Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Mastering Movie Edit Pro: Episode Seven; Mixing Video Live?

I've mixed clips many times with Movie Edit Pro and in doing so I had to sync up clips to specific audio or elements so I didn't think Carol's question would be too difficult. However I never tried to mix two videos of the same thing together to get a "live" look with dissolves from camera to camera. Knowing that almost nothing is impossible with MEP14+ I took this as a challenge and tried it in this episode. Here is what Carol wrote:

"Thanks for your tutorials...am considering buying the program...very impressive, and you are a great teacher.
However, with all the goodies this program offers, there is a basic feature I need for doing concert videos:
Two (or more) video tracks: Camera 1 is long shot of group, Camera 2 handles CUs, zooms, pans. Audio brought in separately, recorded from mixing board. Need the audio and video to stay in perfect sync, and to be able to CROSS DISSOLVE (not just "stamp") between the tracks, from long shot to closeup between both cameras. Just like I had a studio and could dissolve between the two live cameras.
This is such a basic video editing function, yet none of the sub- FinalCutPro programs seem to offer it. I would trade all the fancy transitions in the world if a cheap program would offer this basic function.
If you say it's possible on MEP14+, I will buy the program for sure. It's quite "the deal" anyway, but that's what I need for my upcoming projects." -Carol

MEP14+ has 99 tracks to work with, in this video you'll see I did it with only 4. (2 Video, 2 Audio) However syncing up a concert would be much more time consuming. Frankly I did this on the fly and didn't pay much regard to audio quality or visuals, I just wanted to do something quickly to show how it could be done. If I were working with an actual product I would spend hours just making sure everything was perfect. But I believe this short tutorial will show that you can sync video and achieve a "mix" look. Assuming she has an audio track she can sync with the audio on each camera's recording one should be able to achieve what she is trying to get.


The trick here is getting the audio from both cameras in line. After both cameras are in sync then it is a simple matter of cutting where you want the cameras to mix and applying the dissolve to each segment. You can also "fake it" by dropping in video of the audience or graphics to cover any places where the video may not be in sync.
Enjoy!
~*~
Now that we are up to episode seven of Mastering Movie Edit Pro I will assume you have a basic understanding of how MEP works, so future episodes will likely move quickly like this one. I apologize for the frame rate of this episode but my screen recorder needs adjusting.
Don't have Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus yet? Click on the advertisement on this page to grab a demo and check it out!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jay
i have done a similar thing mixing 4 films with overlays for effect,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBW-a6WualA
i have only had pro 14 plus for a few months but i have a problem making a DVD menu in the burn screen. i can put a jpeg as a background, but then i only want text to select which film or chapter, i can do this with pinnacle 11, please help. ben.