Upgraded from PD11 ultra to PD12 because I do multi-cam.

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Solved by

Sep 13, 2013 11:16

First - media suite 10 came on my HP PC, and I upgraded in June - only one month after getting the new PC to PD11 Ultra.

It crashed allot, especially when undocking the preview screen, and for the most part, learned to live with that, and saved projects frequently.

So, this new version comes out, with enhanced multi-cam support. I asked for a free upgrade, since I havent had the problem very long, and this has fallen on deaf ears.

Today I paid, and upgraded. I pulled up a multi-cam project from late august, which I had previously synced. This is two cams AVCHD60p, and the external audio is from my zoom h6 96k/24 bit.. I watched the tutorial on the new sync plug-in.. It seemed simple enough.

A) I imported the clips into the plug-in, and tried (a couple times) an audio sync. The videos sync fine, the audio (.wav) doesnt sync.

B) I cant put markers on it (the .wav file)
C) The audio on the video sometimes plays in preview, mostly doesnt.
D)It's not obvious how to mark-in or mark out camera segments
E)I only seem to be able to cancel out of the screen..

The last two are probably user knowledge on my part, but the audio handling in sync seems broke.

If I dont see the increase in rendering speed, this order is going to get cancelled through the CC company. The fiew times which I've dealt with support, they have wanted me to fill out their nice little todo list before telling me about known or unknown problems.. This company doesnt seem to understand that my time is valuable. Hence - they are getting this bug report rather publicly.. I'm sure that someone more on a peer level to me than an entry level tech support person might read this, and actually take action on my behalf.

A and C are probably bugs. I'll now go and RTM, and see if I missed something obvious on the others.

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 13, 2013 14:27

This may not be new to PD12.
Some clips in a timeline will have content aware editing greyed out until the video and audio are unlinked. Once they are unlinked, then content aware editing can be selected.
I dont understand this behavior, it occurs with no pattern or predictability that I see. It's easy to work around it though

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 13, 2013 15:12

*sigh*
I seriously hope that I'm missing something here. I just did a two camera sync with the record option. It's cute, it syncs the clips.

What I want is to be able to have the clips put back fully into the timeline in different tracks, but in sync. The clicking between the two cameras gives me a hard cut, and I prefer a soft fade - eg track 2 over one, and I fade the opacity on track 2... I'm hoping once again that I've overlooked something here.

On Content aware editing - I was hoping that I would see a fix in behavior here.. When I select and deselect segments, then hit OK, the clip is placed back onto the timeline with the selected cuts right next to each other on the timeline, so if I had a track in sync before, now it's out of sync with the other cam, and my separately captured audio track. Considering this, my workflow would then be - content aware edit, and select obly the keeper cliplets, then bring these into the multi-camera editor for syncing. But - I'm currently forced to a single timeline after the clip sync. If this is correct, this could have been done much better. I dont want to have to do all of my scene switching in the applet, but it looks like there is no option if I use this method of sync. In the previous version, I put my tracks onto the timeline, and synced by ear, then fade in/out the upper track(s)

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Sep 13, 2013 16:29

You have raised multiple issues in your 3 posts, which may it difficult to answer concisely.

My previous posts on this module emphasise that I view the MC module as more of a mixing desk than a full blown editor.

I believe it's rationale is to synch a max of 4 tracks together using a user choice of "master" parameters.

It assumes that the tracks are individually in A/V synch for an audio master parameter.

It's basic function is therefore to allow synching of 4 tracks, and then to allow the hard cut mixing of the tracks by manually selecting camera tracks, through a form of recording the "cuts" to a single track.

Actually, it is not a true "recording" but really a mark in and mark out recording, which when accepted, transfers the resulting single track to the main timeline. Once on the main timeline the individual "clips" can be edited, moved, extended or shortened etc to suit as they are not "recordings" but just mark in and outs.

There seems to be no possibility of independently editing or handling audio tracks.

If you accept the prime purpose is a mixing desk then then your requirement of synching 2 tracks to separate tracks is not possible, other than by running the MC module twice and accepting the outputs to differing main timeline tracks.

However, used in the standard way, you can apply whatever transition you want to your "recorded" clips and/or move them to different tracks to manually adjust opacity fades etc.

I'm not sure that is a full answer, but I hope it helps.

As to the Content Aware aspect, I'm afraid I have not the experience in your requirement to properly answer your problem.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 13, 2013 17:04

Considering in PD11, it already can handle 100 tracks, the work was really in syncing the tracks to each other on the timeline.. I'd be pleased to have a tool that would do that, and this plug-in, is almost there.. if it would let me hit OK, and have the main editor timeline filled with synced tracks.

While it looked good on the brochure, in practice, it's not really a good solution.. The first time I did just under 30 video clips and two external .wavs by hand, it took me more than a day, and now I can do it by hand in a couple hours.

This solution just doesnt work for me since it doesnt work with the external audio, and even with just the video clips, what I end up with are hard cut cliplets with no nice and simple fade from cam to cam.. before I was just fading down the upper track.. Even then, I'd keep the different cameras in a reduced sized PIP, so that I could watch both videos concurrently to know where to do the fades in the pip editor.. For that matter, it would have actually been simpler, and far more useful in the pip editor to impliment a fade up/fade down.. eg two key frames.. one having the prior keyframe, and xx frames before automatically placed. This implementation wasnt fully thought out, and as a plug in, they should have been able to beta this better before issuing this in a numbered release.. A good idea, but sloppy.

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 13, 2013 17:13

This isnt useful enough for me to want to have to pay for it in an upgrade. Especially, since I paid for an upgrade in June. At this point, I think I simply want a refund, and not have to try to explain things to someone in tech support. It's a friday. If I dont have a definitive anser to this by monday, I think that my least cost solution is to call AMX and tell them that this is now in dispute. But, I'll hold off for now. I sure feel like a sucker though. It took me a couple of hours to figure out the hype from the reality. I should pass this over to CNET as a complaint, since they've been so overboard with their praise.. But, I'll wait until Monday.

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 13, 2013 18:45

I did this in PD11.. From what I see, PD12 doesnt give me anything.. If it would just find the sync spots, then drop them back into the main editor timeline it would work.
external audio sync to a 96k/24 bit wav doesnt work.
Pip editor needs a mid-clip fader..
The cold cuts are far too abrupt.

I've gotten pretty quick syncing multiple cams, but it's still tedious.

The content editing is also lacking, since the cuts go away, and the keeps are jammed up next to the prior keep, which is no good when you're doing live music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUoayFqoL3U

ToddFerrante

Newbie Joined: Sep 06, 2013 23:43 Messages: 6 Offline

Sep 19, 2013 15:48

I didn't see this thread until just now. On the weekend I tested using the MC plugin to sync tracks on the main editor timeline. Here is what I did:
- In MC, import soundtrack and two video clips.
- Use auto sync to audio.
- Make two cuts using the record button, one from each video track.
- Send the resulting clip back to the main editor. It goes to track one.
- Move the clip away from time zero.
- Copy video clip 1 from track 1 to track 2.
- Copy video clip 2 from track 1 to track 3.
- Copy audio track from track 1 to audio sound track.
- Drag the marks on the ends of these tracks so they are restored to their full length.
- (Optional) Delete output from MC from track 1.

You now have synced audio and video tracks in the main editor timeline. These can be edited conventionally. The big drawback is that the video clips have lost their original audio tracks, so there is no way to tell if they are truly synced with each other.

Todd F.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Sep 19. 2013 15:51

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 20, 2013 12:07

You did this with an external audio ? that was stumbling block number one.. I have consistently had no luck having this work with my zoom h6 96/24 wav files on 60i or 60p video ( or 24p).

I simply want to sync my clips and not be forced to make cuts. Or - after MC is done - it can sync the video clips.. But I cant keep that on my own timeline.

I dont see a reply back from support. I'm still feeling ripped off on this

mr micheal w

Newbie Joined: Jul 30, 2013 17:11 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 20, 2013 12:23

correction - I did recieve a reply from Cyberlink with a description of how MC worked, which I previously paid to figure out.

It galls me that I just paid for an upgrade in June from 10 to 11, and two months later, am paying again for an upgrade. I'm doing 2-3 camera with external audio as a matter of practice.

Todd - I'm sorry, in your explanation - I'm unclear when you are in the main editor, and when you are in MC.

Are you starting with a blank timeline, or an existing project...
There might be something salvageable in here from what I think that I'm reading.. In any case - it looks like their first attempt turns out to be more complex than it needed to be..

..

So, If I forget about syncing to my external audio for the time being, I should be able to at least get something in the way of camera sync by doing a mc sync times each camera.

The zoom thing seems to be a separate issue, likely to do with a timestamp oddity in the H6 - eg 12 hrs off for some reason, and PD might be trying to use file time info as a starting point