Tutorial: Multicam Editing in Apple FCP X, Part 1

Streaming Media by Glen Elliott

Our Final Cut Pro X tutorial series continues with the first installment of a 3-part series on multicam editing in FCP X, addressing the basics like creating a multicam clip and cutting and switching audio and video using the Angle Editor.

In this tutorial, we’re going to begin our three-part look at multicam by going over basic multicam editing in Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut Pro X has an excellent implementation of multicam, and they’ve even added a tool that allows you to natively sync your footage based on waveform.

In Final Cut Pro 7 and earlier, you had to use third-party software to sync your footage, so I think it’s pretty cool that they’ve added the native ability to do this.

Creating a Multicam Clip

We’re going to start by creating a multicamera clip by combining the three clips highlighted in Figure 1 (below). The project we’re going to use as an example in this tutorial is just a basic talking head intro to a recent corporate project we completed at Cord3Films, and there are three clips here: Boom Mic, Camera 01, and Camera 02. We need to combine these--to start the multicamera clip, we just need to click and drag a lasso over them (Figure 1, below). read more...