When you shoot the same scene with two or more cameras at the same time to get multiple angles and shots of the event, it’s called multi-camera shooting. Similarly, when you try to edit all of these camera angles and footage together, you get multicam editing. Most high-scale videos usually use some form of multi-camera editing. Reality TV, soap operas, concert/theater videos, travel vlogs, sports video editing mostly utilize multicam. Sometimes, the number of cameras can go up to 15 or 20 at a time. This article walks you through some of the ways in which you can enhance your multi-camera editing skills and take them to the next level.
Name your camera
This is one of the primary steps in any sort of multi-camera footage editing. You need to name your camera so that you can keep track of their individual footage. It is wise to name them according to the type of shots they take so that you take.
Sync your sound
The next usable tip is to have a syncing point for your sound to visuals. Clapboards are going to be your best friends at this stage for syncing and adding together different parts of your clips. You can quite literally use any indication of a cut in your scenes and filing in this process.
Image dimensions and frame rate
This is one of the most important settings that you have figured out at the very get-go. Make sure all your cameras have the same codec, image dimensions, and frame rate. Unless you have the same cameras that have the same make and model and are set up the same way,
Storyboarding
It is important to know upfront that no multicam edits are intuitive in any way. You need to have an expert storyboard prepared, which will tell you exactly how to get started and how to finish. It should essentially direct the entire workflow and editing process.
Familiarize yourself with your software
You need to read your software’s instruction manual thoroughly. Each program has its own way of handling a multi-cam, so keep that in mind all the time. Multi cam editing is also extremely CPU and GPU intensive, so prepare a laptop or computer with a high enough RAM and use a powerful computer.
Wrapping Up
That brings us closer to some of those tips you can follow to improve your multi cam editing skills. With these, you basically have the basics covered. After that, it’s a matter of familiarizing yourself with the software and perfecting your vision so that you know exactly what to do and what you want to achieve. You can also hire expert editors to help you with the process and enhance your vision.
