How to sync a multicam interview in DaVinci Resolve, and keep it switchable.

Two cameras and a recorder become one multicam clip in DaVinci Resolve with a right-click and a sync by sound. The settings, the audio angle, and a round-trip that stays switchable.

Why build the multicam clip before anything else

An interview shoot lands in the Media Pool as several files describing one conversation: a wide, a tight, maybe a third camera on the interviewer, and a lav and boom on a separate recorder. Resolve's container for that is the multicam clip: every source as a named angle, synced once, treated by the timeline as a single clip you can cut like any other and switch at any point. The glossary entry on multicam and sync clips explains the containers.

Editors who skip the container pay twice. Stacking the tight camera above the wide means every trim is made twice. Flattening early throws away the angle switch, the one thing that hides a shortened answer without a jump cut.

The other mistake is order. People open the multicam viewer on day one and start switching cameras on a two-hour interview nobody has decided how to cut. Decide what is said first. Decide which camera shows it second.

How do you sync a multicam interview in DaVinci Resolve?

1. Name the cameras in the metadata before you sync. On the Media page, select all of one camera's clips, open the Metadata panel and fill in the Camera or Angle field ("Wide", "Tight", "Recorder"). The multicam dialog can name angles from this field, so fix it now, not after the clip exists.
2. Select the interview's clips and create the multicam clip. In the Media Pool, select every file from the interview, the recorder's audio-only files included. Right-click and choose Create New Multicam Clip Using Selected Clips. Name it after the interview, set Angle Name to the metadata field you filled in, and check that the frame rate matches your project.
3. Set Angle Sync to Sound. Sound matches waveforms, and since every device heard the same room, it needs no slate. Timecode is frame-exact, and right only when every device was jammed to one clock. In point is the fallback for a source with no usable audio: mark the same clap on each clip first. Click Create.
4. Open the clip and check the sync. Double-click the multicam clip in the Media Pool and it opens as its own timeline, each angle on a track. Confirm the waveforms line up; if one angle is off, slip it here and the fix carries into every timeline that uses the clip. A camera that stopped and restarted shows as two clips on one track; that is correct.
5. Edit the multicam clip into a timeline and pick the audio angle. Make a new timeline at the camera frame rate and drag the multicam clip in. Right-click it, choose Switch Multicam Clip Angle, then Audio, and pick the recorder. The camera scratch tracks are now silent in every cut from this clip.
6. Cut the content from the transcript, not the pictures. This is the long step and it is a text job: read the whole interview, decide which answers stay and where the cuts fall, and build the selects in story order on this timeline. The transcript is covered below.
7. Switch angles in the multicam viewer on the assembled cut. Set the source viewer to Multicam mode from its viewer menu and choose Video from the switching buttons so the audio angle stays put. Play, and click an angle or press its number key to cut to it at the playhead. To change the camera on a segment without adding a cut, right-click it and choose Switch Multicam Clip Angle. Tight on the emotional beat, wide when the subject gestures.
8. Leave the multicam clips as multicam. Where two neighbors show the same angle, delete the edit point to join them. Flatten Multicam Clip is for the day a downstream tool or collaborator cannot read the container, and that day may not come. Keep a copy of the timeline first.

What about the Sync Bin on the Cut page?

The Cut page has a second route. Select the clips, click Sync Clips above the Media Pool, sync by audio and save. The Sync Bin then shows every angle rolling at the playhead's moment and you cut from any of them into the timeline, without making a multicam clip.

That is also its limit. What lands on the timeline is an ordinary clip from one camera, so changing your mind later means a replace edit. For a one-day cut, the Sync Bin is fine. For an interview you will keep shortening for weeks, build the multicam clip.

Where the transcript comes from

Resolve's own transcription lives in the paid Studio edition and free Resolve has none; how to transcribe video in DaVinci Resolve, free edition included covers both editions. Resolve Studio transcribes one clip at a time and does not label speakers, so a two-person interview comes back as one block of words with no names. Neither edition lets you mark the keepers in the text and get a timeline back that still references the multicam clip.

The route that keeps the container intact is the XML one. Select the timeline that holds the multicam clip and choose File > Export > Timeline, then pick a Final Cut Pro XML (.fcpxml) version from the format menu. The FCPXML describes the multicam container with its angles and the audio angle from step five, so a tool reading it can transcribe the recorder, not a camera scratch mic, and send back a cut that references the same container. A CMX 3600 EDL cannot: one event, one source, and the multicam relationship is gone.

Whatever comes back should import with File > Import > Timeline and still be multicam. If a tool returns flat clips from one camera, you have lost the angle switch the second camera was hired for. Ask that question before an interview series goes through any tool.

Common questions