Tutorial: Multicam Editing in Grass Valley EDIUS Pro 7

Preparing the Multicam Edit for Output

Now that I've completed my multicam edit, I'm almost ready for it to go out. There are a couple of things I can do with it at this point.

Let's say I have two sequences. One is a multicam, and let's say I'm satisfied with the cuts there and not planning on doing anything else with it. I can go into Sequence 2 and bring Sequence 1 (the multicam sequence) right into the timeline. To go back and edit it, all I have to do is hit the Sequence 1 tab, or double-click Sequence 1 in the Sequence 2 timeline and it takes me right back to Sequence 1 so I can work on it.

But let's say I'm 100% sure about my multicam cuts and now I want to add some stuff to it. One thing I can do next is to reconstitute it as a single track. To do so, choose Mode > Compress to a Single Track (Figure 11, below). 

Figure 11. Compressing the Multicam timeline to a single track.

The Compress Selected Clips dialog opens (Figure 12, below). Now I need to select my output track. In this case I'll select a new video track, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Choosing New Video Track for the track that will contain my compressed-to-a-single-track multicam edit.

Figure 13 (below) shows that there is now an additional track in the timeline (3V) that contains all the cuts I made in MultiCam mode. And I can still adjust and work with my edits if I want to, but they're all sitting in a single track. I can place transitions between them and make any other adjustments I want, but as I set this all up, it's also changing in Sequence 2, where I recently brought Sequence 1 into the timeline.

Figure 13. Track 3V, at the top of the timeline, contains the multicam edit.

Other Useful Features in EDIUS' Multicam Mode

Before we conclude this tutorial, I'd like to show you a couple more useful features that Multicam Mode offers.

If you go to Mode > Sync Point (Figure 14, below), you'll notice several options: Asynchronous, Timecode, Rec Time, Clip In, and Clip Out. If you have cameras with timecode and they're synced, you don't have to worry about all that syncing together with sound that we did earlier. If you have 16 cameras and they're all synced with timecode, you can bring all 16 into the timeline, choose Mode > Sync Point > Timecode here will sync them all to the frame.

Figure 14. Sync Point options.

As for the next option, Rec Time, or Record and Timestamp, let's say you have multiple cameras that are the same model, and you use a remote control to set the same date and time on all 3 cameras, you can use Date and Timestamp to keep it really, really close. This should bring you within 30 frames of perfect sync, which will make it easier then to adjust all of them and bring them into sync. Both of these options, if they're available to you in your camera configuration, can make your multicam editing experience a whole lot easier.

As you can see, Multicam Mode if very simple to use but it's very, very powerful. It allows you to switch up to 16 cameras in real time as your footage plays, and make all sorts of adjustments afterwards, and then place all your cuts on a single track and place dissolves or whatever kinds of transitions you want between them very quickly, and get your job done much faster.