PE6 Premiere Multi Camera Edit

All I can say is wow. I just learned something that could have saved me hours of time in past video editing. Of course, I didn't have access to Adobe Premiere at the time so it's a moot point, but I WILL be using this feature in the future.

I've done numerous multi-camera shoots for dance recitals, a wedding, ballets, plays, etc. and lining up the video from the various cameras is always tough. Using Premiere, I learned you can set a simple marker where you want on each clip, and then with one setting, have all the markers for the different cameras line up. While this would have been very helpful, this is not where the magic was in this lesson. The real magic came with the actual editing.

Take a look at the photo: there is a window in the foreground that shows 4 video clips on the left and a larger main clip on the right. These clips are from a music video tutorial on Lynda.com and they are currently synchronized. With Premiere, you can watch all the clips simultaneously and simply choose the clips you want to play by selecting them in real time. If after 3 seconds you want to switch to camera two, just click the camera two box. If you want to switch back to camera one after another 5 seconds, click back there. The edits are all done automatically. If you've never done multi-camera editing, you undoubtedly are saying "what's the big deal? This guy is a super nerd." While it's true I am a nerd, the big deal is the tremendous amount of time this type of editing can save because it allows you to see all camera views at the same time so you know which clip would look the best at each moment. Then you can make all your edits by simply clicking back and forth between the best shots while the video is playing. That means you can do an entire edit by just watching the show in real time vs. spending hours and hours switching between clips looking for the best one.

I'm so giddy about this that I'm even shocked how nerdy I am.