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HELP FCP5 multicam woes
  • B3GuyB3Guy
    Hey, all. I am getting darn near ready to blow my top, but here goes.

    I've been pretty ladylike to FCP throughout this whole process. I wish to multi cam edit between two clips I have from a wedding I shot. Both clips are 422 Pro Res files, identically specced, AFAIK. 1080p, 24fps. I have binned the two clips together, selected them and "Created multiclip". I have dragged said multiclip clip into an appropriately specced Pro-Res 422 1080p 24fps sequence. I can watch either angle of the multiclip without rendering.

    I have set the gang to "Open", I have set everything to "dynamic". I can play back the mother trucking son of a bee-sting piece of bovine excrement multiclip just fine . . . until I attempt to "switch angles"/make a "cut"/switch shots/whatever the heck you want to call it. Then everything stops playing back, and it makes no cut. This is a solid hour of wedding footage that I REALLY don't want to have to edit without multiclip. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?
  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • B3GuyB3Guy
    I am now able to make cuts, thank goodness . . . but I cannot get the viewer to play in real time along with the timeline and the canvas. so basically, I am editing in the dark.
  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp
    @B3Guy I don't know FCP but can't you lower the preview resolution to make it preview properly so you can choose cut-points in real time (if I understand your problem right) or make a low-res version for cutting, then use those cut-points to edit the higher-res version? Basically anything which takes less CPU is good. Apologies if I've misunderstood.
  • B3GuyB3Guy
    it plays 100% fine in the "canvas" (main playback window), but not at all in the "viewer" (which is the window that shows me all the angles). It shows static images of each angle and only updates when I pause. Somehow I don't think it is having playback issues due to res or fps, but perhaps. (I have it set to "dynamic" for both, which AFAIK, tells it to "do what it can".)
  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp
    Ah, fair enough. Don't know then - sorry!! I only know that Premiere Pro and Vegas and I know they need a bit of tlc when editing multicamera. I guess trying a low res version of your video files would eliminate that as a possibility but sounds like Dynamic does that anyway and it's not that issue. Hope you find out what it is!
  • lefteditleftedit

    • have you got 'multiclip playback' turned on in the little drop down in the top left of sequence window (where you turn RT rendering, 'dynamic' etc)?

    • did you render your sequence? as far as i know, rendering causes Multicam to not function. Dump your renders by turning the video track off and on again

    • how are you switching angles? by clicking in the viewer? AFAIK you can make cuts using the 1-9 keypad on the keyboard, never worked for me (and some people think this is how you do it).

    • whats the spec of your machine? specifically what kind of hard drive/connection is your footage on? AFAIK, 2xHD pro res clips can be pretty hard going if you are only on a 5,400rpm laptop hard disk. Try firewire 800 or a RAID (software RAID on a mac pro).

    Multicam can be a real a-hole sometimes, take some fiddling. Ive done about 300 multicam shoots on FCP 5-7 so ive done some serious fiddling!!!

    Best,

    A

  • RRRRRRRR

    Or, install cs5 or 5.5 and do the multicam edit in Premiere. Works (almost) flawlessly for me.

  • B3GuyB3Guy

    @leftedit

    1. yep. turned on.
    2. No need to render, right? So why would I? It is ProRes in a ProRes sequence
    3. Clicking in the viewer, yes.
    4. It is on my 15" unibody MBP. Not sure what it is specced at, but whatever.

    @RRRR Unfortunately I am a completely broke college student with no income. Trust me, if Adobe was feasible, I would have it, along with an edit machine, a big screen, a voigt 0.95 . . . gotta learn to work with what you've got, know what I mean? Luckily, I am now in LA for the semester, and my school has excellent machines with FCP7. I'll plug in my drive this week and do the multi cam edit on there.

  • RRRRRRRR

    @B3Guy I know what you mean.. Sounds like you'll manage with the added power! :)

  • B3GuyB3Guy

    ya. the power and having FCP7 i'm thinking will probably make the difference.

  • lefteditleftedit

    @B3Guy

    1. Is Unlimited RT also on? Make sure it is, even if playback is stuttering. Turn playback to 'medium' and frame rate to 'full'. i dont advise lowering this, its unstable in my experience.
    2. You'd think that no render is necessary, but sometimes if your computer can not handle RT playback, it goes for a render. This could be because your hard drive is too slow. For this reason, multiclips sometimes are highlighted as green or yellow in the sequence timeline where normally they should be clear ('no need to render'). If they have rendered (turns blue) then dump this render.
    3. good shiz

    4. The hard drive of this machine could be the problem. try to multi clip two DV PAL or DV NTSC files (i.e. stable codec SD files) and see if that works? Your drive might be too slow, causing problems.

    5. Further suggestion - is 'Range check' (the little green tick, view>range check) turned off in both the viewer and canvas? sometimes this caused probs in FCP5.

    6. One more suggestion which has caught me out before and seems to mess with multicam - make sure that in both viewer and canvas that the background is BLACK and not white or checkerboard.
    7. bonus suggestion - View>external video> OFF. sometimes this takes up some machine power, and you wont need to use anyways since you dont need external monitoring, right?

    mega bonus suggestion - trash FCP preferences. Always a good un.

    http://www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basic_trash_prefs5.html

    Id strongly advise upgrading to FCP 6 or 7 which ironed out a LOT of FCP 5 shitty bugs.

    Best,

    A

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