Advice please on multi-cam concert song separation

Ok, so.....I recently shot a concert with two cams which I stopped/started between songs for easy edits as songs will be released one by one. Issue is I have 4 additional camera feeds that were fixed locations in the studio so each of the four files are over 2 hours. So I need to separate all four feeds by song. With my minimal knowledge, I can do it but it may take me 10 times longer than someone who is well-versed in editing.

Any best-practice advice you can give me would be very much appreciated.

I'm using Resolve Studio 18.6.6 & the fixed camera files are 1080p if that matters.

I stopped/started between songs for easy edits

That actually makes thing more difficult.

In my experience, the most efficient way to cut Multicam is:

1. Create the Multicam using only camera media. (Syncing by timecode is best. If you have to sync by audio and things don't come out perfect, see my note below.)
2. Add the Multicam to a timeline.
3. Add the audio you want to hear under the timeline and sync it up.
4. Disable the audio track of the Multicam.
5. Go through the Multicam in real time making cuts (to video).
6. Step through the edit quickly to tweak the cuts/angles.
7. Continue with F/X in Fusion, grading in Color, mixing in Fairlight.
8. You can now make 'selects' to add to a Master timeline with Copy/Paste.


Here's a little fix, if needed.

A. After step 2, right click on the Multicam and Open in Timeline. This will allow you to add/tweak any clips that didn't line up correctly when you created the Multicam.

I am making the assumption that the extra 4 cameras have audio . I would place them on separate tracks in a timeline, select all then right click and sync with audio. Since you have already edited the other two add one song at a time and again sync with audio. Assuming this all works you have now all 6 tracks in sync. You can now convert the timeline to multicam and edit by song. Before starting you should select the audio track you want to use and then fix the multicam edit to just video. You could copy this audio and paste into an audio track and mute the multicam audio as an alternative. I suggest to save the project by name each time you edit a song so that you have final projects by song name. Then you can flatten and do final colour etc before setting IN and OUT points for rendering.

I stopped/started between songs for easy edits

That actually makes thing more difficult.

Thank you Jim! My rational for doing that was two-fold; One, I assume easier editing (now I get that that's not the case) and two, avoiding the 30 minute record time limits of the Canon R5.

Anyway, great advice on the workflow so thanks again!

I am making the assumption that the extra 4 cameras have audio . I would place them on separate tracks in a timeline, select all then right click and sync with audio. I suggest to save the project by name each time you edit a song so that you have final projects by song name. Then you can flatten and do final colour etc before setting IN and OUT points for rendering.

Thank you Ron!

You guys both helped a lot. I'll be spending a lot of time the next few days incorporating these nuggets into my workflow.

Are you on Mac ? (just because I'm not sure what I'm about to write is available on Win)

Because this case of having a couple of guys stopping the cams during a multicam happened a few times (10 years ago ), and PluralEyes worked like a charm to fix that sloppy drives containing clips here and there...

It's a multi tracks app in which you drag one cam clips per track until you're finished stacking all your footage...Then it syncs the whole stuf (you can see the clips moving on their tracks) and you hopefully you see the same song from each cam perfectly stacked and synced.
Now you export a unique XML and poof, imported in Resolve, you do as you prefer to edit the multicam...

Provided that you had audio on every cam obviously...

Ok, so.....I recently shot a concert with two cams which I stopped/started between songs for easy edits as songs will be released one by one. Issue is I have 4 additional camera feeds that were fixed locations in the studio so each of the four files are over 2 hours. So I need to separate all four feeds by song. With my minimal knowledge, I can do it but it may take me 10 times longer than someone who is well-versed in editing.

We did 22 cameras (not kidding) on the Rolling Stones Shine a Light project some years ago, and it was all synced 100% manually. It's not that hard. You get very fast at it over time. When I muttered and complained a bit to Scorsese's assistant editor, he laughed and said, "hey, it took Marty and Thelma [Schumacher] over a year to sync up Woodstock in 1969, so that was worse." I agreed and added that it was 16mm and all done "old-school analog," which was all they had 55 years ago... but they got it done.

If the cameras are all timecoded and the multi-track audio has timecode, you could do all this in a day. If the cameras don't have timecode, it'll be a challenge... but it can be done, with time and effort.

I can highly recommend PluralEyes if DR doesn't get it done.