Ultimate S Multi Cam -vs- Vegas 11 Multi Cam?

Jim H wrote on 5/22/2012, 7:03 PM

That is the question.
Just back from my music video shoot Sunday. Set up in a dirty factory, made the set from black curtains, and now I have multiple takes of the song using various camera angles - at least 5 main takes and some partial takes that I'll need to edit under the master audio track.
I've used Ultimate S multi cam plug in before with 3 takes but it only accepts up to 4 cameras as far as I can tell. Never used Vegas' built in multicam but enabled it to see what it looked like. Read through some of the help files but can't figure out how to bring in the other tracks as cameras - right now it only gives me one camera in the preview window.

So who has an opinion on the better tool? And can either handle more than 4 cameras? If no, what would be the best workflow? I'm thinking maybe I'll have to do the 4 cameras then add the rest manually?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Jim

Some frame grabs:

[IMG=http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb54/RDJim/Bevel-FrameGrab-Brad.jpg]

[IMG=http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb54/RDJim/Bevel-FrameGrab-Scott.jpg]

[IMG=http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb54/RDJim/Bevel-FrameGrab-Joe.jpg]

[IMG=http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb54/RDJim/Bevel-FrameGrab-Cat.jpg]

Comments

ddm wrote on 5/22/2012, 10:24 PM

I've never used the vegas iteration of multicam but I have Ultimate S and their Infinitycam which does allow more than 4 cameras. I also have and prefer to use Excalibur for multicam for 1 great feature that it has and for music videos it would be quite valuable. It allows you to change every cut with a different camera AFTER you made your cuts and assembled them. For music this can be quite handy, make cuts to downbeats and then decide which shot works best. When you get to a cut you don't like hit the "t" key and the other takes cycle thru, pick the one that works best and move on. I find it to be a huge creative advantage when cutting multicam which is what I do most of the time. Ultimate S and Infinitycam both work great, but that one feature of Excalibur seals the deal for me.

PeterWright wrote on 5/22/2012, 11:20 PM

I have Excalibur and Ultimate S but I always use the built-in Vegas Multicamera function - it also uses Takes so you can toggle any time, or drag to slightly move the cut point. It can use many more than 4 tracks but of course live preview playback frame rate will vary on different machines.

Ctrl Shift D toggles between multicam view and single screen.

Jim H wrote on 5/23/2012, 10:35 AM

I can't seem to get more than one track to show up in Vegas Multicam. I have 6 tracks syncronized beneath the master audio track. When I enable Multicam, all I see in the preview screen is the top track with the blue active track border and the number 1 in the bottom right corner. I checked the takes and there is only one showing up for each track.

How do I get all 6 tracks to show up in the preview screen at one time so I can select which one I want as illustrated in the help file? The help section only states that I need to enable multicam for the layered tracks to show up but that's not helping at all.

I must be missing something simple. Can someone please provide a step by step, multicam for dummies procedure for me?

altarvic wrote on 5/23/2012, 11:38 AM

1) Enable multicamera mode
2) Select all SYNCHRONIZED tracks and run Tools > Multicamera > Create multicamera track
3) Vegas builds a multicamera track containing a series of events, with takes representing each of the cameras.
4) Now you can see all takes in the preview window and can select the desired angle (just click it)

There are some more tricks, which you should READ in the Help

Jim H wrote on 5/23/2012, 11:48 AM

That's the ticket altarvic. Thanks. Tell me where in the help file it talks about selecting all desired tracks and "create multicam track?" I didn't see that. But I did find a useful video on youtube just now:

Arthur.S wrote on 5/23/2012, 11:50 AM

Yep, Ctrl A to select, then after creating the multicam track, Shift/Ctrl+D to see all tracks in the preview. V11 also has the pretty cool ability to 'un-multicam' the track afterwards so that all of the takes are relaid out on their original tracks. (Also under the tools menu)

I also find using the corresponding numbers on the keyboard much faster than clicking on the preview screen. ;-)

The screen grabs look fab!

altarvic wrote on 5/24/2012, 4:35 AM

> Tell me where in the help file it talks about selecting all desired tracks and "create multicam track?"
Here

DavidMcKnight wrote on 5/24/2012, 10:59 AM

I like both the built in multicam and the VASST multicam for different reasons; if I have to color match between cameras I may opt for the built in and keep the clips on tracks, for instance.

All the vasst tools have 14 day (I think) unlimited trial period, download Ultimate S and/or infinitiCam and try them out.

I've said it before, UltimateS Pro is the best add-on tool I've ever bought for Vegas, bar none. I occasionally do some work for the folks at VASST but I've paid for every version of US since 1.1 I think. It's that good. Even if you don't use the multicam for whatever reason, download it and try out some of the other goodies.

Jim H wrote on 5/24/2012, 10:11 PM

I'm working my way through with Vegas multicam. I do have Ultimate S but not for more than 4 tracks. The only issue I've discovered right now is not being able to delete a cut. I guess I can just delete the event and drag the next one over but I'm not sure how that might effect things if I want to go back to expand back to multiple tracks.

ddm wrote on 5/25/2012, 1:15 AM

Wow. After years of editing multicamera with excalibur and ultimate s, I finally tried the vegas version of multicam... Fantastic, and so simple. And for whatever reason, it previews a good deal faster than excalibur. I just finished a 5 camera 72 minute concert with excalibur so I was pretty used to the sluggish performance of previewing 5 hd cameras but editing the same material in vegas multicam was surprisingly peppy. I love this program. Not to disparage excalibur or ultimate S, I bought those years before vegas had the multicam capability so I got several years of use out of that feature, not to mention all the other great features both of those programs have that I use regularly, but Nice job Sony!

megabit wrote on 5/25/2012, 2:12 AM

I do multicamera projects exclusively, and find the Vegas' own tools quite sufficient (and I usually have 6-10 cameras)!

Hope this helps

Piotr

Byron K wrote on 5/25/2012, 10:43 AM

If you dont mind me asking, what is your work flow when editing more than 4 video tracks?

Do you cut the first 4 tacks then render out and use that track and cut the next 3 etc?

Thanks!

megabit wrote on 5/25/2012, 10:57 AM

Hi Byron,

Actually, I work on MC tracks of up to 8 cams. Why eight? Well, if you search this forum you will find some posts of mine (confirmed by Paul_w), that due to some programming quirk, any GPU acceleration vanishes when you add more than 8 tracks into your MC one. Up to and including 8, I can preview and cut my MC track at full fps, Best/Full, and with the current take full screen on the secondary display (and that is with some CC, too).

This is a bug that SCS have admitted, but haven't fixed yet.

Technicalities aside, since I do classical music video I need to leave my Editing Decisions till the very last moment - when I already have the general feel, and know the piece by heart :)

So as you can see, if a project consists of more than 8 cameras, my preferred workflow gets pretty disturbed...

Piotr

ddm wrote on 5/25/2012, 5:01 PM

Thought I'd pass on a little info I gathered regarding the performance of sony multicam vs. excalibur multicam. Since I had just finished a big multicam project using excalibur, I still had all of my veg files so I tested out a few using both methods. I guess I could have saved myself some real time had I used the sony multicam feature. My preview using Best Full with excalibur (which I never used for obvious reasons) averaged under 2 fps. Ouch. Using sony multicam, I could get uninterrupted 29.97 preview with 5 cameras previewing at Best Full. One other thing I found that wasn't as earth shattering was if I switched to GPU on things slowed down to around 25 or 26 fps, not too bad but with gpu off playback was perfect. Live and learn. fyi, stock i5 2500, 16gb ram and GeForce GTX 550 Ti.

megabit wrote on 5/26/2012, 1:12 AM

Yeah - Vegas' own MC capabilities are brilliant, particularly with a strong GPU.

One smart trick they did is that MC preview by-passes any media, event, track or bus FX - this certainly helps with faster preview. But another nice thing about it is that using secondary monitor, you can simultaneously watch the currently active take full screen - and this preview does contain any effect you added to your project, so you have full control...

And it's pretty stable - don't remember a single time Vegas would crash when cutting//adjusting an MC track!

Piotr

PS. One thing to remember though: with some 8-10 full HD cameras, you need a fast HDD to store your sources - I'm using a 4-disk RAID 0 for that.

ddm wrote on 5/26/2012, 4:03 PM

Just tried the secondary monitor, fantastic. With color correction, best full, 29.97, incredible.