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)