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I switched from a Multiwii based board to Arducopter and ESCs were working fine.  After months of tweeking and upgrades to my quad, motors seemed to go crazy.

I applied the methods (automatic and manual) documented by the Arducopter manual but neither worked.

The solution was found by applying the calibration documented here for ESC like Hobby King 20A ESC 3A UBEC and similars. To avoid a huge waste of time and patience all (4 in my case) ESCs were calibrated manually by cabling together their signal and sending it to the rc receiver (3rd column of pins top pin, i.e. throttle). From one ESC Vcc and GND cables also went to the rc receiver (following pins on 3rd column).

Make sure throttle stick on your radio transmitter is at its maximum (this ensures you enter in ESC calibration mode) and give power to your system.

Each ESC (more or less synchronized) will start emetting a sequence of bips and blurps according to the menu you can find on the link above. This (partial) picture gives you an idea:

You may select on option (and thus set it) by bringing your throttle stick down while the sound sequence corresponding to what you need to set is playing. For a start, bring all ESCs to factory default (option/music 8) and afterwards select the options you want.

This may get very annoying if you need to set lots of options but you have the great advantage of calibrating the ESCs the exact way you want to. Also, by cabling the ESCs as mentioned above you need to do it once and for all.

I hope this will help someone out there. Rob