How to sync multicam footage, step by step

Several cameras, a recorder, no shared timecode — and a deadline. The whole path: how to lay the footage out before you start, what happens when you press Sync, what every number and colour on the timeline means, and what to do with the clips that did not land.

Every example here is from a real shoot.

Before you start: lay the footage out

Two minutes of work that decide most of the result. Copy the footage so that every device gets its own folder — a folder per camera, a folder for the recorder — and keep them inside one shoot folder:

• A folder per camera. That is how each camera ends up on its own track.
• The recorder separately. In the edit its tracks belong apart from the camera ones.
• One shoot, one folder. Two different days in one folder will read as one long day.

What the numbers mean

The line under the timeline, from the same shoot.

files

How many files are in the project.

locked

Synced exactly. Nothing here needs checking.

review

Placed by when it was shot — where the footage was at that moment, so you do not have to lay it out by hand. The position is right, but it is not finally confirmed, so these are worth checking on the timeline in your editor.

We show these separately rather than folding them into one “synced” number.

→ tail

What could not be synced. Moved to the end of the timeline so no file goes missing. Below is why material ends up there — there is more than one reason, and they call for different things.

sync time · footage

How long it took and how much material went through.

The counter is boxed while the filter is on. Click again to bring everything back.

Run through what is lit, check the joins where two cameras overlap, nudge anything that sits wrong — and you will not have to come back to the rest of the shoot. Usually a minute of work.

What the colours mean

Two small marks appear in the corner of a clip. A ~ means it was placed by when it was shot — close, and yours to nudge. A ◆ means there was nothing to sync it with. A faint dot is the same “worth a look” mark.

The gold material from that shoot.

On some shoots there is a lot of it. B-roll, cutaways, pickups, drone shots — there is simply nothing to sync them with, and they do not need it. CamHeard does not invent a place for them; it puts them at the end so you decide where they go.

Placed by when it was shot

Look at the first half hour of that shoot:

Two empty tracks above. One camera rolling. The others have not started.

These clips sit on the timeline and look like all the others. But for that half hour only one camera was running — there was nothing to sync against. CamHeard placed them by when they were shot: where they were at that moment, so you are not left hunting for them across the project.

That is why the tally reads 78 locked, 110 review rather than “188 synced”.

When part of the footage did not make it

The striped band is not empty time — it is a warning.

If a camera’s file numbering skips across a gap longer than twenty seconds, CamHeard draws a striped band there. By the numbers, files existed between those two clips — and they are not in the project. Either they never made it in, or they were deleted: in camera, on the card, or on the drive.

A camera that simply paused gets no band: consecutive numbers across a gap are a pause, not a hole. So when you see stripes, check that you loaded everything before you start cutting.

Why material ends up at the end

There is more than one reason, and only one of them means the tool fell short:

• The file has no sound. A drone, an action cam with the mic off, a camera set to record no audio. Nothing to sync with.
• There is sound, but it is unusable. A dead mic, wind, a camera three rooms away.
• It is separate material. B-roll, cutaways, pickups — shot on their own, with nothing to sync them against.
• We did not manage it. This one is ours. It is the case worth writing in about — CamHeard can save a full diagnostic report you can send over.

Multitrack recorders

One track per channel, with the channel count written on the clip.

A recorder writing four or eight channels is not collapsed into one track. Each channel gets its own, and the clip carries a 4ch / 5ch tag. The boom stays the boom; the lavs stay apart.

Those numbers describe the footage, not the tool. On the first shoot cameras often ran on their own, and some of the material had no sound at all. On the second everything was rolling together with plenty of sound around — so almost all of it synced outright.

So a large review number in your project does not mean something went wrong. It describes how that day was shot: cameras running at different times, quiet rooms, a lot of separate material.

Send it to your editor

Export writes a timeline file you open in your editing app. A separate file for each, because they do not read the same format the same way:

• Adobe Premiere Pro — FCP7 XML.
• DaVinci Resolve — FCP7 XML in the dialect Resolve expects: one stereo track per camera, recorder channels apart.
• Final Cut Pro — FCPXML.

The shape is the same everywhere: a track per camera, its sound beside it, the recorder below. Unsynced material travels across too, marked, so nothing is lost between the two apps.

Common questions