One source of sound with multi camera cuts...

For the first Q, no problem, any NLE can do this. The reason why is you have multiple audio and video tracks, and just delete or mute the tracks you don't want. The 2nd, I have no idea.

Awesome thanks.. how exactly do you delete or mute just the audio or video of a track?

Thanks for the quick response.

It sounds like you've never edited anything in a non-linear editor before (there's nothing wrong with that!).

You have

Video track 1
Video track 2
Video track 3
(as many as you want)
Audio track 1
Audio track 2
Audio track 3
(as many as you want)

You have a timeline, you put your video clips on the timeline, and slot the video and the audio portion of the video clip onto which ever track you want.

Once you get in and do it it will make sense. You can mute the whole track or just split the audio from the video of the clip and delete the audio portion (but I like to save it so I can match up the audio perfectly).

I dont use FCP so I cant give you more advice than that.

I'm not sure how you edit in FCE, but if you drag clips into the canvas, so they get inserted or overwritten in the timeline, you can separate the audio targets in the time line by dragging them to the left. Once you've done that, you'll only get video. Otherwise, just put both video tracks in the timeline (layered over the top of each other) and turn off or delete the audio tracks you don't want.

When I did multi cam edits in FCE, I liked to put both video tracks in the timeline, in their entirety, sync them up, then slice away parts of the top track where I want to use the bottom track. You can just make the top track invisible to you can play the bottom track for comparison.

Regarding the 2nd question. That error is usually because you have the wrong sound sampling rate. If you recorded stereo 48kHz audio, you should be selecting DV NTSC 48Khz in your Easy Setup before starting your capture. If you happened to record 4 channels of audio @ 32Khz, you'll need DV NTSC 32kHz ... I hope that is not what you did.

Since you recorded with the XL-2, I should ask if you recorded @ 24p ? If you recorded 24p, you'll probably want to select a preset that strips the 2:3 telecine off the video as it's captured. I sort of hope you did not do that, because your cheap second camera will have been shooting 60i and you may have a lot of fun getting the two of them to conform in the same timeline. You're not lost, but you'll probably want to leave the 2:3 telecine on the video and work with it as if it was 60i.

If you want more help, please provide more information about how you shot the video (SP/LP, 48kHz stereo or 32kHz 4 channel, 60i, 30p, or 24p, and your zodiac sign).

Doug

In FCE, if you want to select just the audio track for deletion, turn off the audio lock. I need a screenshot for this. It's one of the two gadgets that is in the upper right corner of the timeline window. It's the one to the left of the two. If you turn it off, you can select audio and video tracks independently. Be sure to turn it back on, or when you move a video track, the audio will not move with it, which is generally not what you want.

Wideshot is right about leaving the extra audio tracks for syncing. You can use the waveforms to visually align them based on noticeable beats. You will need to click on your sequence (click on it in the browser window - the one in the upper left of your screen, generally), then select "Settings..." from the "Sequence" menu. Once you get into sequence settings, click the "timeline options" tab and find the checkbox for "Show audio waveforms". Turn that on, and you'll see your audio waveforms in the timeline when you are zoomed in close enough.

Thanks guys for the advice. It helps a lot. I'm still extremely new to editing as you can tell. I haven't shot the band footage yet. I will be doing that next weekend. I wanted to figure out how to do it before I shot it and messed it up. The sync issue sounds right. I will change the quick setup before I capture. I was trying to find it after it was logged and couldn't find any controls that fit the error it gave me, so it must be something I need to change before I log the footage. I was just using some random footage I shot and i was using a variety of settings including some 24p and 60i settings. That would explain why I only had the error every once in awhile. I would assume it was when I was using 24p mode. I will keep troubleshooting the problem and figure it out. You guys gave me a good place to start. Thanks for your help.


Mitch

Just be sure your XL-2 is configured to record audio at 48kHz (2 channels). Then select the correct Easy Setup and you should be fine. If you weren't using a second camera and mixing the footage, I'd tell you to use the 24p and shoot at 1/48 second shutter speed to pull in a little more light than you can get at 1/60th. However, if you're editing 2 different formats in the same timeline, it will get ugly and the final product might look a little strange.

Be sure to lock the white balance on both cameras. It would be good to white balance them both in the same light, but at least lock them, so when you try to color-match the footage, the white balance is at least consistent on each camera.

p.s. For balancing color between cameras, it might serve you well to record 10 seconds or so of a white card, or something white, with both cameras, in the same light and at about the same time. Later, you can use the color corrector to match the two images to each other. Then you'll have the color corrector settings you can copy and paste onto your main clips that will match their color, at least. You'll still probably have some major differences in sharpness and contrast, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

There's another trick to that "white card to give a colour correction" idea... and that's to put a piece of matt black card over half of your white piece of paper.

The reason: well when you colour correct you're looking to set the white level and the black level... if you do this you have one reference... 87.6% of the time everything will fall into place from those two points.