Quote Im making a music video, and have more than 4 video tracks - so I can't use multicam. Is there a way to automate making tracks visible (enable/disable)? I can't find anything about it in the help file. I'd like to avoid actually removing the unwanted sections - which makes the trackview look like Swiss Cheese!

There's no automated way to do that, so on the main timeline you're always going to need to either cut out the clips on the bottom to let the higher tracks show ("Swiss Cheese", or more accurately, an inverted bar graph), or to set the opacity on all lower clips to 0 (intact tracks but much more work).

Note that you only need to remove lower tracks than the one you want to see. All clips above the lowest visible track are blocked unless the clip is transparent, is chroma-keyed or is scaled to be smaller than any clips above it.

For example, if you have 6 tracks, take a look at how easy it is to see which is the active track if you cut out the unwanted lower tracks:



It's clear as day that the sequence is 2, 3, 1, 5, 6.

Now here is the exact same sequence, only instead of removing the unwanted lower tracks, the opacity is set to zero on them:



Can you even tell which clips are enabled/visible?

Here's a zoomed in view of the lower right corner, with the opacity (the thin horizontal grey line on the video thumbnail) highlighted, showing visible clips in green and disabled clips in red:



It would be somewhat easier to see if you turned of the continuous thumbnails, but I'd still use the remove lower tracks method.

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That was a fantastic answer - I appreciate the effort you put into that. Having dealt mainly with audio, being able to automate tracks is a standard feature. I guess it's not considered as such in video, maybe because most people would use multicam instead.

But I see your method makes a lot of sense. I have the top track, which is the various backgrounds. For the first time (ever) I'm using a green screen - finally bought a setup from Ebay - and it really works well, but I have five different videos of performance to choose from, so that's too many for the multicam feature. I will do it the way you suggested, with the inverted bar graph. It's the easiest to see, at a glance, and figure out what's going on. That, plus the cue sheet I made up, should make it less of a hassle!

Thanks again for a great answer.

- Russ

Crap! Because I'm using the green screen (chroma key), it doesn't work. I guess I'll have to REALLY "Swiss Cheese" it...

Quote Crap! Because I'm using the green screen (chroma key), it doesn't work. I guess I'll have to REALLY "Swiss Cheese" it...

Not necessarily

Since all of your lower tracks are green screened, you would have to remove all tracks other than the selected clip and the background throughout your project UNLESS you individually produced each full track with the background first.

In other words, convert each of your 5 chroma-keyed tracks to nromal clips one by one, and then import them and sync them on the timeline without the upper background track. Be sure to produce them to the full quality output you'll be using for your finished project.

As an added bonus, you can then use SVRT to very quickly transfer each section of the already-produced clips to the final video, which may only take a few seconds AND there will be no change in visual quality since you won't be re-rendering any of the content.

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If I'm understanding you, you're suggesting I create the green clips with the appropriate background, then use that. Which would be great, and I might do it - once I have the backgrounds completely determined. As it is now, I have a number of background movies and jpgs, and I'm changing the lengths and placements as the song goes on, since I haven't completely decided yet.

But once they're converted, that's it. So I'll wait until I have the background track absolutely finished.

- Russ

Quote


Not necessarily

Since all of your lower tracks are green screened, you would have to remove all tracks other than the selected clip and the background throughout your project UNLESS you individually produced each full track with the background first.

In other words, convert each of your 5 chroma-keyed tracks to nromal clips one by one, and then import them and sync them on the timeline without the upper background track. Be sure to produce them to the full quality output you'll be using for your finished project.

As an added bonus, you can then use SVRT to very quickly transfer each section of the already-produced clips to the final video, which may only take a few seconds AND there will be no change in visual quality since you won't be re-rendering any of the content.

OK. I'd assumed that your background was static, but seeing how you're going to be creating/adjusting it as you go along, I actually think your original idea may be better.

In order to do my second suggestion, you'd have to lock in the background ahead of time and be 100% sure you'd never need to change it, no matter what clips you chose to use in the video. If that works, then you'll be all set to proceed. Note that if you do need to make a background change, you'd need to produce new versions of all your chroma-keyed clips.

On the other hand, if you're going to need to keep tweaking clips/durations/background until everything looks right, you're probably better off starting with universal cuts across all clips (as shown in my screen images) and then using your original approach.

You'll then have the flexibility to adjust each clip's duration and timing while keeping your background options open. One nice aspect of starting out with all your clips synced on the timeline is that it's easy to extend any clip to an adjacent area if you want to use it rather than the clip you'd originally placed there.

In that sense, Swiss Cheese is actually a little easier to work with for the main editing, since you won't have to move all the clip edges each time like in the "bar graph" version. However, it's more work for the initial upfront setup to clear out the other 4 unwanted chroma-keyed tracks for each scene.

Hopefully, somewhere in this discussion you'll find the best way to proceed...

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Thanks again for your attention to my thread. I'm struggling my way through it, hopefully it will all look good when I'm done! I appreciate your time in answering this.

I guess Swiss Cheese is the way to go. It's not that bad, now that I've gotten used to the hot keys.

- Russ

Quote I'm struggling my way through it, hopefully it will all look good when I'm done!

Before multicam I used Sync by audio and put 4 different videos on the preview screen by resizing and placement. You can do five. This way I can see all the videos playing at once. If you desire the video on track 1 then lower the opacity of the videos on the lower 4 tracks. If you want the track 5 to show then resizing it to full screen does the job. Did this for a friend’s graduation many years ago on PD12. The opacity line information from optodata works well.