Princess Productions, part of the Shine Group, has been using FORscene effectively for logging, rough cut editing and review since early 2010.

Logging multi-camera productions one camera at a time is unnecessarily time consuming, so adding multicam logging to FORscene was a natural extension to its capabilities. But playing back and logging multiple concurrent video streams has required several technical issues to be resolved - made more challenging in the case of FORscene as it is a Cloud system.

In the first quarter of 2011, the core FORscene video and audio technology was optimised to support full frame rate Cloud editing on tablets and smartphones. Applying these improvements, with some further upgrades, to the standard desktop Java version of FORscene, has enabled it to handle multicam with up to nine concurrent video streams.

FORscene multicam provides the frame accurate logging and editing capabilities expected from a standard FORscene account - with the advantage of being able to have up to nine source cameras concurrently.

Tools and features required for professional use include:

• the ability to sync to time-of-day timecode and resync shots
• support for multiple cards for each camera (with gaps while cards are changed)
• the ability to have an additional larger view of any chosen camera
• the ability to switch the choice of camera with the large view instantly
• multicam logging entries are added to each individual camera
• logging entries added to each individual camera appear in the multicam view
• the ability to edit the cameras and timecodes in the multicam logging window

"Speed, accuracy and cost are essential on our Got to Dance production. I am pleased to have been able to take advantage of the extra efficiency offered by this multicam feature of FORscene, with no loss of accuracy or impact on my budget."

Katie Le Corre, Series Producer,
Got to Dance 3

Clearly, playing back 9 concurrent sources requires a tad more processing power than when just playing back a single source; but it turns out that many modern computers have this power available already. To use multicam, the Java front end has to be given more memory to play with than the usual single camera version, and multicam users are given an extra button within the interface for this.

While advances in the Internet mean that FORscene multicam can be run directly over the Cloud, Forbidden recommends the use of a local FORscene Server box to minimise Internet traffic.

"FORscene is a very powerful system, but sometimes it takes an experienced user to spot an opportunity. In this case, I had a seven camera production where logging each camera separately was inefficient. Forbidden followed up my upgrade suggestion and within weeks provided a full multi-camera logging system compatible with the existing FORscene material. This upgrade transforms the economics of logging multi-camera material."

Paul Jones, Post Production Manager
at Princess Productions