Multicam: the complete guide

Shot an interview or podcast with two or more cameras? There are two routes, and you choose one when you import. There is no multicam setting to turn on — Eddie has no multicam toggle, and nothing has to be enabled before you start.

The two routes

1. Import all your sources and Eddie syncs them for you. Bring in every camera's files, plus your sound recorder's audio if you used one. Eddie lines the angles up against one shared clock and builds a multicam group you can cut between by prompt. Take this route when you want to switch angles inside Eddie.

2. Or build the multicam in your NLE first, import that, and Eddie keeps your alignments. Already built a multicam clip in Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve? Import it as it is. Eddie brings it in as one clip — you cut it like any other clip, and you don't switch angles inside Eddie — and your editor's alignment is what the edit is handed back against. Take this route when the sync is already right and you want to finish in your editor.

You can't have both for one take. A multicam clip you built in your editor is one source to Eddie, not a set of angles.

The rest of this guide covers both routes: getting your cameras grouped, every way to sync them (including cameras added after the import), telling Eddie how to cut the angles, setting the group's default angle and audio, and what each route hands to your editor.

What a multicam group is

A multicam group is a set of camera angles covering the same take, aligned to one shared clock. Eddie picks a reference angle and lines every other camera up against it, so once they're grouped, switching between multicam angles never drifts. Every angle stays available — the cut sits on one angle at a time, and you (or Eddie) choose which.

Route 1: getting your cameras grouped

Cameras that arrive in the same import are grouped and synced automatically: Eddie spots footage covering the same moment and lines the angles up. Nothing is switched on to make this happen. When auto-detection misses a pairing, or a camera card turns up later, you don't rebuild anything — you just ask Eddie, in plain language, to group the cameras and sync them. You can do this at any point in a project, not only at import.

• Cameras weren't grouped at import. "camA, camB and camC are all cameras of the same interview — camA covers the whole take. Create a multicam group from them and sync them up."
• A camera you added later. See Sync cameras across imports below.
• A whole project to sweep. Ask Eddie to "Sync all my cameras" — see the options below.
• A separate sound recorder that didn't join the group. A recorder's sound doesn't always match the cameras closely enough to place. When a recorder ends up in a group of its own, Eddie says so in the import report and offers to add it to the camera group — accepting costs no credits. Worth checking, because a recorder outside the group means your cut carries a camera's scratch mic instead of your good sound.

Eddie never guesses which cameras belong together — you name the take.

Ways to sync your cameras

Every way to sync multicam cameras in Eddie, in one place:

1. Automatic audio sync

• What it is: Eddie matches what the cameras heard — the same words in the transcripts and the same sound in the audio — and sets each camera's start offset against the reference.
• When to use it: almost always. It's what runs for most footage.
• Cost: no separate charge — it's part of the import.
• How to trigger it: nothing to do — it runs when cameras arrive in the same import. To group cameras it missed, just ask Eddie (above).

2. Timecode fallback

• What it is: for any camera the audio couldn't place, Eddie tries timecode instead — a sound recorder's timecode, LTC timecode recorded on an audio track (from a Tentacle Sync, UltraSync or similar box), or the camera's own embedded timecode.
• When it helps: cameras that genuinely shared one clock — jam-synced or genlocked — but whose audio was too thin to match.
• The checks it runs: audio always comes first; timecode never overrides an audio match. Eddie ignores a blank 00:00:00:00 start and treats common factory defaults (like 01:00:00:00) as a last resort. Cameras only link by timecode if their recordings overlap by at least a minute. If every camera shows the same start timecode but the recordings are very different lengths, Eddie declines the match rather than trust it. And a timecode match is checked against the audio before it's kept.
• Cost: no separate charge — it's part of the import.
• How to trigger it: nothing to do — it runs automatically alongside audio sync.

3. Set the offset by hand

• What it is: you tell Eddie where a shared moment happens on each camera, and it builds the group from those offsets exactly.
• When to use it: a camera with no usable audio and no matching timecode, or when you want to correct an offset.
• Cost: free.
• How to trigger it: say it in the project chat — "the clap is at 12.4s on camA and 9.5s on camB — group them." Any shared moment works: a clap, a flash, a door closing. Eddie will also ask you for the offset when it can't measure one itself.

4. Sync all my cameras

• What it is: a project-wide sweep. Eddie checks every ungrouped camera — including ones added later with Add media — against every existing group in one pass, and comes back with a proposed grouping: new angles for existing groups, brand-new groups, or cameras left standalone.
• When to use it: lots of ungrouped footage, or several late cameras across different takes.
• Cost: about 6 credits plus 2.4 credits per minute of ungrouped footage (an hour of ungrouped footage is about 150 credits), for up to 8 hours of footage per sweep. Eddie tells you the estimate when the analysis starts. Credits are taken when the analysis delivers a proposed grouping — before you apply it, so discarding a proposal doesn't refund it. A run that fails, or finds nothing to group, costs nothing. Applying the proposal is free. See How credits work.
• How to trigger it: ask Eddie "Sync all my cameras" or "Resync everything." The analysis runs in the background, usually a few minutes; Eddie tells you when the proposal is ready. Nothing changes until you confirm it.

Sync cameras across imports: adding a camera later

Shoots are messy — a camera card turns up after you've already imported, or a second operator sends their files a day late. You never have to rebuild the project:

1. Open the project from your projects page and choose Add media, exactly as in Add media to an existing project. Let the new clips finish processing. They appear in the media list but aren't part of any multicam group yet — Eddie won't guess which take a late clip belongs to.
2. Tell Eddie which take the new camera belongs to:

"I just added camC.mp4 — it's another angle of the same take as camA and camB. Group it in and sync it up."

Eddie measures the new camera against the group in the background. The check takes about a minute. Eddie emails you the result and leaves a note in the project chat — including when the clip doesn't match, in which case it stays a standalone source. Adding a camera this way is free. Repeat per clip if several late cameras belong to the same take.

If the group is one you had Eddie build by hand, Eddie rebuilds that group with the new camera included instead, working out the offset from the transcripts or asking you for it.

Adding angles never re-times your existing angles or cuts. New cameras are only added to a group; your current edits stay exactly as they are. Two exceptions, both on groups you built by hand: re-creating a hand-made group under the same name replaces it (that's how you fix an offset), and when a sync finds a camera already placed at a different offset, Eddie asks you — choosing the measured offset re-times that camera.

Route 2: importing a multicam you built in your NLE

A multicam clip you already built in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve comes into Eddie as one clip, with the angles your editor chose baked into the picture. That is deliberate: it costs one source's credits, and Eddie cuts against the sync you already established instead of re-deriving it.

What that means in practice:

• You don't switch angles inside Eddie on this route. Eddie cuts the clip, not the angles.
• Your alignment is kept for the hand-off. Eddie records that the source is a multicam clip and which object in your project it came from, so the edit can be rebuilt against that original rather than against the flat picture Eddie cut.
• Final Cut Pro — export FCPXML. For a multicam clip that came from Final Cut through the desktop app, the FCPXML export puts your own multicam clip back on the timeline at Eddie's cut points. You keep switching angles in Final Cut. It works when you dragged several multicam clips into Eddie one at a time, and when the export carries ratings, labels or transcript markers.
• Premiere Pro — use "Send to Premiere Pro". In the desktop app's Export menu, with Premiere open and the Eddie extension running, Eddie builds the sequence inside Premiere against your own multicam clip, at Eddie's cut points. The downloadable .prproj and Premiere .xml can't carry an imported multicam clip, and the desktop app's Export menu says so on those rows.
• It needs the media on that computer. Send to Premiere Pro rebuilds from your local files, so a project you uploaded on the web, or imported on a different machine, can't use it.
• Keep the take to the multicam clip. If a project mixes your multicam clip with ordinary clips, Premiere gets a flat sequence and the angles aren't switchable.
• One more step in Premiere. Premiere can't re-enable multicam on a sequence it was handed, so before you can switch angles on the timeline: select all the clips (⌘ A on Mac, Ctrl A on Windows), right-click, and choose Multi-Camera → Enable. Once per sequence. The desktop app prompts you with this step after the export, and nothing outside Premiere can set that switch. Ordinary clips, synced clips and compound clips don't need it.

Rebuilding against your own original works for Final Cut Pro, through the FCPXML export, and for Premiere Pro, through Send to Premiere Pro in the desktop app.

If you want switchable angles in Eddie, take route 1 instead: import each camera's files separately (plus your sound recorder's audio, if you used one) and let Eddie group and sync them.

Telling Eddie how to cut the angles

Once a group is synced, direct the cutting in plain language:

"Cut to whoever's talking, and hold the wide shot for the back-and-forth."

"Use the close-up for the punchlines, wide for everything else."

When it cuts the angles, Eddie works like a live director: it stays on the current speaker, holds the wide for quick exchanges, doesn't switch on every "yeah", and falls back to the wide when someone has no camera of their own. It chooses cameras by who's on each one and how tight the shot is — it knows who's on which camera, so you can say "cut to Sarah".

Setting the default angle and audio yourself

Prompts drive the per-moment cutting. To set the group's defaults — the angle a segment shows when nothing more specific was chosen, and which angle's sound becomes the program audio — use the ⋮ (three-dot) menu on a camera angle:

1. In your project's media list, find the multicam group and the camera angles listed under it.
2. Hover over a camera angle and click the ⋮ button on the right of the row.
3. Choose Set as active video angle to make that camera the group's default angle, or Set as active audio to make that angle's sound the program audio.

A small speaker icon marks the angle a group is currently listening to. Both entries are toggles — click again to clear back to the automatic default.

A few things worth knowing:

• Active audio re-points the sound of every cut in that group at once — in the preview, the rendered MP4, and all NLE exports. It is a single click, with an undo in case you change your mind.
• Active video angle is only the default. Any angle you or Eddie chose for a specific moment (a prompted switch) always wins over it, so directed cuts export exactly as chosen.
• On an audio-only angle (say a .wav from a separate sound recorder), only the audio option appears — there is no picture to make active.

What each route hands to your editor

A group Eddie synced (route 1) travels as a real multicam group, with the angle you chose in Eddie playing at each cut:

• Premiere Pro — the .prproj carries a native multicam clip.
• DaVinci Resolve — the .drp carries a real Multicam Clip with its angles.
• Final Cut Pro — FCPXML carries the angles as a multicam structure.
• Legacy Premiere .xml (2018 and older) has no native multicam at all, so there the angles arrive stacked — your chosen angle on top, the alternates below with their audio muted. See Premiere won't import the XML.

A multicam you built in your NLE (route 2) is rebuilt against your own original clip: in Final Cut Pro through the FCPXML export, and in Premiere Pro through Send to Premiere Pro in the desktop app — see route 2 above.

See Export to Premiere, Final Cut, Resolve, Avid & OTIO for the full matrix.

Multicam FAQ

Is there a multicam setting I have to turn on? No. Eddie has no multicam toggle and no multicam mode. Cameras that arrive in the same import are grouped and synced automatically, and a multicam clip you built in your editor is recognised as one when you import it. If an article or a forum post tells you to enable multicam in Eddie, it is out of date.

Why didn't my cameras sync by timecode? Timecode only lines cameras up if they genuinely shared a clock — jam-synced, genlocked, or fed by a timecode box. Cameras left running on their own default clocks each count from their own start, so their timecode doesn't match. Eddie also skips a blank timecode and distrusts factory defaults, needs the recordings to overlap by at least a minute, and tries audio first. Use audio sync, or set the offset by hand.

Can Eddie sync cameras without audio? Not automatically. Automatic sync uses what the cameras recorded — audio, transcripts, and timecode where it's valid — and doesn't match video frames. For a camera with no usable audio and no shared timecode, give Eddie the offset from any moment you can see on both cameras — a clap or a flash — and it builds the group from that.

Will adding a camera change my existing edits? No. New angles are only added; existing angles and cuts keep their timing. The only exceptions are on groups you built by hand, described in Sync cameras across imports.

How much does "Sync all my cameras" cost? About 6 credits plus 2.4 credits per minute of ungrouped footage, taken only when Eddie delivers a proposed grouping. Adding one named camera to a group, and setting offsets by hand, are free.

Can I switch angles in Eddie on a multicam clip I built in Final Cut, Premiere or Resolve? No — it arrives as one clip with your editor's angle choices baked into the picture. That's route 2, and it isn't a dead end: the edit is handed back against your own multicam clip, through the FCPXML export for Final Cut Pro and through Send to Premiere Pro for Premiere Pro. If you want to switch angles inside Eddie, import the camera files separately instead — that's route 1.

Does Eddie pick the sharpest camera? Eddie doesn't score cameras for sharpness or focus. It cuts by who's speaking, who's on each camera and how tight each shot is — and you can always point it at a specific angle.

Honest limits

• Automatic sync needs audio or valid timecode. A clip with no usable audio and no shared timecode can't be measured automatically — give the offset explicitly instead.
• A multicam you built in your NLE isn't switchable inside Eddie. It is one clip here. Import the individual camera files instead if you want to cut between angles in Eddie, and see route 2 for what your editor gets back.
• Angle and audio defaults live on the group, not per segment: set them once and they apply across the group's cuts, with any per-moment prompted switch taking priority.
• You name the take. Eddie never forces a sync it isn't sure of — it leaves an unmatched clip standalone and tells you why.

Related: Add media to an existing project, Export to your editor.