FCPX gets Multicam Editing...finally

Apple has finally updated FCPX with a feature it should have had when launched: multicam editing. And to Apple's credit it now supports 64 streams. They also thought it was time to let FCPX import layered Photoshop files and allow Broadcast monitoring.

How long did that take? And why?

I wonder then how many companies and editors who bought Premiere will even notice given that the gap between launching FCPX without these features and then including them in an update was about seven months.

Some interesting bits:

- Multicam will sync clips based on audio.
- Broadcast Monitoring (technically a beta feature as of this post) requires a PCIe equipped Mac or Thunderbolt.

Compressor and Motion both get some minor updates as well.

Converting .MOD files for Final Cut Pro and Multiclip

I've been handed a few SD cards with .MOD files that eventually need to be edited as a multiclip sequence.

Joy.

I've talked about these problematic files before here and here but never really got into the meat of the best way to transcode them for use in Final Cut Pro. Silly me thought I'd never have to deal with them again.

Here's something to keep in mind about .MOD files (from the wiki page):

"Standard definition video can be recorded in 4:3 and 16:9 formats. Some video decoders do not interpret the aspect ratio information in the media file header correctly, so 16:9 video may appear squeezed horizontally when viewed.^[4] Software that is shipped with camcorders is capable of processing the aspect ratio information correctly, aided perhaps by the metadata stored in MOI files. There are also third-party tools for modifying the wide-screen aspect ratio information in the media file header so that it satisfies decoders which would otherwise fail to interpret this information correctly in an unmodified MOD file.^[5][6][7] Some tools such as MediaInfo can correctly report the aspect ratio of widescreen MOD files, but media players may or may not display them correctly depending on the capabilities of the video decoder that they are utilizing at the time."

Sure are a lot of May, May Not & Somes in those paragraphs; there's even a perhaps!

These are some weird file types.

In order to nail down the workflow for transcoding these things (which, btw are Standard Definition in this particular case) I've been running some tests using MPEG Streamclip to transcode them and here's what I've discovered: (you'll likely need the MPEG-2 Component for Quicktime in addition to MPEG Streamclip)

A: Renaming the .MOD to .MPG or .mpeg and then transcoding with MSC (MPEG Streamclip) doesn't make any difference.

B: The top listing of the two ProRes exports in MSC is a HQ variety. (You may or may not see doubled up listings in your MSC exports listing depending on your setup/system etc…)

I transcoded a sample .MOD file (of about 24 seconds) to various formats, with various settings and then set up a 3 camera multiclip sequence and tested how well it played and if it was the correct aspect ratio.

What I found -after MANY MANY transcodes then importing those into FCP, setting up a multiclip sequence, then exporting and opening with Quicktime Player 7- was that what worked best for me for these files is to transcode them into:

DV25
16:9
De-interlaced

Then setup and edit your Multiclip project and export to Quicktime Movie…

Then open up your export in Quicktime Player 7 and hit Command + J for "Show Movie Properties" and hit the Presentation button and tick "Conform aperture to: Clean". 

See the transcodes from MSC will have this option ticked, but after you export the multiclip from Final Cut Pro this little checkbox will no longer be ticked but will still work. In my tests this checkbox has no effect on .MOD files transcoded to ProRes which would have been nice.

Now with an edited export at the correct aspect ratio you can transcode it to H.264 or whatever you need and it should retain the aspect ratio.

Why DV25? Well the original files are MPG2 in a .MOD wrapper and taking data per pixel, data rates and all that there's not a whole heck of a lot of quality loss (a couple of percentage points?) going to DV25. I suppose DVCPRO25 would work just as well.

Now, keep in mind this is what works for me right now, with .MOD files with this setup that I'm sitting in front of at the moment. The resulting file will be high quality and at the correct aspect ratio.

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.

When Multiclips Angles Suddenly Go Blank

Today, while working on a multiclip started by another editor one of the clips in a multiclip segment was visually blank. The audio was there, and it played fine in QT Player but just before the In point (in the Viewer) which was set it would go blank.

An odd behavior was that dragging this angle to the timeline only showed about 1min's worth of footage rather than the full 4+ minutes of the clip. While I'm still not sure what is going wrong -it must have been visible when the original editor was working with it since it's synced up as a multiclip and cut into the Timeline- I solved it by doing basically two things:

01) I simply duplicated the clip in the Finder by Option + Dragging it (old habit, Command + D would have also worked).

02) After appending the name of that clip with "_COPY_", I brought it into FCP's bin, set an identical In point as the original bad clip, then dragged it to the Multiclip open in the Viewer atop the bad angle and waited for moment for a contextual menu to pop up and selected Overwrite Angle.

If you don't see the Overwrite Angle option, check to make sure that the angle you're trying to overwrite isn't currently used (displayed) in the Canvas via the Timeline. You'll have to switch to another angle, Overwrite Angle, then switch back.

Keep an eye on your audio track sources if you encounter this problem and use this solution. They may still come from the "bad" angle clip.

Then I saved the project and everything seemed fine. I'll update this if I find out exactly why FCP suddenly doesn't like that one multiclip angle.

Another potential solution, which didn't work for me, was deleting the clip from the bin and re-dragging it back in. One last thing you can try is to simply re-import the clip which I unfortunately don't have the option of trying with this project.

Update: Another thing to try, and this just worked for me on a project, was to close the project, reopen it, and then Re-Connect all of the media. Maybe just reconnecting the errant media in the timeline would also work. But, it's another thing to try.

The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't get any mis-match errors about "media start and end" when you try and reconnect your footage. If you see that message, hit Try Again and...try it again.

In the reconnect window "Amount with conflicts" should read 0 (zero) if you're trying this fix.

What do to when you loose a camera on a multicam shoot

Say you have a three camera shoot, and one camera goes out during the shooting but is quickly restarted or restored during the take. You can't add that "fourth" clip to the original three via Insert New Angle or Insert New Angle Affiliates because the sync isn't there.

The trick is to truncate the original multiclip in the Timeline at the point where the camera was lost and then create a new, second multiclip (call it part 2) with the "fourth" clip and then place it into the Timeline after the truncated first so it's a seamless edit when the camera was brought back up.

Open Firmware Passwords

Here's a strange one: A friend of mine was editing some multicam footage and suddenly -apparently without reason- it started to severely choke his mac to the point where multicam footage would only play for about 2 seconds before giving up and announcing dropped frames. Literally two seconds.

I tried everything: rebooting, reconnecting his drives, repair disk, repair permissions, all the traditional troubleshooting steps. None worked. Then I tried a safe boot and it didn't take. The mac refused to boot into safe mode, so on a hunch I tried the firmware boot selector by holding down Option when the Mac booted and was prompted for an open firmware password.

So I turned off open firmware password by booting with an OS X install disc and then ran safe mode and zapped the Pram. The choking was gone. Multicam was working again.

So to determine if it was the open firmware password he set recently, I turned it back on and as I suspected multicam choked again.

Now, I'm not sure why but it's 100% consistent. No open firmware password and multicam works. Set an open firmware password and it chokes badly. He's using 4 separate firewire drives for his footage and media files so my only guess at this very strange problem is that somehow when the Mac boots having the firmware locked is preventing something between FCP and the Firewire bus or the drives.

I'm not sure. Any ideas?

Syncing Multipclips 1/100th of a Frame at a Time.

When you are positioning your playhead to the sync point of a clip (for example, for a multiclip sequence) that doesn't have synced timecode, or are just trying to get audio in sync or just need more precise control over where the playhead is in an audio clip in the Viewer, hold down Shift.

This will let you scrub and position the playhead in 1/100th of a frame increments. When you mark the In point you'll see FCP move things to the nearest frame to the point you positioned your playhead. It can help when you need precise sync and In point control. But this only works in Audio, not Video.

Multiclip Labels

Here's a quick handy tip.

I use labels extensively in FCP. Red generally meaning bad and green generally meaning good with other colors to indicate variances thereof. However, if you create a new multiclip and then highlight that multiclip in the Browser, then assign it a label, FCP will also likewise label the clips that comprise that multiclip and are also set as Video and Audio source in the viewer (even it they aren't loaded into the Viewer).

I'm not sure how handy this is, but since you can highlight a multiclip in the Browser, give it a label, and FCP will also label the clips choosen for Video and Audio so you can see which are being used -I guess- at a glance without having to open that multiclip and load it into the Viewer. Maybe not practically handy, but fun to know I suppose.

It seems a tad buggy at times, where you have to load the multiclip into the viewer to get some kind of labeling voodoo to reset if it only labels the multiclip itself but overall it works.

Multicam and Changing the Elusive Active Audio Source

This one still has me a bit stumped. Let's say you're editing a three-camera shoot, all nicely synced up and loaded into your timeline as a multicam edit. You've set your main hero audio source to underlay the entire piece and have either edited in real time or using Command + (numbers) once you've set your keyboard layout to multicam, edited your final cut cut-by-cut.

But there's one last thing left to do: you need to change the audio source, not the video source, of only some of the clips. How do you do this? As an example lets say you need to change one clip in particular so it uses another synced audio source. Say camera/angle 3 needs camera 2's audio feed rather than the hero main audio which was connected to camera 1. What do you do?

It took me some playing around but I found a way to do it while keeping everything in sync. I'm not sure if this is the correct way to do this, or it's just something someone forgot to put in a few tutorials but the secret is to highlight the video AND audio of your clip and hit Command + L to Link them.

What's this do? It will let you hit 1, 2, 3 or whatever angle number on your keypad and switch BOTH the video and audio of that clip. Then, once the audio source is from where you want it to be, hit Command + L again and to Unlink the clip's audio and video and then tap the camera angle you want it to be with the keypad.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. We'll say our hero main audio is from camera/angle 1. In our multicam timeline we have a clip that's camera/angle 3 and currently has audio from angle 1 but we need it (for whatever reason) to use and sync to angle 2's audio feed. Here's what you do (assuming you're editing with the multicam keyboard layout which is under the Tools menu):

01) Highlight both audio and video of the clip in the timeline and tap Command + L.
02) Hit the number 2 on your keypad and watch as both Audio and Video sources change in your timeline. (it may take a moment for FCP to update this if you have many angles loaded in the Viewer)
03) Now, our Audio source is correct but our Video source is not, so tap Command + L again to unlink them.
03) Tap the number 3 on your keypad and watch as only the Video source changes in the timeline.
04) Hit Command + S to save.

If there's an easier way I haven't found it yet but I'll keep looking. For now this is mostly painless.