Canon 7D Sync Problems

[hamiltonsavage]

Hello,

I was hoping someone could help me with an external microphone syncing problem I'm having. I shot a short film with my canon 7d. I recorded sound with the camera's onboard mic for reference, but had a boom operator mic the scene with a Sennheiser 416 and a Zoom H4n. I learned afterwards that the Sennheiser records at 44.1 kHz and the Canon 7D records at 48 kHz. I don't know if that makes any difference. I took the footage into final cut and tried to match the Zoom sound with the sound I recorded with the onboard sound and found that the sound was recorded at different rates so they wouldn't match. They were off by a long shot. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Is there any way for me to change the rate of the zoom audio that I recorded so that the video and sound will match? Is this normal? Does the make that one records at 44.1 kHz and the other at 48 kHz make a difference?

Thanks

 

[Alex H.]

Yes, it makes a difference between recording at 48kHz and 44.1kHz. The Sennheiser 416 does not "record at 44.1kHz" as it is a microphone - an analog device - with no sample rate. If you were talking about the Zoom H4n, it will record 48kHz at 16-bit or 24-bit. You need only to set it to that format.

As for your sync issue, first try converting your audio to 48kHz. You can use iTunes to do this. Audio for digital video is native 48kHz/16-bit, so you should always work in 48kHz.