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Multiple camera feeds and angles in iMovie/FCE/FCP

S

shumster

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 15, 2001
54
0
I've been asked by my rugby club to video the first team games for technical analysis purposes. Ideally we'd like to video the game from a number of angles , and then put together (unedited) video of the game onto DVD for analysis the next day.

Couple of questions:
1. What is the best way to physically link 4+ DV cameras into one(?) feed into my mac? Is there a physical limit on the length of the video cables (which one should I use - S video/Firewire?)

2. Can iMovie/FCE/FCP handle multiple video feeds, so that I would actually get 4 "windows" in my main video window? Or is there a hardware solution to acheiving this?

Thanks
 
I'm not sure about 1.

2. FCP5 handles multicam editing from multiple grouped clips.

I may be wrong, but I don't think this is real time in the sense that the cameras are all linked to the Mac at the same time. Instead, you synchronise the clocks on the cameras, shoot the footage, download the clips to the Mac, group them into "multiclips", synchronise the clip start times, then you can view them simultaneously ("real time") and edit to your heart's content.

Have a look here and here.

Edit: I'm new to FCP and on further investigation I suspect that multicam thing might not work because it seems to be designed to cut between clips rather than play them concurrently. (sorry to mislead in the earlier comments). But it does seem fairly easy (I tried it) to create 4 concurrent windows from 4 clips, playing concurrently (which I think is what you want).
 
shumster said:
I've been asked by my rugby club to video the first team games for technical analysis purposes. Ideally we'd like to video the game from a number of angles , and then put together (unedited) video of the game onto DVD for analysis the next day.

Couple of questions:
1. What is the best way to physically link 4+ DV cameras into one(?) feed into my mac? Is there a physical limit on the length of the video cables (which one should I use - S video/Firewire?)

2. Can iMovie/FCE/FCP handle multiple video feeds, so that I would actually get 4 "windows" in my main video window? Or is there a hardware solution to acheiving this?

Thanks
Click to expand...
fcp and fce can. you comp can only take one camera at a time, so buy 4 17" mbps, hook them up to your cameras, and capture them that way with some long firewire cables.

(hahahaha)
 
With what you want to do here, editing is not the solution.
There is no possible way to like separate tracks of video and audio together in any editing system.

FCP offers you the choice of multicam EDITING, not multicam viewing.

One thing I can guarantee you wil have to do is import all your videos one-at-a-time. (the only way to get around that is with more computers or alot more money)

The only way to make separate angle videos would be in your DVD authoring program.
To do this, make a track witht he program yoou have called "Angle 1"
then the next one "Angle 2" until you have enough for all cameras.
Once the DVD is complete all you will have to do is simply press the chapter forward button on your DVD player is it will go to the next angle.
 
if all your doing is view the clips at the same time... can't you resize the image (make them equal in each corner....)Linking them together for time might be hard.... But once you start I don't think it will be too bad....
 
shumster said:
I've been asked by my rugby club to video the first team games for technical analysis purposes. Ideally we'd like to video the game from a number of angles , and then put together (unedited) video of the game onto DVD for analysis the next day.

Couple of questions:
1. What is the best way to physically link 4+ DV cameras into one(?) feed into my mac? Is there a physical limit on the length of the video cables (which one should I use - S video/Firewire?)
Click to expand...
You'll have to shoot first and then import each tape into FCP one at a time.

2. Can iMovie/FCE/FCP handle multiple video feeds, so that I would actually get 4 "windows" in my main video window? Or is there a hardware solution to acheiving this?
Click to expand...
Yes, very easily. Once you have all the tapes imported make a video track for each camera and then resize each track in the canvas window so it only takes up 1/4 of the screen (as puckhead193 suggested). The hard part will be sycnhing up all the cameras (but it won't be too bad if you only have 1 tape per camera).


Lethal
 
FCE has most of the main things that FCP has, excluding the more "pro" features.
I was under the impression that shumster wanted to view each angle separately full screen.
You can very easily resize the 4 screens to fit on one all the time.
 
WHat I'm looking to achieve is similar to those CCTV feeds you see in the movies, where you get multiple angles of the same event and can view ALL of them in teh same video window - so you might have 4 separate windows in the main video window

Cheers for your help
 
You can definately do this work with FCE or FCP.
You can do this work with iMovie (with a purchased plugin that allows you to put "picture in picture") but i do not recommend that. iMovie has glitches and cannot handle large loads of footage.
With FC you simply just have to resize all 4 of the screens so that they all fit on the screen at once.
 
I'm not an expert on Final Cut, but I read once that it has zero multicam features. I doubt you'll be able to work with the feeds live all from one computer. I may be wrong, but your best bet from what I can tell is to sync the timecode on all the cameras and import the tapes individually. Edit based on timecode.
 
To clear things up, as i stated before, Final Cut does not have the ability to import more than one feed of video all at the same time, most programs and computers do not.

Your only choice is to import one at a time.
 
There are some hardware solutions out there including multi-viewers such as zandar and rgb-spectrum stuff which will combine 4 or more feeds into a single feed. However, they are really expensive.
 
Try this for multicam capture. Haven't used it before though. Also, yes there is a significant limit on FW cables (something like 5 meters.) Analog/SDI video is a different story though (>100m).
 
Aja Io Hd???

How about with the AJA IO HD??, can you capture Live Feeds 4 of them with final cut pro???
 
Final Cut Express multicam MULTIPLE CANVAS WINDOWS

LethalWolfe said:
Yes, very easily. Once you have all the tapes imported make a video track for each camera and then resize each track in the canvas window so it only takes up 1/4 of the screen (as puckhead193 suggested). The hard part will be sycnhing up all the cameras (but it won't be too bad if you only have 1 tape per camera).


Lethal
Click to expand...
Sorry to appear dense, but could you explain exactly HOW to set up these multiple, re-sized, windows in the canvas in FCE? I can only see a way to get one at a time, not view the (in my case) three video streams simultaneously.
 
watcoh said:
Sorry to appear dense, but could you explain exactly HOW to set up these multiple, re-sized, windows in the canvas in FCE? I can only see a way to get one at a time, not view the (in my case) three video streams simultaneously.
Click to expand...
Put a clip on V1, another on V2, and the third on V3. Enable Wireframe view in the Canvas window and you can resize and drag the video clips around the Canvas window.


Lethal
 
Thanks

Thanks - I'll read the manual more carefully next time! In the meantime, I di install the Quarter PIP plugin, and that lets me do the same. Is there anything significantly different about doing one as opposed to the other?
 
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