Multicam Editing Questions

I'm taking some footage that I originally produced a multicam edit with multiple surround sound audio tracks in Adobe Premiere and trying to recreate the project in Resolve as a practice run.

Several problems:

Sony XDCam EX footage is limited to 2 or 4GB chunks, resulting in about 13:40 long clips. So 3 cameras (Resolve can't even see the .MPG clips from a small Canon "conductor cam" we used for a locked off shot of the orchestra conductor) have 25 clips.

When I select these clips and make new multicam timeline, it makes a timeline with 25 angles. All 25 thumbnails are black. When I drop one of these onto the timeline, it is 13:40 of program + 3 hours of black screen afterwards. Resolve sees each 13 minute clip as 3h 13m, basically, and appends 3 hours of black with no audio to each of the 25 angles.

My workflow in Premiere involved placing all the camera folders (cam 1,2,3,4, etc) onto their own video track on a timeline and then making it a multicam master track. Then I would just use the switcher. I'd then add the 5.1 surround audio tracks to the switched multicam edit.

Since the multicam feature is doing weird stuff, is there an alternate way to make multicam master that I can switch between angles?

Are you using Resolve 30 Free?

Resolve 20 Studio (bought the Speed Editor with the license).

You can build a dummy multicam clip (e.g. with just your 5.1 audio) and then 'open in timeline' and paste in stringouts of the cameras video built in their own sequence.

If you add metadata to the camera clips (e.g
angle set to 1-4) then you can group by metadata when building the multicam.

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=217733

- last couple of answers might help

See if this helps, Mark.

https://downloads.blackmagicdesign.com/ ... diting.zip

When I created a multicam timeline from the five audio (L,C,R,LS,RS), it created a five angle mutlticam timeline that I can't seem to open. The source monitor just shows five wav audio clips.

What shows up if you right click on multicam clip and 'open in timeline'?

Screen shots useful here and/or share a .drp file

I'm not sure there is a way to build a multicam in resolve from multiple mono wavs (e.g. L.wav R.wav C.wav etc) - you need to combine them as a poly wav (wave agent good for this) - but even that requires some work (see below).

Compound clips *and* multicam clips seem to be limited to 1 single stereo bus output (I tried modifying the multicam clip main bus to be 5.1 - and it seems happy enough in Edit / Fairlight window, but reverts to Stereo when next 'opened in timeline'. BUT there is some passing through of the non LFE channels, even though the multicam output bus itself is stereo.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y2QlN0 ... IQ26YPcm-c

is a .drt with media - 6 individual mono source files, nested into timeline
"2. mono-audio-to-5.1 bus nested timeline as source for multicam"
- with the 6 channels panned to SMPTE 5.1 bus.

created a multicam (using 'source audio' checkbox) from that sequence -
"3. mono-audio-to-5.1 bus Multicam"
- open in timeline and 'display individual audio channels' on the A1 (5.1) track shows A1-3,A5-6 waveforms as expected (LFE doesn't appear to have made it through)

playing that multicam in the timeline shows A1-2 passing through to stereo bus, all else mute (though showing on meters in A1 on mixer)

nesting that multicam into a regular timeline
"4. 5.1 bus multicam to regular 5.1 timeline"
- 'display individual audio channels' and playing back, shows A1-3, A5-6 all going to their respective channels AND to A4

I tried it with a poly-wav and had a similar result - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YGycdY ... qPv_fu4dxC)

so all in all trying to nest 5.1 audio in a multicam does not appear to be currently supported.

BUT...

I did *seem* to get it working if I ONLY had a 5.1 bus assigned in the final timeline - the multicam had to have 2 types of audio so when it was used to 'create timeline' using 'source audio' for timeline tracks (so it created mono tracks). See https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YRZXfk ... GU4ZYAQ9im

NB not tested in real world.

These example files are helpful and somewhat illuminating, but at the same time, raise more questions.

I found that if I create 7 mono audio tracks and pull the 7 channel audio clip into it, it gives me the correct 7 mono tracks. But it all seems to be mixing down to mono on playback. I've gone over to the Fairlight page and am trying to make sense of it all. I see everything goes to "Bus 1". I have no idea if that bus is mono, stereo or surround.

Later in the process, I'm going to have questions about exporting the rendered video with the 5.1 audio. In premiere, I encode to Dolby Digital, which then goes into my blu-ray authoring tool. I'd like to be able to encode to DTS surround, or one of the more modern higher quality CODECs, but I'm not sure how to do that here in Resolve.

Maybe don't try to use multicam as a holder for your 5.1 tracks. It *massively* complicated things.

Default master bus (Bus 1) for a new timeline is Stereo.

Change in Fairlight | 'Bus Format' menu drop down to 5.1.

Default pan for mono tracks is Front and Centre - but, having added your 6 tracks in SMPTE order (L-R-C-LFE-Ls-Rs) you can go to the fairlight page and use Fairlight | Link Group to link A1-A6 as 5.1 (not 5.1 Film) - will show in audio mixer as a 5.1 track correctly panned.

In premiere, I encode to Dolby Digital, which then goes into my blu-ray authoring tool. I'd like to be able to encode to DTS surround, or one of the more modern higher quality CODECs, but I'm not sure how to do that here in Resolve.

I don't think Resolve does Dolby Digital or DTS encoding - you'll have to export a mezzanine file with discrete audio (e.g. Quicktime or MXF OP1a) and encode it with 3rd party.

Here's a screen rec of the above - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YXxouP ... uyzHg8ct9m

I was watching a tutorial on doing multiple audio tracks with multicam and I was playing with it in a slightly different way:

I'm having multiple issues handling both 6 mono audio tracks from the MOTU 896 audio recordings and the XDCam footage. It seems I can get partway set up, but then when I set live overwrite on the Speed Editor, my 3 camera angles becomes 24 angles, with 18-24 being audio tracks. I can't wrap my head around this.

I would imagine this MUST be possible to produce in a sophisticated tool like DR, but obviously, there's a different order to it than I am used to doing in Adobe Premiere since 2007 with these symphony concert videos in surround.

Thanks for illuminating a bit on how to set up 5.1 in Fairlight. I need to spend some time playing with this. But I also need to find out the correct sequence for setting up multicam and then uniting that with the 5.1 surround audio.

I'm experimenting with a trial version of TMPGEnc Authoring Works 7. The specs suggest it can encoded Dolby AC3 5.1. I'm just at a stumbling block with it's LEAP licensing system which requires an internet connection, something we don't allow in a production environment.

EDIT: I set up the 5.1 tracks per your instructions.
Now I just need to figure out how to get multicam working without it turning into 24 cam angles.