Syncing a multicam wedding

Why weddings are hard to sync

A wedding isn't one take. It's ten different moments across a whole day, shot by two or three people who start and stop recording whenever they need to. Nobody jams timecode at a wedding. Cameras run on their own clocks — often set to the wrong time — and a lav recorder on the groom runs for an hour without stopping. Lining that up by hand can take longer than the first cut.

How Waveline handles a wedding

• Shoot blocks. Getting ready, ceremony and reception don't overlap, so Waveline lays them out as separate blocks in the order they happened.
• Lav and recorder first. Long recorder files are the backbone. Every camera clip is matched to them, then to each other.
• Drift correction. An hour of vows or speeches on a lav recorder will slowly drift against the cameras. Waveline measures it and re-times the audio on export.
• Crew folders. Drop in Shooter 1/A7S III, Shooter 2/FX3, Audio/Zoom — every camera becomes its own track.

Step by step

1. Offload every cardOne folder per camera, recorder and drone. Keep each shooter's cards inside their camera folder.
2. Add the whole wedding folderDrag the top folder into Waveline. Check the devices: cameras blue, recorders green.
3. SyncWatch the day assemble itself. A typical wedding of 500–800 files takes a few minutes.
4. Check the few yellow clipsPress N to jump between them and listen to Both.
5. Decide where the drone goesDrone clips have no useful sound, so they're placed by the drone's clock or at the end — your choice.
6. Export with drift correction onThen open the timeline in Premiere, Resolve or Final Cut and start cutting.

Shooting tips that make syncing easy

• Start the lav or table recorder before the ceremony and leave it running.
• Keep on-camera mics on, even on gimbals and B-cams.
• Avoid recording music only from the speakers on one camera and nothing else — any shared sound helps.

Next: syncing a field recorder to cameras · drone and GoPro footage.