Improved multicamera tools in Vegas Pro 10 software
by Gary Rebholz
In the July 2009 issue of this newsletter, I explained the innovative approach to editing a multicamera shoot with the multicam tools in Vegas Pro software. Those tools and the Vegas Pro multicam workflow have proven to be very popular with those editors who work in multicamera shooting situations, but there were a few things those editors still wanted. Vegas Pro 10 software answers the call for those additional features with significant improvements to the multicamera workflow. In this article I'll walk through those new enhancements.
Before you get started with this article, it will be very helpful for you to read the July 2009 article so that you understand the basic multicam workflow (if you don't already know it).
The first new feature involves previewing your multicam project. Set up a multicam project now and create a multicamera track to work with. Set Vegas Pro software into multicamera editing mode. As you can see in Figure 1, when you do this you can see all of your camera streams in the Video Preview window simultaneously. And, as usual, a light blue highlight identifies the currently active stream.
When you enter multicamera editing mode, you see each stream of the multicamera track in the Video Preview window.
In previous versions of the application, if you also sent your project video out to an external preview device, you would see the same image on the external device as you do in the Video Preview window. In other words, you'd see the multicamera view on your external device. Vegas Pro 10 software gives you another option, so let's walk through it.
First, let's set up a possible scenario. Say you're editing a multicam project for a client who's looking over your shoulder as you call your shots. (We'll leave the discussion about the desirability of such a situation for an offline discussion!) You need to view your project in the Video Preview window in multicamera mode so you can select and call your shots. But it would be nice if you could feed the active stream out to your external preview device so that your client could watch that and get an accurate sense of the results of your calls. With Vegas Pro 10 software you can now do exactly this.
I'll use my computer monitor as the external preview device so you can follow along even if you don't have a different setup, but the same techniques that I'll describe here work regardless of what external preview device system you use. Right-click the Video Preview window and choose Preview Device Preferences from the menu. In the Preview Device tab of the Preferences dialog box, select Windows Secondary Display from the Device drop-down list. Next, choose the display you want to use as your external monitor from the Display adaptor drop-down list. If you have only one monitor, choose it from the list. Finally, click OK.
Now, click the Preview on External Monitor button. Vegas Pro software sends the video image to the device you specified as the external monitor. If you specified your only computer monitor, the external device feed takes over your monitor and it's all you see. Notice that this external signal looks exactly like the image in the Video Preview window did (and still does if you can see both of them simultaneously). This is the default behavior and the way it had to be in previous versions of the application.
If you only have one monitor and the external feed is currently occupying it, press the Escape key to close the external feed. Now, choose Tools | Multicamera | Show Full Frame in External Monitor. Click the Preview on External Monitor button again. Now you see just the active frame in the external monitor. If you call your shots now (you can't if the external preview occupies your only monitor screen), you'll see just the active shot full screen in your external preview. If you have just one monitor, press the Escape key to close the external feed.
Another improvement enables you to clean up your multicamera tracks if you decide to change several camera calls to just one camera that lasts for the same amount of time. To see this, first play your project and click the various streams in the Video Preview window to call your shots. For this discussion, it doesn't really matter how you call them; just make a dozen or so camera calls so that you have many to work with.
Now, make a time selection in your timeline that starts in the middle of a camera 1 event and ends in the middle of a camera 4 event a few cuts later, like I have in Figure 2. Notice that I have several calls to various cameras within my time selection.
Create a time selection that encompasses several camera calls.
Say that during the span of this time selection, you decided that you want to call and stay on camera 2. In the Video Preview window, click the camera 2 image. You can see in Figure 3 that this changes every event within the time selection to camera two. Notice that for the events that were intersected by the time selection, it does not change the camera used in the portions that fell outside of the time selection. Also notice that instead of multiple events within the time selection all set to camera two, Vegas Pro software created just a single event set to camera 2, thus cleaning up your project for you so you don't have a bunch of unnecessary events all set to the same camera.
Each of the events that were within the time selection have been combined into one event.
Finally, you can now expand a multicamera track back to its original component tracks even after you've made your shot calls. You might want to do this if for some reason you decide you want to edit the cameras individually again—perhaps to perform color correction or velocity changes and so on.
Click the track header for the multicamera track to select it. Then, choose Tools | Multicamera | Expand to Multiple Tracks. A dialog box asks you if you want to “Keep unused takes as muted events (to enable later recombining).” Click No.
As Figure 4 shows, this breaks each of the tracks back out to their original separated state. Notice that there are now holes in each track and the only places on each track that hold events are those places where you had called that stream as the active camera. This makes it easy to see when each camera is the active take, but you can no longer combine these tracks into a multicamera track again because you've discarded all of the unused takes. Of course, you can still use normal trim edit techniques to pull a camera back into an area that it had previously been cut out of.
The tracks have been broken back out separately and all unused events have been deleted.
Click the Undo button to recombine the tracks as they were before you expanded them. Choose Tools | Multicamera | Expand to Multiple Tracks again and this time click Yes.
As you can see in Figure 5, this expands the tracks again, but this time all of the unused takes are still present in muted events. Although this makes for a bit more clutter on your timeline, it can be helpful to do this because since you've preserved all of the unused takes, you can recombine these tracks into a multicamera track again and recall your shots.
Unused takes are preserved as muted events.
To recombine the tracks as a multicamera track, you use the same technique you used when you originally combined them at the beginning of the process.
These new features make multicamera editing even more robust in Vegas Pro 10 software than it was in previous versions. If you want more detail on these new functions and all of the other new features of version 10, check out the Seminar Series for Vegas Pro 10 which you can find in the training zone of our website at www.sonycreativesoftware.com/training. As long as you're there, check out all of our other training resources including many free training videos and archived webinars.
Gary Rebholz, is the training manager for Sony Creative Software. Gary produces the popular Seminar Series training packages for Vegas Pro, ACID Pro, and Sound Forge software. He is also co-author of the book Digital Video and Audio Production. Gary has conducted countless hands-on classes in the Sony Creative Software training center, as well as at tradeshows such as the National Association of Broadcasters show.
