Multicam

[GregB]

It's hard to believe that a multicam production is SO easy to do and leaves you totally in control.  It is offered by all the front runners - Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut.

 

It is especially easy to contemplate when we all have multiple high quality phones, either from friends/family, or the devices we've recently replaced and are simply lying unused in a drawer!  Full HD, 1920x1080, has been standard in phones for close to 10 years!

 

Here's an example done in Premiere (before I switched to Resolve). It used:

• My Samsung phone for the close-up on me (unfortunately the lens wasn't clean!)
• Martin's iPhone for his close-up
• My Canon 70D DSLR on a tripod for the wide shot
• A Zoom stereo field recorder on the corner of the table between us (camera audio is still poor by comparison).  You might prefer to record directly into your DAW via one or more mics.

NOTE - ensure all cameras are set for the same frame rate. 25fps works well as this is the YouTube standard, but anything is fine as long as common to all.

 

I used the traditional hand-clap to provide a sync point all four audio stream being recorded ... the spike in the waveform is easy to identify visually in the editor and line up manually if needs be.  This is essential when there may be several seconds between each device being placed in record-mode.   But note that all editing software has the ability to sync the videos if they contain the same audio content, and it seems to do a good job. The hand-clap is cheap insurance!

 

Once the 3 video clips were sync'd, I MUTED the camera audios and just used the file from my Zoom device.  Depending on your taste, you may wish to process this audio (e.g. some EQ/Compression) in your DAW before importing into the video editor. (My example is the raw recording.)

 

When selecting 'Multicam' in the editor, you are shown a window with (in my case) the 3 different camera views. Whilst playing in real time, or scrubbing through to specific points, you simply click the camera angle you want at that moment.  The editor creates the new timeline with the clip/cut in place.  You can go back at any time and edit those cut points, e.g. to change the chosen camera angle.  More often, a cut point needs a dynamic roll to extend one clip and shorten the other.

 

 

If I performed more, I would take this approach this all the time. It makes for a far more dynamic product.  It also helps to avoid visual problems (e.g. an unwanted excessive flare in glasses, fiddling with a cheat sheet, or even a dog walking past) simply by switching the view.