No real-time playback in Multiclip

A friend is editing a two camera shoot using multiclip. The problem he's having is that there is no real-time playback when editing in multiclip no matter what he does. Out of complete desperation I drove to his place to investigate.

Looking over his project it all seems set up correctly but when you click on a clip in the Viewer it stops playback, playing via the Timeline or Canvas will not cause the clips in the Viewer to play but the thumbnails will update when playback is stopped.

Playing in the Viewer results in full-window playback of the currently selected (blue boarder) camera.

Digging around I noticed his clips are 720x402.

Suspecting that wasn't a multiclip compliant size somehow, I transcoded some clips (in the same codec) to 720x480 brought them into FCP, set the Canvas to "Correct for Aspect Ratio" and got better results.

Now, playback in the Viewer worked; it was no longer full-windowed but there was still no real-time. The Canvas would play or the Viewer, but not both concurrently.

Testing further I transcoded 60 secs of two of the camera angles to ProRes 720x480 and set Correct for Aspect Ratio. Now it all worked (well, the audio needed rendering and I didn't bother to check why); the Viewer and Canvas played in real-time together.

So the lesson here is frame size does matter. It seems that it must be a "standard" size and something listed (I guess) in the Easy Setup menu (Control + Q) to have real-time multiclip playback and editing.

I did lose Command + Z undo function on one test sequence but that seems like a FCP bug more than anything else. I did render the audio on this test sequence but Undo was still non-functional.

Looking at his Option + J (Button List) Keypad numbers are "Switch Video to Angle" while Command + (keypad number) is "Cut Video to Angle"

The Clipboard vs Multiclips

Here's an odd behavior: When you have a sequence with edited multiclips/multicam and you set an IN point in the Timeline right in the middle of a cross-dissolve and an OUT point somewhere else, the contents of the clipboard may not be what you expect.

If you've previously copied a section of the Timeline to the clipboard that copy will remain untouched in the clipboard if the new copy's IN point is on a cross-dissolve. The new copy won't be on the clipboard. You'll paste the older previous contents.

To copy from the IN point you want on the cross-dissolve you seemingly need to remove the cross-dissolve and then hit Command + C again. Or, copy from an IN point that's not on a cross-dissolve.

Likewise, if the OUT point is on a cross-dissolve the clipboard won't copy the current selection but will retain the previous copy.

Bug or something I'm doing wrong or expected behavior? I dunno. It makes sense in that at a cross-dissolve in an uncollapsed multicam Timeline FCP can't know which camera angle you want, but should (in theory) just copy what's on screen mid-dissolve but this would require it to make an non-affiliated clip in the process. Yikes.

Quickly Preview High Playback Quality frames in Multiclip

Here's a quickie.

When you're editing a multiclip sequence and have RT set to Low or something other than High and you want to check the focus of a shot or something that requires seeing it at High Quality, simply tap Control + Z to toggle Excess Luma on and off. When it's on -and you see the green check mark or yellow exclamation point- you'll be viewing that frame in High quality.

Unfortunately, it won't stay high quality for playback if you have RT set to something like Low Quality playback.