking about when I'd shoot and not have external audio files as part of the workflow, and since the audio was linked to the video it didn't matter.
Doesn't Adobe Premiere CC does have some syncing tool built in now?

PowerDirector (latest version) does have native multicam editing built in. Supports up to 4 cameras.

Brainiac

[smrpix]

Doesn't Adobe Premiere CC does have some syncing tool built in now?

Yes, latest version will sync audio to audio and it works very well.

[bbell77]

Thanks a lot for the responses guys. Maybe I'm so new to this stuff that I'm not exactly sure what to even ask, but, essentially, all I'm wanting to do is take some live video footage of me and some of my buddies playing music using several different camera angles. Basically, I would have 4-5 different cameras, mostly iphones, ipads and a Samsung phone set up and recording different angles separately. One of the ipads would capture all the audio with an external microphone. Then I would have to figure out a way to throw it all together and take different clips of each recording and put them into a single video. Does that make sense to everyone?

Thanks again for the responses and I apologize for the double posting yesterday.
Brian

[Brainiac]

It makes sense to me. But you may run into issues with footage from phones. I will let someone else get into details, but I recall that framerates were an issue.

Brainiac

[Cornucopia]

Change that "may run into issues" to a "are assuredly going to run into big issues".

Inter-camera drift is difficult enough with non-genlocked CFR cameras, but VFR is just going to be a huge amount of hurt. Think: hours & hours (days & days?) of manually trying things out & re-adjusting.

@bbell77, before you ever press "record", do your research/homework on this!

Scott

[bbell77]

Thanks guys. This is all part of the research process for me @cornucopia.