Dual-System Audio in Large Quantities

[KyleProhaska]

I'm editing my second feature currently in Premiere. The reason I chose it isn't important, but the reason I didn't choose FCPX (although I love it) is because I couldn't figure out an easy way to deal with the dual-system audio the film has. We sent an audio signal to the camera for reference (C300) and my sound man recorded multiple mono channels from the boom and then lavs (sometimes as many as 4 separate channels). To my knowledge the process in FCPX would be to sync the files from each take, then turn off the reference audio, then turn it into a compound clip and rename that compound clip as the Scene/Take...then organize it into a keyword collection of some kind.

Is this how you'd suggest it? Am I offbase? That would mean the entire film would be made up of thousands of compound clips. Somehow that sounds like the wrong way? In Premiere I've made merged clips which show all the audio channels below it in the sequence, with me just disabling for now the lav tracks since the boom is always the master file for me to use with lavs as back up. Premiere handles it find, but Merged Clips in Premiere aren't like Sync'd Compound Clips in FCPX.

Any advice here would be appreciated.

 

[Thomas Berglund]

Did you sync timecode during recording too? If not, it is a bit of manual work whatever tool you use. Have you looked at PluralEyes for Premiere?

If you have the same timecode, FCP X and Sync-N-Link X is the perfect solution! It can even give you role names from BWAV metadata, which will even follow through to Pro Tools as track names with X2Pro from FCP X:
http://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/Sync-N-Link-X/

Doing a feature with dual system audio without synced timecode is a very bad idea. Always sync with timecode if possible.

 

[KyleProhaska]

No we didn't sync timecode. I synced the entire film manually in Premiere. Time consuming but very very easy to do. I did each take very quickly after setting up keyboard shortcuts I liked. <30sec a clip let me sync each reel fairly quick. Plural Eyes gave me trouble as it had a hard time syncing everything perfectly. I found it actually took more time for PE to do it's thing, me bring it into Premiere and check each clip and then merge/name then it did to just be absolutely sure doing it manually myself. But that's off-topic.

Doing it even manually in FCPX is a huge pain. If I let FCPX do the syncing, I still have an issue in that I have to choose the video/audio files in the Event Browser, I can't throw an entire reel into a timeline one after another in order, then lay in and stack the proper audio file channels (normally 2-3 mono tracks) and then sync, trim L and R, then merge and name it properly. It's difficult with so many files in an Event to choose all the proper files each time (normally scrolling up and down while holding shift) then letting it sync, then renaming that sync file, throwing it into a timeline, then turning off the main camera's reference and changing the synced mono clips to dual mono, since it makes them stereo almost without fail...even though they aren't supposed to be.

If that was a pain in the butt to read it's because FCPX makes this process a pain in the butt lol...especially on this scale. I realize having synced timecode would've been preferable but on our project that wasn't possible. Doing things manually takes time, but even in that sense it was sorta is a pain to do it in FCPX. Premiere sorta got out of the way. Otherwise I would've been happy to use FCPX on this film.

Still digging for responses. I have a guy in Poland who's going to send me some info tomorrow. The information available on this specific subject is scarce online...