Vegas + Plural Eyes for music video sync

GHKAM

GHKAM

Well-known member
I asked this in general software with no response, thought to try here...

I have shot music videos before, (without Plural Eyes/just Sony Vegas), where I placed sync points/beeps on the studio recording and, during the shoot, played that version out of an amplifier while the band played along...did multiple takes like that and later lined up the beeps in Vegas/effectively syncing all the takes to the actual studio recording/muting the audio recorded from the camera in the final...

With Plural Eyes 3, (along with Sony Vegas Pro 12), does it recognize/sync the takes, even though the characteristics of the "live" version recorded by the camera may be somewhat different than the studio version, or will it still need something like sync beeps as a reference?

In other words, when a band plays (multiple takes) to the recording: they may be off, miss parts and/or play it differently in parts...and the audio characteristics of the live playing, along with the studio version being amplified will be characteristically different than just the studio recording alone (the audio that will be later referenced in the software). When manually syncing, a mistake in playing hasn't been an issue because of multiple takes/only keeping the best parts.

How much does Plural Eyes recognize/does it need a certain percentage in order to get a match and sync?

If anyone doesn't understand the premise of my question, please ask and I will clarify. Thanks.
 
I get around this problem to begin with, when I have a band play live to one of their studio recordings, I play the studio version through a speaker at the time so the band can keep their timing of the live playing in sync to the original, it makes the post job even using Plural Eyes that much easier. A truly live performance in front of an audience is much trickier affair however, for that I always use the genuine audio.
 
P13 said:
I get around this problem to begin with, when I have a band play live to one of their studio recordings, I play the studio version through a speaker at the time so the band can keep their timing of the live playing in sync to the original, it makes the post job even using Plural Eyes that much easier. A truly live performance in front of an audience is much trickier affair however, for that I always use the genuine audio.
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Thanks for the reply.

That's what I plan on doing, also. I'm just wondering that since the combination of the live band audio (with mistakes, miscues, etc.) along with the amplified studio version all going into the camera microphone - will these chacracteristically different camera wav files still be picked up by Plural Eyes as a match for syncing to the seperate studio version wav file?

Also wondering if the Plural Eyes method will permit to start anywhere in the song.
 
You can keep the live band audio down to a minimum other than the drums as they're physically hit, keyboards and guitars can be turned right down. Plural Eyes overall seems to do a good job, a few times it might struggle with a clip but I do those manually, but 95% of the time manual re-syncing isn't necessary.

Plural eyes works regardless of where clips and audio start and stop as long as audio matches closely it will sync.
 
My suggestion would be to try 2 mics into your camcorder, one of which is placed right beside the speaker playing the stuio audio.
 
wjauch said:
My suggestion would be to try 2 mics into your camcorder, one of which is placed right beside the speaker playing the stuio audio.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea, but why not run line level from the playback source into one of the audio channels on your camera as the scratch track? It would be perfectly clean.

Alternatively, what I do when I'm synchronising with prerecorded audio is to encode a video with the audio track and a large timecode on it. Then I play that video back as the audio source on set from a smartphone or tablet and get the rolling numbers in frame at the start or end of the take. Then, I just make the timecode I see recorded in the clip match the timeline timecode and you're in synch.
 
Thanks for the additional ideas. I will weigh my options.

Now, after actually installing and importing files into Plural Eyes, an error message says the PCM audio (Canon EOS M) is not supported by the program.

Any suggestions, in Vegas or otherwise?
 
I don't use the software myself but a number of users on the Sony Vegas forum have said that they went back to using version 2 (it comes with the version 3 download) as they did not like the way that version 3 behaved.

Mike
 
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