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intercutting two videos of one event. Hints and tips?
fishtop_records
Newbie Location: Wayne, PA Joined: May 12, 2016 02:02 Messages: 39 Offline
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I was out riding my motorcycle the other day, capturing it all on my GoPro. I crashed, falling end over end. Got the video. A buddy was following on his bike, with his own GoPro, and I have his video as well.

I want to intercut the two videos, showing a few seconds from one, then switch to the other for a few seconds, back and forth, combining my helmet-eye-view with his following view.

I don't see any obvious way to do this? Got any hint?


Should I put each video on a separate track and make cuts, then slide the videos forward or back?

Or try to manually cut them and place them in the right places?

or maybe there is a tutorial?

Thanks
Pat
Anonymous [Avatar]
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Quote I was out riding my motorcycle the other day, capturing it all on my GoPro. I crashed, falling end over end. Got the video. A buddy was following on his bike, with his own GoPro, and I have his video as well.

I want to intercut the two videos, showing a few seconds from one, then switch to the other for a few seconds, back and forth, combining my helmet-eye-view with his following view.

I don't see any obvious way to do this? Got any hint?


Should I put each video on a separate track and make cuts, then slide the videos forward or back?

Or try to manually cut them and place them in the right places?

or maybe there is a tutorial?

Thanks
Pat


You've almost answered your own question! Drop your shot on Video Tr.1, drop your friend's shot on Video Tr.2. The next bit may be tricky as you'll need to find some kind of audio cue(yeah, above the noise of the engines, might be a big ask, but audio is the best cue to syncronise the two clips, unless you can find a suitable video cue).

When you've got your two clips synchronised, ignore the clip on Video Tr.1, there's no need to cut it(assuming of course that each shot was just one long stream of video). You'll be working on the content of Video Tr.2. I should add, to synchronise the clips, the content on Tr.2 might need to be reduced to a quarter-size(a corner of the screen) temporarily so you can see the two clips together. With syncing done, the second clip is simply cut in places where you want your video to appear. Simply split the Video on Tr.2 to create points at which the video on that track will come in or out of shot. Using "Modify" you can make the wanted parts appear and disappear with the opacity setting. Using the first piece of your friend's clip as an example, place a keyframe at the very beginning of this clip, then count forward one second(for PAL, 25 frames, for NTSC, 24 frames) and place another keyframe at that point, then go to the end of what we'll call "the insert" and place a keyframe there, then count back one second and place a keyframe at that spot. At the very first keyframe and at the very end, set the opacity to "0". Play your sequence and you'll see the item fade in and out. Copy the keyframes and paste them to the subsequent "inserts" and the job's done! Sorry if my explanation stumbles or appears laborious, but at least you'll get the idea of what I'm trying to say. Other contributors to this forum may provide better ideas, just go with what's easiest to follow.
ynotfish
Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Online
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Hi Pat -

... and you survived to tell the tale!

This little video might offer you some ways to do it. As Neil says, syncing the audio will probably be a bit challenging (though there would have been some prominent sounds!)



Cheers - Tony
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Anonymous [Avatar]
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Tony's tutorial video fairly-well puts into pictures what I, in my stubling fashion, tried to explain. The only thig I don't use is sync by audio as my experiments with that feature were disppointing(to me, at any rate), plus the fact that the noise of your motorbike engines may prove difficult to properly synchronise. That said, the idea as shown in Tony's video should help considerably in what you aim to do. Good luck. Just now noted, Tony and I get shared credit for solving this... Gee, thanks!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Feb 11. 2017 01:11

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Quote ...I want to intercut the two videos, showing a few seconds from one, then switch to the other for a few seconds, back and forth, combining my helmet-eye-view with his following view.

I don't see any obvious way to do this? Got any hint?


The solutions presented are pretty good, but I'd use the Multi-Cam designer (if your version has it available). I bought the "Ultimate" version and I don't know if all of them have it.

Look in the upper left of the Edit world at your "Import Media" icon. Just to the right is another mysterious looking icon that opens a tool menu. Multi-Cam designer is at the top. Highlight both of your video clips and select Multi-Cam Designer. The rest is pretty easy to figure out. First sync your videos together (try audio sync and click Apply, upper center),. Next, start at the beginning, hit the record button, and click on each camera that you want to cut live when you want it to appear. Very easy! Once you finish your rough cut, you can click OK at the bottom to pull the work to a single track in the Edit timeline. There you can add dissolves, fine tune, etc.

Three things should be said about this nifty tool: 1). The preview windows for each camera are a Godsend because you can see all cameras simultaneously. 2). You can re-record over any part of the finished cut to change or refine it. You can also grab the edges of a cut and drag it left or right to adjust when the cut happens. 3). If you re-record parts of your finished track, you may end up with fragmented clips (same clip, plays contiguously but shows up in parts). These will carry back to the Edit timeline but you can highlight the parts of one clip, right click and Combine them. 4). Hint: You can take just one clip to the Multi-cam Designer and then import the rest from your hard drive. The nice thing about this is that whatever clips you end up using are automatically carried back to your media room and the ones you don't use aren't.

If you have Multi-Cam designer, it is well worth learning to use!

Len
Anonymous [Avatar]
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I think with the Multi-Cam designer you need at least four different items to be spliced together using this tool. Fishtop_Records only had the two shots, his own and that of a friend. Multi-Cam might prove to be "using a jack-hammer to crack a walnut". Just a personal view.
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
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Quote I think with the Multi-Cam designer you need at least four different items to be spliced together using this tool. Fishtop_Records only had the two shots, his own and that of a friend. Multi-Cam might prove to be "using a jack-hammer to crack a walnut". Just a personal view.


Multi-cam can be used with 2, 3, or 4 cameras, and a dedicated audio file. It's great. What used to take hours of tedious tweaking now I just push a button or 2 and I don't even have to be in the room!

However, with 2 files, the timeline SYNC BY AUDIO can be very useful. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
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Anonymous [Avatar]
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Quote
Quote I think with the Multi-Cam designer you need at least four different items to be spliced together using this tool. Fishtop_Records only had the two shots, his own and that of a friend. Multi-Cam might prove to be "using a jack-hammer to crack a walnut". Just a personal view.


Multi-cam can be used with 2, 3, or 4 cameras, and a dedicated audio file. It's great. What used to take hours of tedious tweaking now I just push a button or 2 and I don't even have to be in the room!

However, with 2 files, the timeline SYNC BY AUDIO can be very useful.


Okay, I'll stand corrected, but with Sync by Audio, I've experimented with it and the results(for me) weren't satisfactory. Anyhow, I believe Sync By Audio would have a tough time synchronising two videos with very loud motorbike engines, as would be present in Fishtop_Records' videos.
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