Switch by Speaker settings

These rows of the Switch by Speaker sheet shape the cut: where it opens, how long shots last, and how it treats two people talking at once.

Menu: Clip ▸ Switch by Speaker…
Agent tools: switch_by_speaker

Row	What it does	Default	Range
Wide:	Your wide shot, which opens the cut and shows during crosstalk	The one camera no person uses, otherwise None	Any camera, or None
Minimum shot:	The shortest shot allowed	2 s (3 s with one microphone)	0.5 to 30 s
Cut:	How long before speech the cut comes	0.2 s	0 to 1 s
Crosstalk:	What shows while two people talk at once	Wide	Wide, Current speaker
Ignore bleed:	How far below a speaker’s level a voice is ignored	15 dB	3 to 40 dB
Cut to the wide after	Breaks up a long monologue	Off	2 to 600 s
Mute the cameras’ own sound	Turns the cameras’ sound off inside the range	On when no microphone is on a camera track
Write to:	Where the cut goes	A new Program track

The number fields take up to two decimal places.

Wide

The camera for your wide shot. Choose any of the cameras, or None. If exactly one camera is left over once every person has theirs, it’s picked to start with. Otherwise the row opens on None.

The Wide shows:

at the start of the cut
during crosstalk, when Crosstalk shows Wide
after Cut to the wide after
for a stretch where another camera has nothing to show

When nobody is talking, the current shot holds. It doesn’t go to the Wide.

Minimum shot

The shortest shot the cut may have, from 0.5 to 30 s. The default is 2 s.

A shorter shot merges into the shot before it when that camera covers the stretch, otherwise into the shot after it. A short shot that neither neighbour covers stays.

Raising this is also the way out when the cut would add more clips than a project can hold.

Cut before speech

The Cut: row sets how long before a new speaker’s first word the cut comes, from 0 to 1 s. The default is 0.2 s, and the cut lands on a whole frame.

Late cuts under heavy bleed

A cut is timed from where a voice first rises above its bleed line and the microphone’s quiet background, not from the word itself. So with heavy bleed in a noisy room, a cut can land later than Cut asks. In the worst case measured, with another voice 24 dB down under −45 dBFS of noise, the cut came about 35 ms before the first word instead of 0.2 s.

Crosstalk shows

What the program shows while two people talk at once for a second or more. Wide cuts to the Wide, and Current speaker holds the shot you’re on. With no Wide chosen, crosstalk holds the current shot whatever this says.

Crosstalk shorter than a second starts nothing. A stretch under half a second between two bursts of crosstalk counts as crosstalk.

Two microphones are crosstalk when both hear a voice above their bleed line. If one leads the other by 8 dB or more, measured against each one’s own speaker, it counts alone.

Ignore bleed

Every microphone also hears the other people, quieter. A voice more than this far below a microphone’s own speaker is bleed, and never counts as that person talking. It runs from 3 to 40 dB, and the default is 15 dB.

Raise it if a quiet guest is never shown.
Lower it if someone is shown while only the other person talks.

A voice must also stand 6 dB above the microphone’s quiet background to count. This row doesn’t appear in the one-microphone sheet.

Cut to the wide after

Breaks up a long monologue. Tick the box and set how long one person may hold the screen, from 2 to 600 s. It’s off by default, and the field offers 20 s.

When a shot reaches that length, the Wide shows for one Minimum shot, then the speaker’s camera returns. This repeats to the end of the shot.

It needs a Wide. With Wide on None, ticking it does nothing.

Mute the cameras’ own sound

Switches the cameras’ scratch sound, the rough sound each camera recorded for itself, off inside the range. It’s ticked to start with when no microphone is on a camera track, which is when the microphones are separate recordings.

It never touches a microphone’s track, so a camera used as a microphone keeps its sound.

Write to

Writes the new cut over an earlier Program track instead of adding another. Choose Replace the shots on and the track’s name, or leave it on A new Program track, the default.

The row shows only when an earlier track can be replaced. That track must:

be unlocked
hold no selected clip
sit in front of the cameras
have something in the range
hold only pieces of the cameras there

The track is cleared over the range and cut at its ends. Nothing on it outside the range changes.

Remembered values

Minimum shot, Cut, Crosstalk and Ignore bleed are kept for the next time. They’re written only when you change a value and press Switch, so Cancel keeps the old ones.

Minimum shot isn’t remembered in the one-microphone sheet. Every other row opens fresh each time. An agent’s call reads none of the remembered values and uses the defaults in the table above.

With an agent

switch_by_speaker takes these rows as wide, min_shot, lead, crosstalk, bleed_db, wide_after, mute_cameras and track. See its options.