How to Create Multicam Clips in DaVinci Resolve - Best Workflow Practices for Multiple Workflows! 

Thank you so much for the kind words! Any time I can make a somewhat complex concept simpler is a win.

❤❤❤

Thank you so much!

Amazing! Glad I could help!

Hopefully I’ll get to them in the near future! There definitely seems to be a lack of multicam content out there.

You’re welcome! And thank you for liking it so much! I’m really glad I can help explain the in-and-outs of how multicam functions in a way that people can understand it.

Thank you so much! I’m really glad this helped!

No problem! Glad it could help!

Thank you! I tried to make it as cohesive as possible.

Haha! Thank you so much!

Thank you! Glad it was helpful!

YOU’RE WELCOME!! GLAD I COULD HELP!

Thank you so much!! That means a lot!

Thank you so much! Anything the video didn’t cover that I can help with?

Amazing! I definitely want to make more Premiere to Resolve content in the future, because I started back in Final Cut 5, and also used Premiere for 7 years, so I know the process of switching can be daunting. Trying to find ways to make that transition easier.

It’s comments like these that remind me why I do what I do. Seeing someone overcome a hurdle is always incredibly gratifying, and I’m so glad that I get to provide value to people in this way. Thank you so much and I don’t plan on stopping bringing content anytime soon.

Thank you for the suggestion! And yeah, I should've mentioned that tab as a third option and added keyboard shortcuts to it so that you can easily toggle between them from the multicam source window. I just didn't think about it at the time because when I was recording this, I didn't really use it because of my typical workflow (which often has me cutting between multiple audio sources), but definitely something I will mention in the future if I do any other tutorials on multicam.

@@CameraTim My comment was just a suggestion, Tim. I usually have one audio recorded on a separate mic which is my best audio, but I can see that using multiple audio sources would work better in other workflows. I'm mostly a "one-man-production crew" and use shotgun mics on the cameras, usually two but sometimes three. There have been times in editing that the best audio may come from one of the cameras and, well, then I have a problem using my suggestion. Thanks, again for your quick response. I will follow you to get additional helpful ideas. Les.

@@llpreiss I’m really glad you found the video useful! I run solo shoots pretty often as well, so I feel that. I am happy with suggestions, and it’s definitely something that can help a lot of people’s workflows, so it’s good you brought it up. Thanks again!

There you go! Even more ways to do it! It’s so hard not to make my videos longer. Haha!

Thank you for the kind words Jim! Yeah, I tried to cover several scenarios for creating multicam clips because people have different needs and workflows. I think I might’ve just forgotten to mention the video only icon because I personally don’t use that method, so that was mostly just an oversight. For the Open In Timeline part, I did cover that in a different tutorial (I think the Color Matching one), and that’s definitely something I do with my grades. Makes it so much easier to just grade clips as a whole instead of grouping everything on the multicam clip itself. It’s super convenient if you need to go back and make changes after an edit pass.

Thank you for enjoying the video! The only way I know how to view additional angles beyond 25 is on the Edit page, you can hit a page toggle right underneath the source viewer, and it'll show you the 26-40 angles. It's not the absolute best solution because you can't see all 40 at once, but you can still view all 40 from the same multicam clip. (Just make sure the source viewer is set to Multicam and not Source in the bottom left corner)

great thank you. I'll try this out!

@@mdvmusic Sounds good! Let me know if it works for you or if you run into any issues!

Yes, you can. You can open the Multicam Clip in the timeline (so it shows everything inside of it), then you can add the new clip on a new layer, then highlight that clip and whatever clip you’re syncing it to, use the Auto Sync Clip By Waveform and it should sync automatically (if the audio is good enough to sync with, it’s possible you may have to sync it manually).

Thank you so much! In terms of your question, Groups are likely the best option for you. Depending on how you're setting up your multicam clips, there can be multiple ways to do this. The general way though is by going to the Color page, right-clicking a clip and selecting "Add into a New Group". This will give you a Group Pre-Clip and Post-Clip tab in your node tree. Then you add your Color Space Transform from camera to working space in the Pre-Clip tab, and your working space to delivery space in the Post-Clip tab. For example, in Pre-Clip your CST could be: Sony S-gamut/Sony S-log > DaVinci Wide Gamut/DaVinci Intermediate And your Post-Clip CST would be: DaVinci Wide Gamut/DaVinci Intermediate > Rec.709/Gamma 2.4 Then all you do from that point is highlight every clip from that camera in the Clips window, right-click, hit Groups, and select the corresponding camera group you made. Also, an easier way to sort if you have a lot of clips, on the Media page, highlight all the clips from each camera and set them to a certain color or use a flag (right-click after highlighting and select Clip Color or Flags), doesn't matter which one. Then on the Color page, use the dropdown tab on the Clips tab to pull up all the sorting options, then you can select each color/flag individually so you can highlight all the clips that need to be added to the group.

@@CameraTim Thank you! What an amazing follow-up - truly, truly appreciate all your help on this, Tim. Will try your advice and tips today!

@@pourquoipa5 Absolutely! Glad to help!

Ah, this is an interesting one. I have a couple theories on how to best tackle it. First off, just want to make sure, do the cameras themselves sync properly on the initial sync task or is it either inaccurate or too cumbersome to sync manually?

Having some knowledge of Resolve does help for this video, yeah. I made it because there are lots of Resolve users that somewhat struggle with multicam workflows, and I was hoping this could simplify concepts and help it make more sense.

​@@CameraTim to be honest, having spent some days with it now, much of the confusion comes down to Resolve itself, not your video. I find it to be less intuitive than Premiere Pro and that results in some frustration trying to figure it out. Thanks :)

@@Caleb6000 That’s a fair assessment. I would probably never say that Resolve is the easiest and most intuitive software, but what I have learned about it is once you overcome the initial learning curve, it becomes a lot easier to learn everything after that. And this is after having started in a software like iMovie back in 2007, and since then have gone to Final Cut, Avid, Premiere, and eventually Resolve. I can confidently say that in terms of what’s possible in a single software, Resolve has by far the biggest scope of possibility, but to get there takes a lot more time to learn, especially if you want to learn Fusion.

Haha! We call those learning experiences. Glad this was useful though!

What kind of footage are you trying to play back and what are your system specs?

Not really. Resolve doesn't offer a lot of customization for workspaces, which can be of benefit when trying to do tutorials because the variance in windows is minimal (unlike another software that shall not be named...). With that said, dual screen and single screen layouts are very different, and I tend to switch between them quite a bit, so which part looked different to you?

@@CameraTim As soon as you go to the cut screen, nothing looks the same on my computer. It may be that I'm using a MacBook pro with a small 13" screen right now but at work with a larger 27" monitor, things still look different. Before I take any more of your time, I need to figure out what I've done so wrong setting up this multicam project with my two camera clips and single external audio clip that I can't follow along from the start. I'll spend some more time watching and listening to see what I can figure out. Thanks, Tim! If I could send screen caps I guess it would be easier to convey exactly what's different but let me do some more learning before we get all fancy sending pictures back and forth! lol Who knows maybe I'll figure out what I'm doing wrong.

@@rsw987654321 If you want to send screen shots through a Google Drive link to my business email (listed in the description), I can take a look at it there! Scaling can definitely be a factor as screens will look different depending on resolution. The Cut page also has had some updates since the version I made this video in, so if you’re on 19, it’ll likely look different. There are also different tabs that can make different windows appear/disappear and extend/retract, that might also contribute to it.

So there are probably a couple ways to do this in the Deliver page, maybe even the Media Management tool. I haven't tried this myself, but on the Deliver page, when you select the Individual Clips option, and click on the File tab, it gives you the option to add File Subfolders, and there's also the Use Commercial Workflow toggle, but I haven't used it exactly in the way you're describing. So I'll have to do more testing on my end.

@@CameraTim Hi, thank you for your response. I have rendered with individual clips and in a separate folder, but my problem is that every shot should have a custom name sequence.

I believe there are some variables you can use to work around this, like adding {Timeline Name} or something like that to the file name box, but I haven’t fully tested this. That would probably be the best option to work around it. Might take a little bit of setting up on the timeline and clips end, but at least it would be possible to avoid most of the renaming. I’ll continue to look into this when I have the time and I might make a new video or a short about it eventually.

Turns out I figured out how the variables work. This will take a bit of playing with, but if you put a % in the Custom Name or File Subfolder boxes, it will allow you to use the metadata of the clips in the timeline, so it'll auto-name them for you based on the available metadata. Hope this helps! Now I have to make a video on this.

Are you talking about whether you apply sound effects inside of the multicam clip or timeline or just in general? I usually apply them in the normal timeline and not the multicam clip because they’re easier to mix in that way.

@@CameraTim yeah that’s what I meant. Applying the effects in the timeline. Can I still do that?

@@Lex.Ramirez Yeah, definitely. I just wouldn’t do it inside of the multicam clip.

Going into the syncing window, it would be empty if you don’t have the folders with the video clips selected. If you’re referring to the actual Sync Bin button, you need to have a multicam clip created before it works.

The simplest way to get around this is just by making those multi-file cameras a compound clip. It’s basically the equivalent of nested sequences.

Thx@@CameraTim

@@naecatalin8518 No problem!

Ah, so the shortcuts I can address easily. So my philosophy with editing is that you want to use your mouse as little as possible and assign keyboard shortcuts to whatever takes longer to do with a mouse. This has been a common ideology that started with Avid editors many years ago (this is where the term “left-handed editor” started). Although it is something I assume for people who watch my content a lot, so that’s something I should be more mindful of that. The one shortcut I mentioned to not use because it has the same label, but it’s specifically for the Media Pool page and not the Cut/Edit pages, and has different functionality, which can be confusing, so I felt that just addressing that it was the wrong shortcut for awareness was sufficient. Each of the shortcuts mentioned were used in the video, and I say a quick summery of what each of them do. It’s a personal preference of mine to have everything set up before going into the actual tutorial aspect of the video so that we’re not going back and forth between setup and tutorial. This ensures that if someone is following the tutorial, everything they’re replicating actually operates the way it should, because if a step is missed, that can cause issues down the road very quickly. I made a video on Proxy Media because it’s a commonly misunderstood aspect of editing, but necessary for many editors, especially for multicam workflows. As an example, if you’re trying to playback 4 H.265 files in a Multicam clip at the same time in your source viewer, very few systems have the hardware decoding capability to play that back in real-time. So for a vast majority of editors, intraframe proxies are a necessity for real-time playback. So that’s why I refer to that video specifically. And just to clarify, I do take criticism seriously. I don’t really believe in getting offended. So if a someone has a genuine issue with my content, unless they’re just trolling or making some sort of useless “this sucks” comment, in which case it’s easy to ignore, I actually want to make improvements on what I do.

@@CameraTim Ok, I am now clear about the shortcuts situation. I have suggestions: Make segments in your video and clearly at the beginning of the segment what you will convey. Someone not interested can go to the next segment. I wrote my first computer program in 1964, and it was decades before shortcuts became available. I’d likely skip that section. You will need to write a script for your teleprompter, that’s how they work. Make it highly structured. A hierarchy. Back to high school principles about a good paragraph. Being called away…

@@EdwardKilner I’ve been trying to keep up on chapter markers to ensure people can find what they’re looking for if they only need to watch a small segment (I’ve missed that on a couple videos, and it’s something I need for all of them). But that would certainly fix that problem. The scripting is exactly why I really want a teleprompter. It’ll help me significantly on ensuring I mention each topic that’s necessary as well as articulating it in a sensical form. It’s on my list of next purchases, just a matter of when budget allows.

Appreciate the feedback! Thank you for considering me intelligent, at least I fooled someone. On a serious note, pacing is definitely something I’m trying to figure out in terms of balance. On one hand, I’m aiming to be able to keep retention, but I’m also trying to provide information that can be considered somewhat complex but in a simplistic form. I definitely have a lot of growing to do in that skill still. Some of these videos I make are also longer than I was hoping they’d be, so that doesn’t help much either.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Any particular instance where you felt my attitude was bad? I don't consider myself a teacher, but I consider my audience to be anyone who's trying to learn more about DaVinci Resolve, whether they're brand new or using the software for years. I usually just look for what people often struggle with and try to make a video to help them. This is the first time I've gotten feedback of this nature, so I'm curious as to what specifically this stems from?

@@CameraTim Clearly, I found the video hard to watch. It is rare that I don’t watch a video completely. I was watching a number of videos on this topic; obviously, I have a need for this feature. Videos can proceed too fast for me, not because I’m unintelligent nor technologically deficient, but because the narrator causes me to say “why?” frequently. I try to figure this out, maybe can’t, and by this time, I have to rewind. Even on the desktop, rewinding is not really great. This happened with your video enough that I abandoned it. “Bad attitude “ might be inaccurate, but reflects my struggle with your script and delivery. If I already knew this topic and was looking for rounding out my knowledge, I might have felt differently. A much tighter script with many fewer but well chosen words and a nice linear track with appropriate pauses would not likely affect the length of a video. No need to rush. I’ll consider revisiting the video, and if I have a change of heart, I’ll tell you. You are not the only creator who has a style that creates problems for me, I’ll get over it, get what I need elsewhere, and move on.

@@EdwardKilnerMy delivery is definitely something I’m working on because speaking on camera is not natural for me (and I often struggle with proper word retrieval, which is why I really need to invest in a teleprompter), and obviously I’m not going to please everyone, nor do I intend to. But if something is genuinely wrong with how I deliver something, I’d like to rectify it and make it better later. I think this video in particular was a little off because I recorded it differently than I normally do, but it was an experiment and didn’t work as well as I wanted. I’m not questioning your intelligence, and I do think I can simply some of my explanations, but it’s a work in process as I try to make some complex concepts somewhat more simple for newer users as well so that people can understand these topics better when it comes to troubleshooting. And I want people to be able to expand on it outside of just following along step by step. At least these are my intentions.