Synching video with audio from an external recorder

B

bluekayak

Member
Hi

I'm doing some serious shoestring decision-making here for a low-budget documentary short reel

This is fairly comical so feel free to chuckle

For b-roll footage instead of paying the high rent I bought a Panasonic TS2 point & shoot that actually takes fairly decent Hi-def

What I was thinking about doing is getting an inexpensive digital recorder for the sake of getting slightly better ambient sound. This will be ocean, harbor scenes etc

2 questions:

How do you then sync the sound with the footage? I don't imagine for the most part it will need to be spot-on, with waves breaking etc; in the event that there are humans speaking on cam - more critical

I have latest version of Final Cut Pro and am wondering will I need another software for matching things up?


Thanks
 
Clapper. The TS2 records sound right? Import both files and shift them in the time line until the audio spikes from the clap noise line up. This won't be a perfect world especially on longer clips. You can hope that the TS2 synchs sound accurately.

By the way, how do you like the TS2? Have you used it underwater? I need to do some very brief video clips just below the surface. Give me your impressions or if you can, post a clip to Vimeo and send a link. I would highly appreciate it.

Regards,
Grant
 
You could use a clapper board or just simple clapping your hands together on camera. Be sure to verbally slate so it can pickup the audio in both the camera and hhe recorder before shooting. You may have to adjust the audio timing if your shooting progressive because, your recorder is not genlocked to timecode and it will certainly drift. That is why it is advisable to use a program that you can manually adjust audio timing in post. Not sure if Soundtrack pro can do it, if not logic pro does.
 
Thanks for the responses

Grant

Now of course this is coming from a rank amateur, but I love this camera

I know absolutely nothing about video but the HD footage coming out of this little point and shoot blows me away

I can honestly say I'm glad my water-proof Pentax was stolen

If it hadn't I wouldn't be toting around a little hi-def camera that fits in my pocket

It was bought for home use but the footage is good enough that it may actually be usable on a project, which I never would've anticipated

I'm sure there's no comparison with most of the equipment that gets discussed on this site but I'm stuck with some serious budgetary concerns so perfect ain't gonna happen

Haven't done anything underwater yet, if I do I'll post it

Thanks again
 
I've not tested this but checked it out: http://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html

I think it works by recognizing waveforms and matching 2 system or multi system sound to align.
So if the cam records a reference audio stream, then you could use it. (or at least try it).

I don't know what it does for relative distance, as in MIC distance from speaking subject, vs. second system recorder and distance to subject and how it compensates for it.

I'm about to test it this weekend.
 
Computers (and the software they run) are supposed to make our lives easier/better, and I suppose programs like Pluraleyes is an example of that. But us old-school (and/or cheap :-) editors don't find it all that difficult to sync video and audio tracks in any reasonable NLE (non-linear editing) application. Lots of people talk about it and worry about it, but until they have tried it, the process may seem more difficult than it really is.
 
Richard Crowley said:
Computers (and the software they run) are supposed to make our lives easier/better, and I suppose programs like Pluraleyes is an example of that. But us old-school (and/or cheap :-) editors don't find it all that difficult to sync video and audio tracks in any reasonable NLE (non-linear editing) application. Lots of people talk about it and worry about it, but until they have tried it, the process may seem more difficult than it really is.
Click to expand...

I find that true also. But Pluraleyes is designed to work in FCP and FCP is a small nightmare for sound. So I can see it's use. Personally it's pretty easy to get within a frame in FCP and as long as your going to audio post via OMF (and you leave the guide track in) it's very easy to phase the lines in in a DAW. Your never going to get dead on in most NLE's because they only let you trim/move in full frame increments.


If I were syncing a LOT of FCP double system I would probably be inclined to pay for the automation but?
 
Noiz2 said:
Personally it's pretty easy to get within a frame in FCP and as long as your going to audio post via OMF (and you leave the guide track in) it's very easy to phase the lines in in a DAW. Your never going to get dead on in most NLE's because they only let you trim/move in full frame increments.
Click to expand...

You actually can do sub-frame audio editing in FCP to get exact sync for dual system sound. Watch this:

http://proappstuff.com/proapptipsvi...11A/BE5CA6A0-2D41-4F89-955C-16A05AC2A383.html
 
Interesting video. Not only is that not "well covered" in the manual it would be news to some folks at the big A. However it also reenforces my "nightmare to do sound in FCP" and that syncing greater than at the frame level is quite difficult. You can cut finer than a frame (something that folks who ought to know told me was not possible) but your cutting blind. The video is clear but a bit of a cheat since the sound on the video happened to start at the frame edge AND the second system happened to start very clearly. In a more normal situation you have sticks that hit somewhere in the frame and you would have to approximate that offset on the sound blind. You still can't phase the sound as you could in any DAW.

But thanks for the link, good info.
 
That is a great tip!

But man, I still hate FCP audio. When I started out I was using Vegas, which has the BEST audio of any NLE. I used Vegas over a decade ago when I was learning audio engineering, and Vegas was only a DAW. So they took a great DAW and added video to it. FCP could stand to enhance their audio so one doesn't need to go out to STP or something else do get some basic audio tasks handled.

Like if you could apply an audio plug-in to a whole track rather than a clip. I know you can do it in a nested sequence, but that's clunky and even buggy when you make changes. If you could just use a simple channel strip plug with EQ and compression on a whole track you would be able to deal with many audio situations simply without going out of FCP. Also the plugs are not represented graphically. I have some Waves plugs that show up in FCP. When I open them I don't get a GUI (graphical user interface), I get a bunch of numeric sliders that are not intuitive to use. TOTALLY LAME.

Don't get me started....
 
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