Sync picture in picture clips in Davinci Resolve

Question

I'm trying to transition from Lightworks to Davinci Resolve. My question here is about the right way to sync 2 video clips and show them simultaneously.

In my case I have a video of a sporting event and another video of the game clock. I want to crop the clock video and show it in the corner of the game video. Obviously getting them synced is important.

I've seen how Davinci Resolve makes it very easy to create a Multicam clip and sync the angles. However that seems to work to show just one angle at a time, and I want to show both at the same time. How do I accomplish this?

Bonus question - I want to cut out some spans of time in the game (timeouts, etc) which creates a challenge with the clock (at least in LW). In LW I would sync both clips, then cut out time with them together so they stay synced. How do I do this in DR?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I've seen how Davinci Resolve makes it very easy to create a Multicam clip and sync the angles. However that seems to work to show just one angle at a time, and I want to show both at the same time. How do I accomplish this?

It does only show one angle at a time. The way you accomplish it is to create two tracks on the timeline, drop an instance of the multicam on V1, duplicate that instance by alt/option dragging upwards to V2 (add shift after you start dragging to constrain the movement vertically, and to keep the clips synced temporally). Then switch the angle of either one of them, so that V1 is showing angle A and V2 is showing angle B, for instance. Then adjust the transform and crop parameters on the topmost clip (V2) to expose the one underneath.

As for the bonus question, you can either be careful how you blade by making sure you have either both or neither clips selected when you hit command/control-B, or you can lasso-select the two clips, right-click, and select "Link Clips", then make sure clip linking is on by toggling the chain link icon (cmd/ctrl+shift+L). Clip linking lets you move clips as groups, blade them as groups, and displays a red frame offset badge if the clips accidentally loose sync. I'm not sure how lightworks works, but it's very similar to Premiere and FCP7.

Answer 2

The above answer is not technically wrong, but it's probably not the right way to think about solving the problem. The general idea of a multicam clip is that you want to switch from one view to another view to another view. Each camera is a valid view and interchangeable with one another AS A VIEW. Cutting back and forth between a player and the clock is a great example of switching views.

The general idea of a compositing digital video editor is that you can build a final image from layers of video, text, graphics, etc. And you can even use such things for controlling effects like keys, transitions, etc. Very cool!

If the idea is to have one clip function as a picture-in-picture view of a clock, then the idea of using a multicam clip as the source for that clock is kinda wonky: why have a multicam clip whose job is merely to select precisely a single view?

If your footage of the event is continuous (and even multi-camera), then that would make for a good baseline track, such as Video Track 1 (V1). Place the footage of the clock on V2, aligning it so that it is synchronized with the video in V1. Initially, V2 will completely cover the video of V1, giving you a very exciting view of just the clock for the whole duration of the game. Using the Inspector in the edit window, scale the clock to the size of the picture-in-picture view you want (using the Zoom controls), but don't adjust its location with Position X and Position Y. Rather, adjust its location with Anchor X and Anchor Y.

When you have the clock where you want it to becreate a compound clip consisting of the clock clip and the action clip (which might be a multicam clip if you have a multicamera recording crew). Now you can edit the compound clip, cutting out all the boring parts. You might decide that you don't want the clock on all the time, only at certain times. You can edit the compound clip, making cuts to define the regions where you don't want the clock to show. Or making cuts where you want only the clock to show--full size. If you want a full-sized clock, make cuts so you can select the part of the clock clip you want to be full-sized. Set the zoom factor to 1.0 and the clock will magically fill the screen in the center (because you used the Anchor XY instead of Position XY controls).