MultiCam Editing

A co-worker recently asked me about how to merge multiple camera shots of the same event into one video. I didn’t know the answer. Turns out to be not such a simple thing. However, it sounds like the available software is rapidly catching up with this feature/need.

So, I thought I’d share what I’ve found so far:

The best thing seems to be to output an SMPTE time code to an audio track on each camera. There is a free android app to do this, then I think you just wire the output of your phone to the various camera microphone inputs. This technique is called “jam coding”. Here is an article on the process. Then, there is software, like JamSync (~$250) to automatically sync things up. I think some of the fancier paid applications might have this built-in – not sure.

The advantage of Jam Syncing is that if the cameras are at different frame rates, or they turn off/on at multiple different times (i.e. camera A got lost power for 5 minutes while a battery was swapped, etc), then the software can often recover.
Otherwise the best thing seems to be syncing via the audio. Numerous blog posts say that doing it manually with the video yields worse results and is more time consuming than doing it with the waveforms in the audio.
The good news is that things like adobe premier ($700-800) (not elements) or final cut pro (the link has a bunch of audi footage) (mac only, $300) will do this for you. Also there are 3rd party tools, like plural eyes ($200) that supposedly do it faster and better.
There is a website, called switchcam that will do it, but it is pretty expensive to export your video back out of the website.
There are open source, multi platform non-linear editors (NLE’s) freely available, like openshot, nova cut (funded on kickstarted, but not available yet) and pitivi, but they don’t really seem to do the multi-cam thing well – yet (link also has more links on howto’s for various paid software packages). Here’s a good post on what open source NLE’s (mostly don’t) support multi cam.