Tape recorded audio out of sync with video (Premiere)

J

jeremiahjw

Active member
Ok, here is the setup. I recorded a wedding for some friends. I used my Sony EX-1 and their HVX-200. I'm 99.9% sure it was recording at 24p. The audio captured from the HVX (wired from the soundboard) was messed up halfway through, so I had to use a tape recording from the sound. To record the tape, I captured it via Soundbooth on my computer.

I dropped the tape recorded audio over the HVX video, and lined it up. It works! Yay! I then scroll to the end of the video, and guess what? IT'S OUT OF SYNC!!!! :badputer:

I captured the audio at 48kHz, and the comp is also at 48kHz. How can I solve this?
 
Two issues here:

One, second-system sound, non-sync, is almost always going to have drift. You simply need to time-compress (or expand) the audio just slightly to match the running length of the video.

If you really were using tape, and by that I mean a cassette, then there's a slight difference in play speed from machine to machine. Again, a slight time-compression or expansion of the audio will correct that.
 
Yep, unless the tape was digital it was probably non-sync. You may have to do as C2V said and make strategic edits from time to time to aline the pic and sound.
 
@C3V - I did think of compressing it, and yes, it was a cassette tape. I'll play around with that some more.
 
Ok, so I decreased the time, and it works...BUT only in sync at the beginning and end. Middle is horrible out of sync, and it gradually gets more in sync when you go backwards/forwards. Guess it's a matter of slicing all the audio up and syncing small portions?
 
That is more-or-less "normal". You didn't say how long (minutes) between sync and out-of-sync. And you also didn't say how FAR it was out of sync. It is easy enough to "pull up" the video to match the audio, especially if you are inserting B-roll video.

My practice is to NOT attempt to time-adjust (stretch or shrink) the audio track because most video edit systems don't do this very well and leave significant audio artifacts. It is much better, IME, to "adjust" the video to pull it back into sync with the audio. A repeated (or dropped) random frame here or there is MUCH less noticeable (and more tolerated) than goofy-sounding audio.
 
The audio is in sync at a 1 minute increment, then goes out on either ends. Thankfully there are a few piano pieces, so that cuts out any major syncing.
 
You said it was a cassette tape deck? If so then it's speed is going to be all over the map. There were a few high end ones that could be synchronized but that requires an external clock/TC generator.

So what you have done is really the only way to go. An over all speed change won't usually work (as you found) because the problem isn't so much that the cass. is at a different speed as that it is not at a consistent speed.
 
@Noiz2 - Yeah, I did notice that the out of sync intervals changed. In some spots it would stay in sync for 2 minutes, others just 30 seconds.
 
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