How to edit multicam footage

Why a second angle helps

A second camera hides jump cuts. When you remove an um from a single shot, your head jumps. Cut to the other angle at that moment and it looks like a choice. It also gives a long talk some pace without adding anything.

The usual setups are a wide and a close-up, or one camera straight on and one at a slight angle. Either works for a talking head, a sermon or a workshop.

Place the cameras so the cuts look right

Keep both cameras on the same side of you. If one films from your left and the other from your right, you seem to flip direction at every switch. Put the second camera off to one side of the first, not straight next to it, so the change of angle is big enough to read as a new shot. Two nearly identical angles make a switch look like a glitch.

Make the two shots different sizes too. A wide and a close-up cut together cleanly. Two medium shots from slightly different spots do not. If the edit will end up vertical, frame the close-up with room above your head so the crop still works.

Film for an easy multicam edit

• Start both cameras before you speak and stop them after you finish. Don't stop one halfway through.
• Set both cameras to the same frame rate.
• Clap once on camera at the start. Some editors sync on it, and it costs nothing.
• Match the white balance, or the two angles will look like two different rooms.
• Get decent sound into both cameras, or run your main mic into one of them.
• Check the battery and card on the second camera. The angle that dies twenty minutes in is always that one.

The manual way

1. 01Import both files.
2. 02Sync them by waveform, by the clap or by timecode.
3. 03Build a multicam clip or stack the angles on two tracks.
4. 04Choose one audio track to use for the whole edit.
5. 05Play it down and switch angles live, or cut them in by hand.
6. 06Go back and move any switch that lands mid-word to the start of a sentence.
7. 07Then cut the pauses and fillers, keeping both angles in sync.

Why it is slow

Syncing goes wrong in quiet passages, and switching angles well means one full real-time playthrough at minimum. Every cut you make afterward has to respect both angles, which turns small fixes into fiddly ones.

The Cutroom AI way

1. 01Drop both camera files in together on the Projects page.
2. 02Cutroom AI matches the second camera to the main one by its words, at one steady offset. No clap or timecode needed.
3. 03In the Cuts tab, the Cameras section shows how many cameras filmed the talk. “Switch angles” turns angle changes on or off.
4. 04Pauses, fillers and retakes are cut as usual, and both angles follow.
5. 05Play it through, then export.

How it decides when to switch

Angles change at jump cuts and at the start of a sentence once one angle has run about 7 seconds. An angle is never held for under 2 seconds. A camera that is not rolling at that moment, or shows no face, is skipped.

The limits today

Sound currently follows the picture. When the second camera is on screen, you hear the second camera's audio, so give both cameras good sound. “Even out loudness” in the Cuts tab evens the level, but it can't make a far-off camera mic sound close.

It does not yet pick the camera of whoever is speaking in a two-person interview. And because the match uses one steady offset for the whole file, keep each camera rolling from start to finish.

Mistakes to avoid

• Switching every couple of seconds. It feels nervous. Let an angle breathe.
• Switching in the middle of a word.
• Leaving the second angle out of focus because nobody checked it.
• Mixing frame rates, which makes one angle stutter against the other.