I continued experimenting with my video clips. I took short clips that definitely overlapped in audio and time. I even produced them with the "Produce Range" feature to be sure they are fo the same type of video, and then selected them for sync. I spent several hours trying all sorts of ways to use this new audio sync. The end result always is that the two video clips are placed, one following the other. From my experience, this feature does not work. And it is the part that I really looked forward to using because I felt it would save me tons of time with many hours of video clips from two different cameras. I can use the manual mode and the multicam feature is nice. But manual is really laborious!

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Bill Bill Seifert
HP Pavilion Desktop TP01-2022
8 core
AMD Radeon
Windows 11, 16 GB RAM

Quote: I eagerly tried out the new Multicam feature. I figured out most of the bells and whistles. But the end result is the same: the two vidoes do not overlap at all, as if no audio matches. I can use markers to get close, but it would be nice to have a precise match of the audio of each of the two. I conclude that the audio format of each camera must match. Does that mean when others are running their cameras they must have the same brand and all the audio parameters br the same? If so, I can't use hours of video clips I have been given to use the Multicam feature the way I expected in my next project.

Quote: I continued experimenting with my video clips. I took short clips that definitely overlapped in audio and time. I even produced them with the "Produce Range" feature to be sure they are fo the same type of video, and then selected them for sync. I spent several hours trying all sorts of ways to use this new audio sync. The end result always is that the two video clips are placed, one following the other. From my experience, this feature does not work. And it is the part that I really looked forward to using because I felt it would save me tons of time with many hours of video clips from two different cameras. I can use the manual mode and the multicam feature is nice. But manual is really laborious!

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Bill

Hi Watercolorwilly/Bill,
I don't think you're doing anything wrong. Clearly there is something remiss with the feature MultiiCam and the issue you have posted here needs further investigation and confirmation.

1. I would like to have some sample clips from you, too large to attach to a reply. I'll send you the information via PM. they'll need to be suitable for a multicam test - same event and same audio etc.
2. Please can you create a video screen capture of the actions you're carrying out? A free and easy to use video screen capture software is Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 free version, see Part F in the guide for the link: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/29701.page
Upload the video to the same location as item 1.
3. What are the cameras you're using, make and model please?
4. Please provide a diagnostic of your computer. See Part B http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/29701.page

I'm sure many editors have different cameras and are concerned to know if they'll have issues to. Thank you for posting your issue Bill.

The information you'll provide will be passed onto CyberLink.

Dafydd
Forum Moderator

Dafydd,

In trying to prepare some sample video clips for you to demonstrate my problem, I discovered something. While my camera's video clips are all separate, my friend's clips were one continuous series of clips from about the same timeframe. I had used PD's trim feature for scene detection and thought it did a good job.

What I now see is that two very similar clips were still together in one scene after the detection. I split this scene at the correct spot and used one of the two for the Multicam feature. I had to produce that selected scene so as to import it to the Multicam feature. Therefore, I had my .MOV and my friends VTS (reproduced in MPEG-2) clips loaded. I clicked on "Audio Analysis" and it immediately they overlapped exactly where it should have.

My only concern (complaint) now is that I have to further split and produce 100s of clips so that they can be brought into Multicam for the audio analysis. I wish I could split and delete parts of clips once in Multicam rather than the laborious method I just described. Perhaps I just don't yet know all the options that Multicam has provided.

I did notice that when recording the result in Multicam, I can only pick one or the other camera audio. This is a problem when selected Camera 1 audio runs out and Camera 2 audio has to fill in. To restate, I think I can't switch from audio 1 to 2 and back at will when needed and I have a need to have PD use the audio from the chosen camera as it switches cameras. (I'll have to create that situation again to better describe this.) Bill Seifert
HP Pavilion Desktop TP01-2022
8 core
AMD Radeon
Windows 11, 16 GB RAM

Hi Bill,

You are correct in that "as designed" the MC module really bases everything on a user defined "master audio" track, ie everything is aligned to that and therefore there is no reason to have other audio available. As CL's 1st implementation of this feature, I suppose it works OK within this design box.

However, a number of folk do want something more than this original design idea and there are a couple of workarounds - whether they are worth the effort or not, I leave to individuals to assess.

The main workaround (again within a set of circumstances) enables all video clips to be transferred to the main timeline synched together, so that they can be edited manually in their entirety (which is what some folk wanted?). I demonstrate the workaround here :

http://youtu.be/8DtJDjjq8nA

However, for simplicity, I stuck to the "master audio" principle and therefore all video tracks are made available but they "incorporate" only the master audio track.

It is possible to transfer each video track with it's own audio with the addition of an extra step.

When the next camera track is selected by the rt click technique, then the camera audio source must also be changed to that camera's own audio. The resulting "snip" can then be transferred to the main timelines with it's own audio.

I haven't tested this exhaustively but it seems to work in the scenario I demonstrate.

As I say, whether this is worth doing is open to question, and I suppose CL will look to incorporate further developments in later versions so .................

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.

Thanks, Adrian!

Your video gave me an idea to work around my problem. It's a little tedious, but it works for me: I made four copies of a multicam project which had four audios that overlapped somewhat, but none could be a master to cover the whole length of the combined video. I placed them on four tracks in the same timeframe.

Then I trimmed the audios of some of them on the other tracks so that I had continuous audio throughtout the total multicam, using the best of each audio as I trimmed. I then moved all the trimmed audio tracks to the first track, for continuous audio throughout the resulting video, and removed all the other left over tracks. The end result was continuous audio. I had to use normalization to improve the whole audio track. I even used some audio transistions to smooth out some of the abrupt switching from one audio to another. It's not 100%, but it works for me for the time being.

Thanks again for your inspiration. I sure hope CL adds some option like this because it is a huge deficiency.

Now what I need is to figure out how to fine-tune the Trim feature where automatically detects scene changes, but it overlooked some scene changes. I need to split some of the scenes it did not do well. And those split scenes must be importable to Multicam - I have not found a convenient way to do this, except for "Produce a range" option which places it in the library for Multicam to import.

My other video source, from a friend, provided a continuous video of all the clips on a disk. (In the future, I'll have to insist on separate video clips!)
Without 100% accurate scene selection before importing to Multicam, the audio analysis will not work. One clip with two very simialar scenes but with two audios in separate timeframes is a problem: Multicam will not recognize that audio and fail, despite both audios are in the other video clips. Audio analysis kept failing until I separated the problem clip properly into two clips. Then it worked beautifully!

Otherwise, this feature is awsome! Thanks, CL!

Bill Bill Seifert
HP Pavilion Desktop TP01-2022
8 core
AMD Radeon
Windows 11, 16 GB RAM