Which Multicam video editor?

Multicam video editing

I've been trying to find a simple yet powerful new multicam video editor because I am starting to find Magix Vegas Pro old-fashioned, clunky and basic.

It should be possible to lay down more than one video track easily and allow the software to synchronise them for me.

However, it turns out not to be that easy. I tried several options before deciding to take a further look at Pinnacle Studio 23 Ultimate and Cyberlink PowerDirector 18. Both should do the job.

Working with the trial version of PowerDirector, I was able to synchronise three video streams, unfortunately, they got split to four tracks. When one camera makes several files, these should just be stuck together, but Cyberlink also decides to switch track.  This basically means that I can't use more than three devices to record.

It took a lot longer to get any result from Pinnacle Studio and ended up giving many more headaches. I thought I could try the multicam editor, but it wasn't available on the trial version. I asked support and they said I should buy the paid version, to return within thirty days if it doesn't work. I did and tried, but it still didn't work. Basically because the paid version includes Multicam Capture Lite.  So then I had to buy Multicam Capture (despite not wanting to capture anything) before proceeding.

Now I read this, I may not have needed to buy Multicam Capture, because I couldn't find the multicam editor before. And the support was frankly toe curling. Support couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand them either. I think they seriously thought I wanted to do multicam capture, while I only want to edit existing footage.

However my attempts to import the same video material as in Cyberlink resulted in a total mess. I have two continuous streams and a third one of separate shots of the same event. It was a conference with several speakers. A glance at the screen after synchronising shows each track with a different speaker. The sync was a total failure.

I would prefer Pinnacle, but it shows no signs of working and has already cost me money. Cyberlink seems only to allow three channels when I would prefer four or five.