How to Set Up and Edit a Multicam Clip in Final Cut Pro for Multiple Cameras
How to Set up Multicam Clip in Final Cut Pro
There are a few ways to handle a shot taken with multiple cameras in Final Cut Pro, but by far the most efficient one is the Multicam Clip. It allows you to take a scene you shot with two or three or any number of multiple cameras and edit them in real time by switching camera views with a click.
My name is Nicholas Johnson and this is the Space Warehouse.
With a multicam clip in Final Cut Pro, you can switch between camera views just by clicking with your mouse, in real time, as the video plays. All the moves you make get saved as cuts and of course you can stop and start or go back or forward all you want. All of your camera angles are combined into one clip on the timeline.
Heres how you set it up. File handling is a big part of this because if youre shooting with multiple cameras, depending on how big the project is, youre going to end up with a LOT of files and youre going to be syncing specific ones with their matching counterpart from the different camera. In this example, I had a lapel mic also, which will become part of the multicam clip.
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So Ive got one shot all separated out here - and crucially, for this next part, every clip had audio recording as well. Thats what the computer is going to use to sync them all up. You CAN add clips with no audio also, like if you had a drone shot - but you’ll need to go in and make an adjustment after the clip is generated, and Ill go over that in a minute.
Ive got a new event and a new project here, so the browser is empty so far. Drag all of these files into the browser together, that way they will all be selected, lets say if you’re in the middle of your project and it might otherwise be hard to find each file in the list. Right click on one of them and choose Multicam Clip - you can leave all these settings on automatic, rename it and press enter. Now you’ve got a NEW clip in your browser with the name you picked. You’ll see at the end how its just got a black screen, thats because the lapel mic was still on after all the cameras were off. Now go over to View on the upper right of the playback, and click angles, or press shift command 7. All of your views should pop up! If you make this part of the screen bigger, you can scrub around and make sure they did a good job of syncing - or if you had a clip with no audio, this is where you will have to manually put it in the right place.
If you have an older computer you may need to make proxy files to get smooth playback.. Im using a 2019 16” macbook pro, and it handles two 4k streams AND a 1080 stream with live playback..
It almost always does this automatically and perfectly, but if you notice one of the clips didn’t sync correctly, maybe it had bad audio or in the case where you had a clip with no audio, just double click on the clip in the timeline, it will expand out into all of the clips, and you can drag them around to put them where they belong according to the other clips in the bunch.
Now that you’ve got the files in there and they’re lined up - here’s how you work the multicam clip for editing. This window has all of your clips, and these three icons on the upper left determine what your mouse click on a given window will do to the timeline. If you have one primary audio track, like a lapel mic - start at the beginning of your clip, click this waveform icon and click on the track that has the audio you want to use. Then click the filmstrip icon and when you switch from angle to angle during playback, it will only switch the view and not the audio. If you have the icon with both the waveform and the film strip selected, now when you click during playback, it will switch the video AND audio together to which ever view youre changing to.
If you have more than one audio source that you want to use the whole time, head over to the inspector, switch it to audio and check the boxes that apply to each audio track you want to play - then when you switch between clips, you’ll only be using the filmstrip icon and it will keep the audio playing from however many clips you selected in the inspector. That makes sense if you have two people and they’re both mic’d up with different files.
Now youre all set, you can just press the space bar and pretty much treat it like a live broadcast and just switch between views! After you’ve watched through the whole thing - go back and make cuts and edits like you would if you had taken the time to individually put all these clips together.
This video was shot on a Sony Alpha a6600 at 50mm and a 2019 Macbook Pro 16" Audio recorded with Amazon Basics Professional Mic II, and the music is from Epidemic Sound.