Pluraleyes...where am I going wrong?

J

johnnyspack

Active member
Hi there,
Posting a dual sound shoot and having trouble using Pluraleyes for the first time.

Shot about 80 clips at a beach with people doing "to camera" pieces on a T2i @ 24fps and a Zoom H4n. The T2i also had an on-board sennheisser plugged in so the guide track is pretty good, and ocean waves aren't over powering.

Laid all the clips unedited on a time line in FCP 6.01, then added two tracks and laid the wav files, there were about 20 of them covering the whole shoot compared to my 80 clips, downloaded Pluraleyes and followed instructions for a simple sync. Only synced about 6 of the 80 clips.

Tried again and this time synched 9 clips, but different ones and some were actually matched to the wrong piece of sound. Tried another pass with level audio on and that didn't make difference, though again it synced some different clips.

What am I doing wrong?
 
First I think you need to split the sound files so that they are one to one with the video. I don't se how it could sync the audio otherwise. It's moving the clip to match so it needs A sound file for each clip.
 
There are a few settings to force Pluraleyes to "work harder" to sync the tracks, but it takes longer as well. I have to tell you honestly, I tried Pluraleyes, it worked half the time, but I can manually sync audio to video clips faster than the plugin could do it. Pluraleyes is not fast by any stretch of the imagination and that's on less than year old upper end mac pro and macbook pro.

For future reference, put your fingers (or an assistant's or sound person's) in frame and snap, it gives you an easy (carry anywhere) "clapperboard", you can see and hear the spike in Final Cut, have waveforms turned on. You can bang out the syncing at the same or better speed than Pluraleyes. Just my experience.
 
Luckily I did "slate" with a hand clap and have since manually synced up.

I dont get it, if you have to break the sound up into matching clips manually why have the software in the first place. I thought I could set and forget the the zoom and button on an off with the cam and then hey presto in post! Knew it was too good to be true! :happy:
 
The assumption with double system is that you roll and cut both camera and sound at the same time. Thus you end up with an paired audio file and video file for each scene. When you bring these two files into the editor, PluralEyes syncs them up togther.
 
Plural eyes simply saves the step of having to manually sync the clips (i.e. finding the the "CLAP point" on both clips, etc). So, it does save time. However, you still have to isolate the matching clips to make it all work properly.

It's a slight time saver, not a magic wand. Honestly, the best way to work with off-board audio is to be diligent in production. Make sure to uniquely call all your takes. Use a clapper.

It may seem silly when you're shooting, but it will save your life in post.
 
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