Audio drifting problems

Roy42

Active member
Hi, I'm new to the forum. Nice to meet you all!

I've been working on a tough project lately. It's a two person discussion that I shot in 24p with three, rented DVX100s. The conversation spanned over two tapes, so that's six tapes total that I've ended up with. After all the settings in Final Cut Pro 4 were straightened out, all of them captured in just fine.... Except one. For some reason, whenever I try to capture this one tape, the audio starts to drift. It starts out fine, but by the end of the clip, it's horribly out of sync. I've tried logging and capturing it numerous times, but each time it comes out the same, with the same lagging audio.

Here's the weird part. Once in the finder, I go back and open the clip in quicktime, and it plays perfectly well, with the audio completely in sync. Apparently, the clip only goes out of sync in Final Cut.

Is this a problem with the actual clip, or with the playback in Final Cut? As I said before, I'm capturing entire tapes here, so perhaps it's somehow too much for the system..? (Then again, even with the last tape captured, I've still got 20 GB leeway, so that's doubtful) I'm pretty sure all the settings are right considering it works for everything else. It's only this one clip that gives me problems. It's very confusing...

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
Re: Audio drifting problems

I have experienced audio sync drift if I capture clips over 5min in length. Also make sure you are using fcp 4.1.1
 
Re: Audio drifting problems

I've read conflicting stories, some claiming 10, 20, 30 minute
clips without drift, and even others saying they've imported hour long clips with no problem. The problem I have is that I need to sync the three different audio channels before editing, so I don't want to import the tape in pieces. Is Final Cut Pro 4 just not appropriate for editing a three camera interview at all? Anyone
else had this problem, and is there a reasonable workaround?
 
Re: Audio drifting problems

I forgot to include what I'm using: a Dual 1 ghz G4 tower, 1 gig RAM, FCP 4.1, capturing to a 120 Gig Firewire Drive with the DVX100. Any luck capturing the audio and video seperately?
 
Re: Audio drifting problems

Found the problem..it was the Firewire drive. When I captured the
long footage directly to the internal ATA drive there was no audio
drift...
 
Re: Audio drifting problems

Found the problem..it was the Firewire drive. When I captured the
long footage directly to the internal ATA drive there was no audio
drift...


Derek, just to make sure you only encountered this audio issue when importing through your external, correct? So it's an easy lesson learned right? Just don't capture through to the external?
I am just paronoid, I had alot of audio drag problems when I was on prmeiere and I just dropped alot of money on a G5 to put that problem BEHIND me.-Charles
 
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