Hi Zadoc-Lee,
That's a great question and something I've been wondering about since I picked up PD7 a couple of weeks ago. You inspired me to do some experimenting. What you are describing is known as an A-B-C-D roll edit. You have four sources that you want to combine into one master video. This can be done two ways...live, as the production is running, or editing in the studio, which takes more work. You're going to use method 2.
If you want PD7 to do it, I think I've found a way. But there are a few prerequisites. If all your camera people taped the event in its entirety without turning off their cameras, you can sync all four sources. If not, you probably can just skip the rest of this post as you will have to grind it out in trying to match all the clips.
Let's assume you have all the footage entirely shot with all cameras rolling from beginning to end. The first thing to do is to find a "sync" point for all sources. What this means is that you have to find a video frame that is common to all video sources at the beginning of filming. It could have been a camera flash going off, a certain sound, the MC walking on stage...anything that all four sources can lock onto as a common starting point.
Let's assume a camera flash went off when all four cameras were recording. This is the sync point and the very beginning were all of your sources will start. After capturing all your sources, make this sync point the start of your master video track, and the other PIP tracks.
Turn off your audio on the other PIP tracks. The master video will provide all the sound.
If you are planning to make many frequent cuts between all four sources, this method I am describing will be very tedious and hard to do. However, if you plan to cut to each source after several minutes or so, it will be easier.
Set Up Your Tracks:
Your main camera will be on the master video track on PD7.
PIP 1 should have footage that you want to cut to the most.
PIP 2 should be next in line for frequency of use.
PIP 3 and PIP 4 next in order of use.
Ok, now the fun begins. Lock your master track so it can't move. You'll see a little padlock at the beginning of the time line. Click to lock.
The next thing you'll do is to just work with your master track and PIP1. Click on PIP1 track and play as a clip. You'll see tabs above the tracks. One of them will say "split." This is your device to chop up PIP1 clips. In preview window, you'll see PIP as a little box. Move this to one of the corners so you can see the master track behind this.
Now you can begin editing. Make sure you save very frequently, or set your options to save every couple of minutes. PD7 is doing an awful lot right now, and it sometimes crashes.
Click on the PIP 1 track to select it. Then hit play in the preview window and make sure you are playing in "clip" mode. You'll see the main source play with the PIP 1 track playing in the corner. Watch the PIP1 window to figure out what scene you want to cut into the main video. Once you know where your scene begins and ends, hit the "split" button once to set where the cut starts, and a second time to where the scene ends. Stop the video. You will now see three segments. The first segment isn't needed. The middle one is what you just selected. Now you can use the slider to move through your PIP clip to the next segment you want. Make sure you delete the footage that you don't want previous to your cut.
If you make a mistake, no problem, just hit ctrl Z and you can erase your mistake in cutting. You can do going back up to 50 times, but you'll never need to do this.
Now, do this until you have the whole thing done. PIP 1 should have a track that is filled with spaces and clips. Now, you have to resize all of your PIP1 clips by dragging the box in the preview window to full size. When the PIP1 track plays, it will cut on top of the main video. Once you finish with PIP 1, lock it, and move onto the next sources. Remember, you can only cut to the PIP sources if another PIP track isn't already taking up timeline space. During your editing, if you want to see how the movie looks with the edited clips, you can just view in movie mode. Just don't forget to switch back to clip mode when you are done. You also might want to resize your PIPs to full frame after each clip is done so you won't have to do them all after you finish.
If you look at the time line, you'll see that there are spaces between the clips in PIP 1. These spaces are the places where you can add additional clip material from your other PIP sources. Since the majority of your cuts will come from PIP1, and the other PIP windows are just used to give different perspectives, the rest should go pretty quickly.
Remember to save, save, save.
This is what I did to practice. PD7 gives you a ready made clip of fishes swimming around. Use this clip for your main video. In PIP1, place another clip of this also. Change this PIP clips color to an extreme setting by right clicking on it so you can make the distinction of which clip is which.
Try and do what I described in the steps above and you'll see how this all works. It sounds a lot more complicated then it really is, but if you can make yourself a practice session that works, you'll be able to do your four camera edit.
I think what I may try to do is to make a short video of this later if all these steps are making you crazy.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Dec 18. 2008 20:35