After 14 hours of multicam edits, I’m ready to try anything that will speed up the process. So instead of cutting by city, I decide to build the sub-edits based on how the music relates to what the viewer expects to see. The vocals are the thread holding everything together, so I choose them the “foundational” layer. The guitars drive the melody, so pass number two will be guitars. The third pass is drums, since you often need to inject drums quickly in-between other shots. This means the edit will be structured with all the necessary singer and guitar shots, and then drums and crowd shots can get peppered on top to tie it all together.

After this much testing and burning-in of the editing system, I’ve determined that it handles nine simultaneous HD layers in real-time as a multicam project pretty well. Good enough for a full-length live cut for this project. And since nine makes a nice multicam matrix AND means you can assign each multicam angle to a button on a numeric keypad, this seems like a solid approach.

So I do these edits. They work and look good. I complete the first pass on the singers, then use that as “camera 1” for the guitars multicam. This means “camera 1” is actually a sub-edit of all the vocals. I can layer guitars on top of that from the eight remaining shots. And that works.

Then I insert the guitar multicam (which contains the singers multicam) as “camera 1” into a third multicam, which contains eight shots of drums and crowd shots. This seems to work. Until it comes crashing down.

Towards the end of completing the third pass, I start to encounter some strange behavior in Premiere. It starts running slowly. It bogs. It crashes. And suddenly it won’t open my underlying first and second pass from my third pass project. W. T. F.

I spent weeks gently massaging the project file back to life, extracting sub-edits (first and second pass) into new projects, relinking files, and carefully rebuilding my work. Finally, after pulling out a lot of hair (and I think literally having some hair turn gray), I finish the third pass and everything seems about right. Unfortunately I had to “hard burn” the first two passes into ProRess 422 files of their own, thus losing the ability to go back and tweak those edits. I’m able to salvage the work and insert them into the third pass though. I make all the necessary tweaks to have a “first final cut” of the project.

Proud of my hard work and weeks of frustration, I happily export a full version and upload to Vimeo for review. Sascha calls a day later.

“Jacob, the video looks great, but I have to say – it’s out of sync.”

We go back and watch together. I notice a couple of blips and bumps, but overall it looks great to me.

“I’m sorry man, but there are entire sections that are clearly out of sync.”

I protest. I beg. I plead. I decide to get a second opinion from Andy, the drummer. I figure as a drummer and member of the band, he’ll be able to speak with authority on the timing and sync, and will clearly see it’s perfectly in sync.

“Sorry mate, Sascha’s right – a good 80% of this is out of sync. The audio is off, the timing is off.”

I’m ready to give up. I have spent months and months of personal time on this project, all for the love of the project and tiny glimmering prospect of future profits from an on-demand sale. I protest with both Sascha and Andy further, but they are adamant. The video is out of sync and must be corrected before going out.

After a week absorbing this idea, I come around. Looking closely I realize they are correct. At least 20 of the camera angles need to be nudged forward or backward by a few frames to achieve sync. The problem is, having hard-burned the first two editing passes into ProRes 422 files, there’s no way to go back and make this adjustment. I will have to re-edit the entire 90 minute video.

THE EDIT: ROUND 4 (THE FINAL)

Having gone through hell and back with the embedded multicam sequences in Premiere, I know that is NOT the way to proceed. But at this point, I’m exceedingly familiar with the music. Then it hits me: edit blindfolded.

Instead of worrying about structuring the multicam sequences in layers, just setup one MASSIVE multicam sequence with every single angle, tapping the beat blindfolded. Literally blindfolded. After all the cuts are made in the sequence using the “add edit” command (I remapped this to the spacebar to make it easier to find while blindfolded), simply open the project, and then select a camera angle for each cut using the keypad (or the drop down selector).

The advantages of this method are:

You cut exactly on the beat and aren’t distracted by the visuals

You instinctively insert more cuts, thus creating a more engaging, dynamic video

You are not constrained to cut it live in real-time (we found that even with nine cameras, if you stopped the playhead after six minutes and then restarted the edit process, a noticeable one-second lag was introduced every time you made a cut, thus making it necessary to edit the entire live show start-to-finish in one pass)

Since there are no embedded multicam sequences, you avoid all the trouble there

The major disadvantage here is that playing back 38 cameras of multicam is nearly impossible for most computers. Even reducing the frame rate and using tiny 640×360 proxy files didn’t help.

But since I had already cut the set ten times and listened to the set countless more, I was so familiar with the shots, I simply took a screenshot of the multicam output, added numbers in photoshop, and placed this printout next to my monitor:

This fourth and final system worked. And it work GREAT. I could go back and fine-tune any of the edits very easily, I had a much faster, more engaging piece, and I was able to nudge entire tracks forward or backward to adjust sync at any time.

It was this final method that resulted in the actual product, which is available online at www.WeAreKMFDM.com. Or check out the portfolio entry on the Punch Drunk website.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your massive multicam project!