Stitching multiple clips together in FCP - How?

S

sparky05

New member
hi all - looking for some assistance on a problem that's been bedeviling me for a little while. Here's my situation:

I'm working on putting together A/B edits on a number of 1-2 hour long interviews shot on a couple of Panasonic HVX200s (HD footage shot on P2 cards).

I have all of the MXF footage imported into FCP, and from each camera, I have multiple individual files which, when laid end to end, comprise the entire interview. For example, from my A camera, I have 4 clips of 12, 8, 12, and 2 minutes respective that comprise the first 34 minutes of the interview, and I have the same from the B camera.

What I'd like to do is to create a single long clip from each camera that can then be turned into a multiclip for the A/B edit. Unfortunately, I don't know how (if there is a way) to quickly and easily turn multiple shorter clips into larger clips without exporting a full sized quicktime movie, which takes a lot of time. Is there a way to take those multiple clips, line them up, and turn them into one big clip?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Hmmm... good question.

I've got two solutions that MIGHT work for you...

First, I'd try and export each sequence as a QT movie, just not as a self-contained one. Same settings... etc... just not self-contained.

Then import them back into FCP and add to Multicam.

Second... not sure if this would even work... can you multi cam sequences??? Try that and see if it would work.

CaptM
 
Thanks for the suggestion - I'm trying it right now.

I don't think it's possible to multicam sequences. I've tried that, but no dice (unless I overlooked something).

I have been exporting the lined up clips as a self-contained quicktime and then doing a multicam edit, but that ends up taking about as much time as it would to digitize the footage from a tape, which in effect negates any advantage P2 has over tape in terms of convenience.

What I've been looking for is a command that's sort of the inverse of creating a subclip out of a larger clip... creating a larger clip out of a bunch of subclips...
 
Are you exporting them to Quicktime Movies, or are you using Quicktime Conversion? Because exporting the sequences as Quicktime Movies should take no time at all, and they can be easily imported back into the project to set up a multiclip.

That is by far the easiest way to do it, like the Capt'n said.

You could also try to nest the sequences, but I'm not sure if that would work either.

But either way, you still might have a problem if your footage isn't synched up with timecode, because you start and stopped shooting along the interview. It'll be really hard to make the footage match.
 
I've been exporting to Quicktime Movies. It takes forever if they're self-contained. Exporting them as non-self contained movies is much shorter.

I haven't had any problems synching up the footage. Understand - because we're using the HVX and P2 cards, we don't end up with a single long clip of video. For whatever reason, we end up with the interview divided up into 5 or 6 shorter clips that, when laid end to end, make up the whole thing. so all I've been looking for is a way to easily and quickly fuse those 5 or 6 clips together into one. So far, the best solution has been to export the non-self-contained QT.
 
Try this.

Select all the clips from Camera A and then choose Sequence > Nest Items.
Repeat with the clips from Camera B.

That'll create the larger clips, but really it just makes them sequences embedded in another sequence. I don't think you can do a mutliclip from there. I tried, but it didn't work.
 
Ya -- then from there you're old school... resizing to fit both on one frame and razorblading back and forth for cuts -- then removing basic motion from the remove attributes menu.

FUN!

Ah... the old days.

CaptM
 
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