Delivering Synced 5D files to client

Guy Jackson DP

Guy Jackson DP

Member
I have been doing a lot of shoots with the 5D lately,
As far as Sound: I always do double system, going to Sound devices 788 or 744 recorders.
Post firmware and using a smart slate at the start of every shot (or tale slate) Sync is a breeze, no drifts and it takes me sec to sync a shot,

Recently there were two clients that asked me to deliver the footage already synced for them on a hard drive.
I use FCP:The only method that wasn’t too time consuming was to import the Prores files after sync as QuickTime movie with current setting from my prores timeline.
that seem to work well, but is there a better way that i'm missing?

Maybe a way to sync the H264 files? And converting them with the sync audio saving one conversion? Using compressor take too long with the H264

Thank you in advance.
 
You'd be adding a generation loss by re-encoding H.264 with the new audio. I'd stick with a ProRes with new audio- that's the best way to sync and preserve the best image quality.

Noah
 
You can cut-and-paste audio channels into the Quicktime container, however they have to be of identical length in samples and then save-as-new movie. This leaves the 5D h.264 original intact, and permits you to have pasted audio. - Mainly the kind of request you're getting would be to a crew that wires up their location mixer into their ENG cameras.

After you do it for one clip, you'll find it to be more tenacious than it's worth. Plus your second system audio might have a bit more channels than the Canon and coded differently, so it may create unsupported files for ingest into what ever edit system. Plus you'll still need to keep the in-camera audio for safety.
 
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yeah that would require you to match clips down to the frame and eyeball it- doing that is a royal PITA. Go ProRes- simplest method.

Noah
 
i did this test:
brought the H264 file into FCP, synced it and then did quicktime export as prores 422.
it looks great (better then my first method) ..but took forever (1Hr for an 8 min clip)
i think it's the best way if you have patience (i don't)
 
That software looks good but i do it with MPEG streamclip already that works fast enough.
the perfect solution would be to tie the H264 and the Wav file before converting to Prores which will save a generation,
If there was software that did that it'll be perfect.
 
You're still doing your clients a favor- H.264 is useless as an editing codec (if you know what you're doing that is).

Noah
 
Guy Jackson DP said:
Noah
the idea was how to somehow sync while converting to Prores from H264. so you just convert it once.
Click to expand...

You basically are only converting it once. Convert original h264 files to Prores. Bring new Prores files into NLE, sync up clips with the separate audio tracks, then export your clips (staying in Prores).

You're not really converting anything again, just changing audio. Prores is virtually a lossless format so you're really not losing anything by doing this.
 
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