A PluralEyes alternative for Mac: syncing external audio after PluralEyes

For years, PluralEyes was the answer to “how do I sync my recorder to my camera.” You dropped in clips and audio, it lined them up by waveform, and you went back to editing.

That era is over. Maxon put PluralEyes into limited maintenance mode on January 31, 2023 — no new features — and support and bug fixes ended a year later, in early 2024. Existing installs may keep running, but nothing is being fixed for new versions of macOS or editors, and Maxon itself points users to the sync built into their editors.

So what do you use instead?

Option 1: the sync in your editor

Maxon’s own suggestion. Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Avid Media Composer can all synchronize clips by audio waveform. If you already edit in one of them, this is the obvious choice: select the clip and the recording, run the sync command, and keep editing on the synced clip.

Where it gets tedious:

• Many clips, a few long recordings. A recorder or a wireless mic’s internal recording (like a DJI Mic 2 or RØDE Wireless PRO) produces long files that cover dozens of camera clips. Matching which clip belongs to which recording, inside an editor, is clip-by-clip work.
• You don’t edit in one of those apps. If you cut in CapCut, iMovie, or on your phone — or you only want to fix the sound and post — installing and learning a full editor just to sync is a lot.

Option 2: ffmpeg

If you already know the offset, ffmpeg can swap in the new audio without touching the video:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -itsoffset 1.25 -i recording.wav -map 0:v -map 1:a -c:v copy -c:a aac -shortest synced.mp4

It’s free and fast. The hard part is the offset: ffmpeg won’t find it for you, so you’re back to measuring it by ear or in another app, for every clip.

Option 3: a small app that only syncs

SyncCut is a Mac app built for the job PluralEyes used to do for many people: take camera clips and external recordings, line them up by waveform, and give you files you can use.

• Auto Sync finds the offset by matching your recording against the camera’s own audio — about a second, even for an hour-long recording. You can fine-tune it on a waveform timeline or in 10 ms steps, with a live preview.
• Batch Sync takes a whole shoot at once: many clips and one or more recordings. Each clip is matched to the recording that fits it best, and weak matches are flagged so you can check them before exporting.
• Lossless export. The video is passed through without re-encoding whenever possible, falling back to a high-quality re-encode only when needed. You can keep the camera’s audio underneath the external track.
• Local only. It runs offline; your footage never leaves your Mac.

How it differs from PluralEyes

SyncCut isn’t a drop-in clone, and it’s worth knowing the differences before you switch:

• It exports synced files, not editor timelines. PluralEyes could hand a synced timeline back to Premiere or Final Cut. SyncCut gives you finished MP4 or MOV files with the new audio in them, which you can edit anywhere or post directly. If your workflow depends on round-tripping a timeline, your editor’s built-in sync is the better fit.
• One recording per clip. Each video gets the one external track that matches it best. Multicam projects with several cameras on one timeline are an editor’s job.
• It matches by sound, not timecode. That works with any camera that records some audio, including phones and mirrorless cameras without a timecode input. A video with no sound at all can still be lined up by hand.
• Mac only, and it requires macOS 26 or later.

Which to pick

• You edit in Premiere, Final Cut or Resolve and need a synced timeline: use your editor’s waveform sync.
• You know the offset and like the terminal: ffmpeg.
• You have a pile of clips and recordings and want synced video files back, without opening an editor: SyncCut. It’s coming soon to the Mac App Store.