The Best MultiCam in the Business

[Dufusyte]

In case NewTek would like to make the Best MultiCam Editor in the Business, this is what it would look like:


You place your clips on the timeline in layers.
You select those clips you want to MultiCam, and press a Key to flag them as Multicam. Indeed the MultiCam checkbox could be right next to the OverLay checkbox, and assignable via a keyboard shortcut
Under the "Window" Menu Item on the toolbar, there is a "Multicam Bay" item. You select this to open up your Multicam Bay. It looks similar to the Video Output Window, but it displays the multicam video clips in each quadrant (quadrant or sextant or octant etc; there is no limit on the number of clips simultaneously displayed in the MultiCam Bay window; Plus you can arrange the video streams in the MultiCam Bay window by dragging them, in case you want to rearrange them just for your viewing purposes).
Ok, now you Play through your timeline, and whenever SpeedEdit encounters a clip that was flagged as MultiCam (see step #2 above), it displays the clip in the MultiCam Bay window. As the timeline plays, clips may pop into the MultiCam Bay window or Drop Out of the MultiCam Bay window depending on whether they had been flagged as MultiCam clips. That is, as the Edit Line plays through the Timeline, whenever it finds a clip flagged MultiCam, it adds it into the MultiCam Bay window display. Thus, as you play along, the number of streams diplayed in the MultiCam Bay window may change, depending on how many clips you had flagged as MultiCam clips in the various parts of your timeline.
Naturally, you click on one of the streams in the MultiCam Bay window to make it the Active Stream; a Red boarder around the clip in the MultiCam Bay window lets you know it is the Active Stream you have selected. Meanwhile in your regular Video Output window it displays the actual resultant Video Output. This may include additional tracks such as lower thirds, or any kind of overlays or additional layers you might have on the timeline.

The special quality of flagging a clip as MultiCam (Step #2 above) means that the clip will be Invisible (hidden) unless it has been Selected as an Active Stream in the Multicam Bay window. This is a little different than pressing Z to bring a clip to the forefront, since, if the clip in the forefront has alpha, then one of the other clips might show through behind it (using the Z method). But in the MultiCam Flag method (proposed here) the unActive MultiCam clips never show through even if the Active clip has alpha. This is because, as stipulated, the unSelected clips with a MultiCam flag are hidden (their alpha is set to 100% I guess you could say). Again, a MultiCam clip is only unHidden if it has been selected as Active in the MultiCam Bay window.

Anyway, that is what I would consider the most spiffy MultiCam implementation. I mean, sure there are alot of MultiCam implementations already out there and SpeedEdit certainly has one. But I am talking about the spiffiest, most intuitive, most efficient, most easy to use MultiCam implementation (not a kludgy workable workaround).

MultiCam Editing is certainly at the core of an Editing App, and it would be nice to have the best MultiCam implementation in the business.

[Dufusyte]

Another subtle difference between this implementation, and the typical "Z brings the clip to the Front" implementation, is that the MultiCam implementation proposed above does not actually bring the clip to the Front, rather it unHides it while leaving it in its regular layer on the timeline.

The advantage of not bringing the Selected clip to the front means the Selected clip does not jump in front of any other Overlay or Lower Third, or other element you might have in front. For example, if your MultiCam clips are themselves Overlays, you do not want them jumping in front of other overlays just because they are the Active MultiCam clip.

er...

[bbeanan]

or you can just get BobFX MultiCAM plugin...

[ScorpioProd]

What Dufusyte has described is actually VERY like the MCE built into Vegas Pro 8, which works really well. The main problem with this type of system in SpeedEDIT is that SpeedEDIT doesn't work with or understand the concept of tracks. Until it can, I don't see this type of implementation as possible.

Till then, I definitely recommend Bob's MCE.

[Bobt]

If you had tracks I could do that. You dont so I dont.

Bob

[Dufusyte]

The method I described is not track based at all. Clips are flagged as MultiCam. Clips - not tracks. The Clips can be on any track, and you can move them from track to track. The track is irrelevant.

Whenever the Editline falls on a Clip that has been flagged as MultiCam, it pops the clip into the MultiCam Bay window.

[Dufusyte]

My method is also not track based since it does not rely on the Z method (lowest track appears frontmost) to make the Selected Multicam clip visible, rather it relies on Alpha settings to hide/unhide the clips which have been flagged as multicam.

[SBowie]

I think we must be approaching the general point in SE's maturing process that an integral multicam solution should be sliding onto the discussion table. However it is obvious to all, I'm sure, that it's a tad more complex to implement in code than it is to write a page long feature description. Let's start by getting this onto the wishlist - realizing that in doing that, you may push something else down quite a bit.

[Dufusyte]

Design process:

1: The Concept. This is like Concept Art for a movie production, or a Concept Car for automobile design, etc. It is an idea, perhaps an idealized idea.

2: Implementation: this is where the engineers and coders say it cannot be done, and the Concept gets watered down. Sony and Apple have been known to hammer the engineers until they actually implement the concept instead of rationalizing "why it cannot be implemented"; this has allowed Sony and Apple to be leaders in innovation and cool products.

Ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs about it, and he'll tell you an instructive little story. Call it the Parable of the Concept Car. "Here's what you find at a lot of companies," he says, kicking back in a conference room at Apple's gleaming white Silicon Valley headquarters, which looks something like a cross between an Ivy League university and an iPod. "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory!

"What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse."

When Jobs took up his present position at Apple in 1997, that's the situation he found. He and Jonathan Ive, head of design, came up with the original iMac, a candy-colored computer merged with a cathode-ray tube that, at the time, looked like nothing anybody had seen outside of a Jetsons cartoon. "Sure enough," Jobs recalls, "when we took it to the engineers, they said, 'Oh.' And they came up with 38 reasons. And I said, 'No, no, we're doing this.' And they said, 'Well, why?' And I said, 'Because I'm the CEO, and I think it can be done.' And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit."

from 2005 Time article (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118384,00.html)


I give Steve Jobs alot of credit for not only coming up with innovative ideas, but perhaps even more importantly, making them happen. That has made Apple very successful.

[SBowie]

And when you're the CEO, you'll have the same privilege. :)

Until then, you'll find that those on the pointy end of the stick are very busy people who get a lot of suggestions. Someone has the next great idea every other day. A few of these really are good, some are good but come at the wrong time, and some are just plain ridiculous. (Then there are many that have been considered previously and rejected for one reason or another.)

In my experience, ideas that 1) aren't too much of a departure from current implementation, that 2) fill an often requested need, and which 3) are succinctly explained have the best chance of success. More radical notions, regardless of merit, are much more difficult to sell - there are a lot more stakeholders involved. And of course, a difficult implementation which necessarily consumes resources that would otherwise have been expended on established goals faces other hurdles. This is not an ideal situation, but it is reality.

[ScorpioProd]

OK, not based on tracks.

Except SpeedEDIT doesn't support effects tied to CLIPS, either.

[Randall Chesbro]

OR they could just pay Bob for what he has done and work on it a little more.
just think what Bob could do if they paid him for 1 year just to wright for them.

[SCS]

Let's keep VT & SE's 3rd party developers happy, or they may end up coding for someone else...

[ScorpioProd]

And let's remember the results of third-party developers being absorbed into Newtek in the past...

[Bobt]

The method I described is not track based at all. Clips are flagged as MultiCam. Clips - not tracks. The Clips can be on any track, and you can move them from track to track. The track is irrelevant.
Whenever the Editline falls on a Clip that has been flagged as MultiCam, it pops the clip into the MultiCam Bay window.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That would not be easy. 1 reason OVERLAP.
The user is free to overlap the clips. Then which multicam clip track 1 has priority?
So its not a simple flagging them item.
Free flow allows you to move an entire clip and as such overlap several
other clips of the same priority.
A secondary decision tree would have be written to decide the priority of
the clip based on its position in the timeline in the case of overlap.

This of course would require being part of the Edit application and some information would have to be added to the actual timeline element to
indicate its a Multicam item and when a user moves the item it then has
to reevaluate all the Multicam items based on all of their positions on the timeline.
There are some other interesting issues that can occur allowing free flow
formatting.
Bob

[Bobt]

PS Finish Eugenes feature request list first please..
Slo mo? etc. Effects on a clip?
Thanks all.
Bob

[Dufusyte]

Thanks all for your contributions to this discussion.

Regarding "SpeedEDIT doesn't support effects tied to CLIPS," I'm not sure what this means, because it seems to be that operations are always performed on clips, such as adjustments to Alpha, or Positioning. The implementation I am describing hides/unhides clips, and the hiding/unhiding can be achieved by adjusting, for example, the Alpha of the clip (alpha=100% to Hide the clip) or by Position (move clip offscreen to Hide it).

Allow me to restate the process, which will also address Bobt's points.

1. You flag certain clips as Multicam; there can me several layers of multicam clips naturally. The default state of any clip flagged Multicam is Hidden. This means, for example, the alpha for all MultiCam clips is set at 100% (or they are Positioned Off Screen, if this seems a better method of Hiding them, or they are Shrunk to 1x1 pixel Size, if this is a preferable method). So, if you play back using the regular Video Output Window, you do not see any of the MultiCam Clips.

2. Meanwhile, if you open Window>MultiCamBay, then you have your MultiCam Bay Window (somewhat similar to the regular Video Output Window except...) which displays only your MultiCam clips (the MultiCam clips which are current at the EditLine, naturally). If you Select one of these MultiCam clips in the MultiCamBay (by clicking on it, or using a number shortcut key I suppose), then that MultiCam clip becomes unHidden. If you glance over at your regular Video Output Window, you notice the Active (unHidden) MultiCam clip is now showing up there, integrated into the rest of your video (including your regular overlays, and whatever else you may have going on in Regular Video Land).

3. Ok, now you decide to close your MultiCam Bay window and do some regular editing on the Timeline. You see two clips which had been flagged MultiCam and which were made Active (unHidden) via the MultiCam Bay. You decide to overlap them. Naturally what happens follows the normal rules for overlapping clips in the regular Timeline, namely, the one of the lower track appears in front of the one in the higher track. There is nothing special about the MultiCam flag in this regard.

4. Now you decide to go back into your MultiCam Bay to play this section to see what happens. As you come to the place where the two MultiCam clips overlap, you notice the MultiCam Bay window indicates that Two clips are Active (they have a Red border which indicates the clip is Active). You continue viewing happily.

5. Just for fun, you rewind and play through that overlap section again in the MultiCam Bay, and this time, while the two clips are Active, you decide to click on a third clip in the MultiCam Bay window to make the Third one the Active MultiCam clip. Lo and behold, as soon as you click on the Third clip, the other two become Hidden again (deActivated) because as a rule, when you click on a clip in the MultiCam Bay window to make it Active, all other clips with the MultiCam flag which are current on the Timeline become inActive from that point (naturally a Cut is performed at the point of the click). This is just the rule for how the MultiCam flag and the MultiCam Bay work.

6. For folks who need to work around this, they are free to go in and Uncheck the MultiCam flag from clips if they want to preserve tricky overlaps one some clips while they continue tinkering with the same section on the timeline in the MultiCam Bay.

And there you have it, folks.

Meanwhile, new and unusual ideas are always the hardest to get implemented, but they can also be the most profitable. SpeedEdit's most notable features have been its interactive Storyboard, format agnostic Timeline, and Realtime processing. As more companies implement these features, it becomes necessary for SpeedEdit to come up with something new to retain its leadership and viablility in the marketplace. NAB will see several editing apps catching up with SpeedEdit; will SpeedEdit have anything that is a major stride beyond its competitors?

[Bobt]

SpeedEDIT doesn't support effects tied to CLIPS," I'm not sure what this means,

It means no 3rd party developer can make an effect that can be attached to
an individual clip so only the single clip is affected by its processing.

I might add if NewTek finally gets to doing this then that new addition
should allow for the injection of alpha channel as well.
As for the rest.. Not to knock it but its harder than what I have now.
If you place it into the editor it should be automagic..
Anyway.. thats my 2 cents.

Bob

[bbeanan]

I have personally used Bob's Multicam to do a 9 camera HD multicam edit and personally I can not think of a more simple way to do it... Reading your description sounds like it would be more work with no additional benefit. While it took me about 15 minutes to sync up all 9 of my clips, I did the full edit on 1 hour of footage in about 1.5 hours total.
Faster than any other system I have ever seen short of live real time switching...

[Tony R]

I have Bob's Multicam and, while it does do what it is supposed to, I wish it would allow me to preview the take before I commit to it. I find it very difficult to look at 9 monitors that just show a light on the one that is selected at the moment. I do a lot of fast cuts at times and it is completely impossible to follow and gives me no idea what the final cut (sorry for the pun) will look like. If it does that now and I am just unaware, then maybe I am missing something. I hope that is the case.

[ScorpioProd]

Bob's MCE has a full screen preview mode that would show you what I think you are asking for. As in play back your MCE and see each take full screen instead of just in the multiple clip matrix. It's one of the settings right on Bob's preview screen.

[Tony R]

I wasnt aware of that. I will try it. Thanks for the tip Eugene.

[Piper4873]

I have used Bob's MC for several years and actually don't know anything else. I have a friend who uses Liquid and while the MC is a bit easier,,, it has to render EVERYTHING separately and that is a pain. Once he has made his cuts, he can't change them without re-rendering... another pain. Hey, give me VT and Bob and I am happy..... I really do like the new full screen preview also.... thanks Bob, appreciate you very much.

Mike
Turning Leaf Media

[gymcoach]

Bob has the muticam been fixed for the 5.2 update?

[Quiet1onTheSet]

I have personally used Bob's Multicam to do a 9 camera HD multicam edit and personally I can not think of a more simple way to do it... While it took me about 15 minutes to sync up all 9 of my clips, I did the full edit on 1 hour of footage in about 1.5 hours total.
Faster than any other system I have ever seen short of live real time switching...
Wow, Brett. Bob could really use that fine plug in his marketing!
:thumbsup:

Sure as heck convinces me to install my copy of Bob'sMultiCamEditor, but I'm not sure it's VT 5.2-ready (just yet).
:vticon:
:rolleyes:

Hmmmm. I wonder if NewTek has been able to provide Bob the tweaked SDK hooks for 5.2, that he's been in need of...
:question:

[Scott Bates]

I wonder if NewTek has been able to provide Bob the tweaked SDK hooks for 5.2, that he's been in need of...

Yes - http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92299 - Post # 49.