Even though simplicity is always best, there are times when it just makes sense to film a video or a scene using more than one camera. So, whether it's because you
need to capture something that you can only do one time, or because you're just trying to save time while you're filming, or even if you're filming
something by yourself and you just kind of need the extra help and you don't have anybody, using multiple cameras
to film a single scene, can sometimes be the most
practical choice you can make. But sometimes putting all that footage into Final Cut Pro,
and editing it together, and syncing it all up, can sometimes turn into a nightmare and it can get really complicated. So, today I wanna show you the basics of multicam editing in Final Cut Pro. A few weeks ago I made a video about this 3D-printed
tripod head that I made and the video was all about
me putting this together. And to do that video, I actually had four
different cameras set up. And fortunately, for Final Cut Pro's multicam editing, really doesn't matter what
kind of cameras you use. You can mix very high end cameras, you can use low end cameras, you can use a little bit of everything. For that video specifically, I used the EOS R as my main camera, I used the 6D Mark II
as an overhead camera, I used the Sony RX 100 as like, a camera on one side to get some closeups, and I actually used a borrowed Sony a7 III on the other
side to get those shots. So, I had four different cameras, two Canons, two Sonys, a DSLR, mirrorless, and a point and shoot, and everything synced together just fine. So, here's the basics of
how you would do that. And the first thing is to
spend a little bit of time and plan out how you're
going to film your scene. Ultimately, regardless of
how many cameras you use, even if it's just two or 16, it's important that they're
all recording at the same time. It's very important that the cameras are recording audio at the same time. If you can't record audio,
there are ways around it, but just to be safe, make sure your cameras
are recording audio. It doesn't matter how good it is, even if you're using your phone,
it's just the phone audio, or the onboard mic or
whatever, that's fine. Just make sure every
camera has an audio source because that's going to help
you when you sync them later. And then you do wanna designate
your main audio source. So, in the case of my example video, I had the Rode Videomic
Pro+ connected to the EOS R and that was my main audio source. And then you just start recording. And what will happen later on, is that Final Cut Pro will
sync all the clips together based on their audio signals. So, sometimes once the
cameras are all recording, it can be very helpful to do something like literally clap your hands, so that way, there's a
big audio spike to sync to or even just yell out like, "Action," or say something so that
there's a clear audio signal to allow for syncing. It doesn't even necessarily matter if you start and stop some of the cameras throughout, if you have to, but you just film everything, and then when you're all done, you've got, you know, probably
three or four SD cards, in my case it was four memory cards, that I had to put into Final Cut. So, here's what that
ended up looking like. I put them all in a folder and I just called it 'Multicam Angles'. So, I have all the
footage from that video, which has like some B-roll shots and just extra footage. But the multicam angles of me actually assembling the print, I put in their own folder. And as you can see, I have two files from the 6D Mark II, I have two files from the a7 III, two files from the EOS R, and two files from the RX 100, 'cause I ended up filming
for like almost an hour to put the whole thing together. And then this is my finished timeline in Final Cut Pro for that project. So, it's kind of a simple-ish timeline. There are a lot of cuts happening here, there's not really that
much B-roll or anything, because it's all multicam. And then, of course, I've got my song and a couple of little
audio things happening. But the beauty of multicam
comes with all of these cuts. So, if you look at this project, there's, you know, I don't
even know how many cuts, many, many cuts from different angles. But the beauty of multicam is that it almost turns
your recorded footage into like a live broadcast. So, if you've ever seen
behind the scenes of a TV show when a director's calling shots, they usually have a input monitor where it's all the different sources, and then they have their program monitor where it's the thing
they're actually selecting and they're pushing a
button on a video switcher to switch between the different angles. That's basically all that you're doing with multicam and Final Cut Pro. And so, these cuts all
happen almost automatically, and then you can tighten
them up afterwards. So, I don't wanna start
with the finished project. Let's start from scratch and I'll show you how I
would put this together. So, in Final Cut, I'm
going to create a new event just to organize my footage. I'm gonna call it multicam. In the case of these cameras, I had some cameras filming at 4K and some cameras filming at 1080 and they're all different bit rates. So, it doesn't really matter. Everything comes together
pretty seamlessly. Into that multicam event, I want to add in all my multicam shots. So, import those. Now, it can be kind of
tough to see in Final Cut since these are such long bits of footage. So, I'm gonna click this
little icon up here, and just go into list view. So, just to keep things simple for me, since I did two long chunks
of footage with each camera, we will start with the first one. So, I'm gonna select the a7 one, 6D one, RX one, and R one. That was my first round of
filming about 30 minutes. And then all I do, once
I have the clip selected that I want to use, I just right click and
select 'new multicam clip'. My computer sounds like
it's about to blast off. So, if you hear that, I'm sorry. It's just doing its thing. Multicam clip, we'll just
say, we'll call it number one. You can adjust your frame rates, and your size, and all your settings based on the footage that you're using and then just click 'okay'. It's gonna take Final Cut Pro
a second to sync everything. And then you're gonna end
up with a multicam clip, which you can tell it's a multicam clip because it has this little
icon, it looks like a window. It literally looks kind
of like the Windows logo. And then all you need
to do is drag that down into your project timeline. And this is where people
often get confused 'cause they drag that
down there and they go, "Well it's just the one clip." Like in this case it's my 6D Mark II, my overhead shot. And it just looks like
this whole 30 minutes is just that one angle, where
are the other three angles? And this is where you get to dive into a feature of Final Cut that you might not have used before. If you go up to the viewer window and you click on 'view', there's an option to show angles. And if you click on that, now you're gonna have all of your angles. They are all built into this single clip that's in your timeline. It's magical. In this case, they're
usually just numbered from top to bottom. The 6D would be camera one, the a7 would be camera two, the R would be camera three, and the RX 100 would be camera four, since I have four angles. And you notice, as soon
as I mouse over these, I get the razor blade icon, and if I cut to them,
it cuts to that angle, and down on the timeline, it actually creates a cut automatically. So, I'm gonna undo those cuts, go all the way back to the beginning here and switch it over to the R1, which in this case is my camera three, because this is my main shot. This was what had my main audio and this is also just the main shot of me talking to the camera
like this right here. So, everything else is gonna
be a cutaway from this. In order to do that, I need to pay attention to
these three icons up here. The first one means that every time I switch between my shots, it's going to switch video and audio. The second one means that it's only gonna be video switching, and the third one means
it's only audio switching. So, you have all kinds
of different options. In the case of this project, and probably in most multicam projects, you're gonna wanna do
video-only switching, because you're gonna
have your audio source, and if you had used an
external audio recorder, it would just show up
as one of these angles and you would just leave that down there and just switch the video only. And at this point I'm ready to go. I'm not gonna go through and actually edit this whole thing, but if I scrubbed through my timeline, I can see that all four
of my angles are synced. So, that means continuity's not an issue. Final Cut Pro did that automatically. And then all I need to do is, as I'm playing through this, I can just cut to whatever angle I want. So, in the main window over here, I see me talking and I can
just watch my other angles and when something happens that I think is interesting,
I can cut to that. And I can either click on the angle to switch between it, or I can literally just press one, two, three and four on my keyboard, whichever camera angle is which. So, if I wanna go to the
RX 100, I can press four, if I wanna go back then to the EOS R, I can press three, now I want my overhead shot, now I wanna go back to the R, now I wanna go back to, I just wanna go through
all of them repeatedly and give someone like a panic
attack, I could do that. But the cool part is if I go down to my timeline, every time I either clicked
on one of my sources or pressed the button to switch angles, it creates a cut automatically. As I play back, it will
switch between them, keeping the audio from the
source that I designated. And that is the magic
behind multicam editing, because as I'm watching
through just in real time, I can be making these cuts just as if I'm watching a live
stream of myself doing this, and I can just cut between
the shots that I want. But if I make a mistake and I cut to a shot that I don't want, it's really not a problem. I just select that clip. So right here, say, I wanted camera three
instead of camera one, I just go to the beginning of that clip and then click on camera three
and it'll switch it over. So, just because you have
selected different shots, doesn't mean you're stuck with them, you can go back and edit them. And just like a normal
project, you can go through and you can adjust the
timing of your cuts, you can delete things, you can essentially then
start layering and editing, the same way you would any other project. But the bulk of getting all
four of those angles lined up is pretty much done for you. I mean right here, I'm dealing with a
30-minute chunk of time, which when multiplied
by four camera angles is two hours worth of footage, but ultimately it comes down to just one, 30-minute, multicam clip and I could play through it and get through the entire thing in 30 minutes or less. If I know those parts that I'm just gonna cut out right away. And so then, you can start to see how much time this can save you. And from there you can
edit just like normal, adding in music and sound effects, and different layers, and other angles, and the same way you would edit normally. But those are the basics of multicam editing with Final Cut Pro, it doesn't matter how many angles. I think by default Final
Cut Pro can support up to 16 different camera angles, which is, good God, why? I don't even wanna keep track of something that involves 16 different angles. But you can be really creative. It's great for YouTube, but beyond YouTube and
other production work, there's so many scenarios where having multiple cameras
recording at the same time is helpful or it's just kind
of the nature of a live event or an interview or something like that, that you can't do more than one time. In this case, I didn't
want to assemble this four different times
to get all those angles and I didn't wanna have to keep stopping and moving my camera to set up angles. I wanted to just set up the cameras and be able to assemble my tripod head, the best that I could. And from there, the
sky really is the limit in terms of creativity with Final Cut Pro. There's a lot more you can
do with multicam editing, but that gets kind of
complex and kind of advanced. I just wanted to give you the basics of how to set up a multicam project, start switching between your angles, and get that sucker exported
and out into the world. If you do wanna learn a little bit more about Final Cut Pro, I
did put together a video of some of my favorite tips and tricks that I've learned over the years. So, go ahead and check that out here and I'll see you over in that video. (slow mellow music)
