A dialogue box appeared. It was crude, the text rendered in jagged pixels. SYNC THE FOOTAGE. OR THE FILES CORRUPT.

Elias dragged his raw footage into the bin. It was a messy gig—a wedding in the Bronx, three cameras, audio from four different recorders. Usually, this took hours. Syncaila was famous for using waveform analysis to align everything automatically.

ERROR: SYNCHRONIZATION IS MANDATORY FOR CONTINUITY. The app overrode his input. It snapped the audio to the video frame perfectly. The crack of a bat against a knee was aligned with the movement of the shadow on screen. It was technically perfect. It was the best sync he’d ever seen.