Multicam: the complete guide

Shot an interview or podcast with two or more cameras? Eddie treats them as one multicam group — synced angles you can cut between by prompt, sharing one program audio across every cut. This guide covers the whole flow: getting your cameras grouped, telling Eddie how to cut them, and setting the group's default angle and audio yourself.

What a multicam group is

A multicam group is a set of camera angles covering the same take, aligned to one shared clock. Eddie syncs the angles — by their audio, or by matching timecode when the cameras carry it — so once they're grouped, switching between them never drifts. Every angle stays available — the cut sits on one angle at a time, and you (or Eddie) choose which.

Getting your cameras grouped

Cameras that arrive in the same import are usually grouped and synced automatically: Eddie spots footage covering the same moment and lines the angles up. 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. Import it with Add media, let it finish processing, then tell Eddie which take it 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."

• A whole project to sweep. "Sync all my cameras" checks every ungrouped source against every group in one pass and comes back with a proposed grouping to review before anything is applied.

Adding more footage to a project later works the same way. New angles start out ungrouped — Eddie won't guess which take a late clip belongs to — so just tell it, and it groups and syncs them into the right multicam like any other, by audio or by timecode. Eddie never guesses which cameras belong together — you name the take.

How Eddie syncs the angles

Eddie lines the angles up on one shared clock, and chooses the method automatically:

• By audio — the default. Eddie measures the alignment itself from the sound and transcripts, matching the same words or the same moment across files, and sets each camera's start offset against the reference. This is what runs for most footage.
• By timecode. Cameras that were jam-synced — genuinely sharing one embedded timecode — can be aligned by that timecode instead of their audio waveform. Eddie reads each file's embedded start timecode at import, so matching-timecode angles line up exactly. This includes LTC timecode: if your rig records timecode as an audio signal (a Tentacle Sync, UltraSync or similar box feeding one channel), Eddie decodes that LTC track and aligns the angles from it.

If a clip has no usable audio and no matching timecode, Eddie asks you for the offset instead ("the clap is at 12.4s on camA and 9.5s on camB"), and you can correct an offset afterwards the same way. Full detail: Multicam: sync cameras across imports.

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."

Left to its own judgement, Eddie cuts 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. More on this in Multicam: syncing and switching angles.

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.

Multicam in export

Multicam grouping carries through to your editor:

• Final Cut Pro preserves the angles as a multicam structure.
• Premiere Pro receives the angles stacked on the timeline — the chosen angle on top, the alternates below with their audio muted — so every angle is there to swap in.

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

Honest limits

• Automatic sync needs audio or matching timecode. Eddie aligns cameras by what they recorded — their audio and transcripts, or a shared embedded timecode. A clip with no usable audio and no matching timecode can't be measured automatically — give the offset explicitly instead.
• 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: Multicam: syncing and switching angles, Multicam: sync cameras across imports, Export to your editor.