mixing a and b rolls

[BobNaughton]

Jim,

You didn't mention in your post whether or not you needed to synchronize your A roll and B roll footage or not. If you are mainly using one camera for your shoot and taking various cutaways with a second camera that can be placed anywhere in your scene simply download both tapes into your unit and then rename them whatever makes sense to you. Cam 1, Cam 2
A-roll, B-roll Etc. Place the A roll on the storyboard and then Auto-split The B-roll footage. Each resulting scene will be labeled B-roll.1, B-roll.2 and you just use the insert feature to place selected scenes from your B-roll where you want them.

If you do need to synchronize them, say at a wedding where you are using one camera as a wide angle view and another as a close up view, and you have to synchronize the audio from your main camera to your second camera, I would strongly reccomend Quadcam, as previous posts have suggested. I bought my casablance prestige because I had read about Quadcam and its ease of use. My computer skills to edit video are only fair at best. I know Vegas and Adobe also have a multi-camera program, but I didn't want to spend 6 months trying to figure out how to use it.

You can run up to 4 cameras at a time. You just clap in front of all the cameras or set off a Still camera Flash to give a visual synchronization point for all your cameras then trim each cameras video to where you see the flash as the first frame.
Open up Quadcam and just pick whichever camera has your main audio as "Background" Choose whatever other cameras you are using as insert 1, insert 2 ETC. Then as you video is playing, just choose whichever scene looks best for that moment in time. All your audio is now lip-synced to all uyour cameras. You even have a 3 second fudge factor to fine tune any of the shots between any of the cameras. Its my most used software I think. It has never failed me. I love it! As tony the tiger said "ITS GREAAT"

[Beachy]

Just to add my little tip...I do as Ian says but when chopping Cam B shots for use or not to use, I make all the ones I am going to drop, end in a Zero Then I just quickly run thro and delete all the inserted scenes ending in zero. ie 10 20 etc. Youll be suprised how accurate these 10 frames can be....John

[TimKennelly]

I just Split alternating between what I will want to show and what I will want to not show, then add them all sequentially and Remove every other one.

When only having two views and one of them stable I find using this process far faster and more precisely accurate without having to tweak as much in post than QuadCam.

If both views are dynamic or you have three or four views QuadCam is the better choice usually.