Final Cut Pro X Quick Tip #1 – Using Multicam for Instrumental & Vocal Music Edits.

Good day everyone! 

As my first real post on this blog, albeit after some busy work I’ve finally managed to put one up. I have one of my favourite techniques for editing audio inside of Final Cut Pro X.

Specifically, when cutting between music that has an instrumental track and a vocal track, for example, in a documentary where you’re cutting between interviews and b-roll and you want the instrumental to take place under the interviews, and the vocal track to take place during the b-roll.

This technique is one of the easiest I’ve found for doing this directly inside of Final Cut Pro X, and not needing an external application to do it.

Let’s get started!

1) Inside your Event Browser where your media is stored, select your audio tracks that have vocals and an instrumental mix.  Select the two clips, right click and select “New Multicam Clip”.

2) For the multicam settings, make sure “Use audio for synchronisation” is checked, and for Angle Assembly, change the drop down menu to “Clips”. This will name the clip angles to the name of the clips in your event browser, this’ll make it easier when you’re cutting the audio together. (If you cannot see this many options, then click “Use custom settings”)

3) Now that the multicam is completed, double check to make sure the tracks have synced by double clicking on the multicam clip inside of the Event Browser.

4) If everything is synced up and sounding sweet, you can begin editing. Create a new project and on the tool bar, where the options to Connect, Insert and Append, change it to Audio Only (Shift+3) and place it onto the Primary Storyline by hitting E (or connect it to the primary storyline by hitting Q, if you so wish)

 

5) Now you can cut the mulitcam as normal, using the mouse or number keys to make cuts between the two variations of the music, and as said earlier, you can see which clip is being cut by seeing the name of the clip in the Angle Editor.

 

Hopefully this speeds up your editing, and if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask!

You can follow me on Twitter @SWDoctor for more updates on things I do.

The music is Walk Through Life by PinkZebra on audiojungle.net

I recommend having a listen and supporting the artist, he makes great stuff!

Thanks for reading everyone!

SW