Multi Cam feed

Can FCP 6.0 take nine multi-camera feeds? How? through firewire? IP Network?

- We will have nine live camera feeds (probably standard definition 640x480)
- We will need to switch between each individual full screen feed to all nine feeds displayed at once like a tic-tac-doe board. Hollywood Squares style.

- Also, can someone recommend decent cameras for this type of application? One chip is fine. Web cameras?

Thank you.

Are you wanting to run the cameras directly into FCP? I don't believe it works this way. You need a switcher for that.

Steve

FCPX
FCP 7.0.3
Premier CS6

MBP Retina 2.6i7 16GB / iMac 27" 3.4i7 16GB

FCP is not designed to do anything of this sort.
You could capture each feed after the fact and edit them in a multiclip, but live switching? No. Camera's aren't your biggest issue, a switcher is. This is mostly an editing forum when we're not going on endlessly about Steve Jobs latest breakfast snack and what you're talking about is live TV production. A similar question has come up before and you're probably better off asking experts on a TV production board. That said, there are a lot of great people here with a wide range of experience so you might get lucky.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Yeah definitely an analog hardware solution would be required to do something like that.

-Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
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Final Cut Pro itself can handle 9 streams - but not while recording.
You'll need a good ingest solution which will include some powerful hardware. This won't be cheap.

Or you can use a mixer as suggested above, but then you would be bound to a single stream recording

Have a look at the www.livecut.at solution. It works - I know that because I did the Final Cut Pro integration.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Hey. We don't need it to record. Just push it back out as one DV signal say.

So har would those 9 streams come into the Mac? Through ethernet (an IP) ?

thank you everyone.

If you expect to be able to switch between inputs during shooting then FCP is not really the proper tool. It cannot live switch between multiple inputs. Multicamera editing in FCP is only with already captured sources.

You would need a hardware switcher and from there- sure you could feed that device's single output into say a Kona card or a DV capture device. But you say you don't need to record so really the only thing FCP could help you with here is not really needed.

When I say switcher, I mean something like this which you can probably rent someplace:

[www.dvcreators.net]

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

To reiterate what the the others here are saying, the tool you need to do this is a video switcher. FCP, or any application on a single Mac does not have the tools needed for this.

"We will need to switch between each individual full screen feed to all nine feeds displayed at once like a tic-tac-doe board. Hollywood Squares style. "

To have 9 feeds all scaled down live is going to take a REALLY powerful switcher as well.

You may want to think about renting a TV production truck to handle this. You would be able to get your 9 cameras, switcher, DVE's for the scaling etc. I work in sports and know several truck companies that I would be happy to recommend. Reply privately if you are interested.

-Vance