Multicam Shoot Out

Whether you are cutting together a reality show, sporting event or live performance, multi-camera editing is a hot commodity these days. During live events, where you don’t have the luxury of multiple takes, multiple camera shoots can be your only chance to properly capture what’s on stage. Take, for example, the recent MTV Video Music Awards show. All Mobile Video (AMV), a leading event production company in the East Coast, was hired to update the award show to high definition. To capture the many elements constantly in motion, AMV’s president Erik Duke used over a dozen HD cameras running simultaneously. "We were using about 14 HD cameras on everything from cranes, dollies and Steadicams," says Duke.

Yet with multiple cameras comes multiple post-production headaches – or at least added expenses. "While it can be very efficient, multi-camera editing on any nonlinear editing system has its own set of challenges," notes Dan Lawrence, a Los Angeles-based freelance editor who has cut together everything from high-end music videos to feature films. Today, Lawrence is a big fan of Final Cut Pro – especially now that it has native multi-camera editing. "In the past, you had no choice: If you wanted to edit multiple [video] channels, you had to edit on higher-end Avid systems," he says. "Now the latest version [of Final Cut Pro] gives you more options in the kind of productions you can do."

We decided to put Apple Final Cut Pro 5 and Avid Xpress Pro HD, individually, through the multi-camera paces. In our tests – which wouldn’t have been possible without Medea’s new FCR2X Fiber-Channel RAID array – we found that both Final Cut Pro 5 and Xpress Pro HD are pretty evenly matched, and both offer a variety of impressive multi-camera editing features. The differences lie in the way each one works.

First, a quick trip down historical context lane. The demand for multi-camera editing has been around for a long time, ever since the first rookie soap opera director said, "Ready, camera one, take one – I mean two! No..uh.. Three!" Multi-camera NLE systems started popping up in the early 1990s. Lightworks created the first multi-camera NLE system by using lower-resolution images to display multiple angles. Avid immediately jumped into the fray, and the two fought it out in the marketplace for several years. Avid got the upper hand by 1995, and even won a Technical Emmy Award for its multi-camera editing system. These systems continued to evolve in features (and list prices) to today’s Avid Symphony Nitris, which can handle eight streams of uncompressed SD or HD material at one time.

Naturally, the advance of low-cost NLE software brought with it the demand for lower-cost multi-camera editing software. The first out of the gates was UK -based United Media’s Multicam software, a plug-in for Adobe Premiere that could handle up to four camera angles at one time. Next Digital Heaven came up with a plug-in for Final Cut Pro. While these packages brought multi-camera features to a broader audience, they didn’t have the integrated flexibility of the multi-camera NLE systems from Avid and Lightworks. Leitch joined those ranks a few years ago when it added native multi-camera editing to VelocityQ and VelocityHD.

Last year Avid migrated multi-camera editing features into its software-based Xpress Pro system, giving users a maximum of four angles of DV video to use on one timeline. The only problem with this iteration of native multi-camera desktop editing was that the viewer window wouldn’t update each stream; you’d only see the separate angles when the timeline was stopped. Xpress Pro HD solves this by using a Gang Follow Video function, so you can view up to four sources playing back in sync with the main viewer. (Ironically, Pinnacle, soon to be acquired by Avid, also released an NLE with native multi-camera editing last year. It’s still too early to tell if, and for how long, Liquid Edition 6 will peacefully coexist alongside its future step-sibling.)

Apple upped the ante at NAB by announcing version 5 of its HD NLE Final Cut Pro, which now has the ability to simultaneously play back up to 16 video angles at one time, and up to 128 source clips per Group Clip. While Avid Xpress Pro HD can ultimately link together more source clips (according to Avid, the theoretical limit is somewhere around 624 clips per group), Xpress Pro HD can only display four streams at one time.

Xpress Pro HD and Final Cut Pro 5 use nearly the same approach to multi-camera workflow. In both programs, you start by digitizing your footage and grouping multiple clips together before finally saving off each group as a separate file. Final Cut Pro adds at least one extra step to this process: Each digitized clip has to be numbered as a specific angle before it can be grouped together. Also, in Final Cut Pro, all grouped clips must be the same format, so you’ll need to devote some extra time to recompressing media if your source material is coming from different camera types.

Once you’ve created a group file, you bring the group file onto either program’s timeline and start editing. Instead of the usual edit controls, both programs let you select camera angles while playing back the main window, either by using assigned keys on a keyboard or using a mouse. On both the Xpress Pro HD and Final Cut Pro systems, this kind of editing was extremely fast and easy to adjust. Made a mistake while editing? No problem – just right-click on a media clip in either program, and you can select a different clip from a pop-up menu. Because Final Cut Pro can display more angles at once, you can also use your mouse to select different angles in the Source window.

While both programs offer similar features, there are differences in the way each one handles out of the box. Final Cut Pro offers significant ease of use compared to the Avid Xpress system – it’s amazingly fast to load, set up and begin editing. In fact, we were able to get Final Cut Pro 5 up and running within about twenty minutes (unlike Xpress Pro HD, which took much longer to configure). Final Cut’s elegant interface makes it easy to apply effects, adjust audio and select different cuts nearly at the same time. The icing on the cake? Seeing up to 16 sources playing back at once, an impressive, major benefit if your projects include more than four video sources. For example, you could group non-synchronized clips together to quickly cut a music video using multiple video sources.

Yet for all of its great features, Final Cut Pro 5 feels like an island – a great place to do all your work, but a pain if you need to work with other gear. Because nearly all of the software processing is done by the Mac’s CPU, the performance of your multi-camera editing system is ultimately constrained by the power under your Mac’s hood. While comparatively much more expensive, Avid offers integrated systems that provide the necessary NLE hardware kick. According to Apple, you’ve got to first down-convert HD material to a different codec-such as Apple’s Intermediate Codec – in order to edit multiple HD clips in its multi-camera mode. Avid Xpress Pro HD lets you mix formats within a multiclip view. Not so in Final Cut: You’ll need to down-convert HD material or up-convert DV material if you plan to mix cameras.

Like Final Cut Pro, Avid Xpress Pro HD has its own set of quirks. Xpress Pro HD is similar to nearly all Avid products-overly complex to set up and maintain, with stringent hardware requirements that can confound even the most experienced media geek. Frankly, I haven’t come across an Avid NLE system in the past decade that didn’t require some serious tech support time in order to get up to speed. In fact, this test took a lot of quality time with Avid tech support.

Yet unlike Apple, Avid isn’t trying to be all things to all people (from consumers to high-end post production houses). Xpress Pro HD is, without question, a tool for professionals only. While not as elegant and easy to use as Final Cut, Xpress Pro HD shares the same modular, standardized interface that you’ll find on all Avid systems. Consequently, you can easily match cameras using Xpress Pro’s excellent Color Correction mode. In fact, this feature was a huge time saver for us during production. While you can add a color-correction filter in Final Cut Pro 5, you can’t see other reference clips to match camera coloration.

Then there is the upward migration path for your edited project. Thanks to shared programming, you can easily move an Xpress Pro HD project to a high-end Avid online suite for finishing, and use the same media if necessary. Even if you’ll never have the budget to purchase one of Avid’s higher-end NLE systems, chances are you have access to one. For smaller post houses with low overhead, this is a major boon: You can do your "homework" on your Xpress Pro system, and then do your online finishing in the $800-per-hour Avid Unity suite down the road.

Xpress Pro HD’s ability to mix different formats will also save you plenty of production time. Final Cut Pro 5 may get up and running faster, but you still must conform all clips to the same format before you can start working with its multicamera features-a huge time sump when deadlines are tight. While there is no clear winner here, there is a clear directive-go out and start editing, fast!

Easy, painless multi-camera editing is evolving at a steady clip, and Xpress Pro HD and Final Cut Pro 5 are leading the way. Other options include Leitch VelocityHD, Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6, United Media’s plug-in for Premiere Pro 1.5 and Macrosystem’s QuadCom plug-in. The only way to find out which system works best for you is to take a test drive. When you do, think about what other multi-camera features you need, then beat a path to the respective development teams and let them know!

Final Cut Pro external hardware acceleration.

Final Cut Pro remains a software-based system only, which is powered by a CPU speed that has nearly hit the processing wall. Extra CPU horsepower would let you edit an HD program with multiple angles without having to recompress all footage to SD.

Better color matching in Final Cut Pro.

Color correction between cameras in the multicamera-editing mode is trial by error at best. It would be better to have a new color-correction filter designed specifically for multi-camera editing that has the ability to compare images from other angles.

More viewable angles in Xpress Pro.

While 16 angles are fairly unusual in most production situations, six to eight angles in a live production is pretty standard.

The ability to sync by marker in both products.

In addition to synchronizing clips by in and out points, wouldn’t it be great if you could group clips together by marker, so you could keep in and out points separate?

Avid Xpress Pro HD is, without question, a tool for professionals only. While not as elegant and easy to use as Final Cut, you can easily and quickly match cameras using Xpress Pro’s excellent Color Correction mode. In fact, the feature was a huge time saver for us during production.