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Music Video Sync
Big question that I’m hoping somebody can help with. easy enough solution I’m sure, that I should probably be posting on Calf, but just in case…
Cutting an ultra low-budget music video that wasn’t properly synced. No timecode, no smartslate – CD played on a speaker and recorded through the camera mic on the assumption that it would sync to the CD track in post. 12 Angles worth of this. It really doesn’t sync.
The video was recorded at 48000, running at 23.98 fps HD.
The CD is 41000.
What is the best way to transfer the CD for FCP where I won’t get audio pops, and what are the proper settings I should use?
Thanks.
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6 Replies
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CD audio should sync perfectly.
Sample rates do not matter.
Both formats are locked to TIME and not the sample rate.
Import the CD and convert it to 48 kHz in iTunes or QT Pro.
(This will not affect the time or length of the CD track however.
BTW, CD audio is 44.1 kHz.
I have synced to camera-mic’ed audio from a CD source for over 30 minutes at a run.
Imported the CD audio and captured the videotape… sync’ed it once and dead-on for the whole length.
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That’s not a problem as far as the track goes. Just copy the track off the cd to your harddrive. Drag from harddrive into a bin or directly into the timeline. Works great. No problem that the video is 48.
Should sync fairly well with the CD playback. Especially with a music video where you only sync on for a second or two. Unless you’re trying to match up cameras and do a live switch. Then probably not since every cd player could be a little different and expect some drift.
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[Bret Williams] “Should sync fairly well with the CD playback. Especially with a music video where you only sync on for a second or two. Unless you’re trying to match up cameras and do a live switch. Then probably not since every cd player could be a little different and expect some drift.”
Nope. CD players are generally “dead-on”.
The “every player is different” went out the window with analog.
All CD players (unless they specifically have a “pitch control” (few do) play while locked to an internal digital “clock” thats timing is amazingly accurate.
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I’ve used one method that is an extra step, but makes thngs a lot easier.
(I assume that the band did a good job of syncing their performance to the CD playback. If they were sloppy, there is not musch you can do to fix that…)
1) Digitize all of the takes, and place each take on a timeline. (Set up the timeline timecode to match the camera timecode)
2) Place the master cd track you will be cutting to on the timeline.
3) Sync the beginning.
4) Watch the playback.
5) If the music gets out of sync, snip 1 frame from the music about 5 or ten seconds before the point where the music is noticiably out of sync. If it gets worse, un-do the snip insert a break edit, and add 1 frame.
6) Repeat until the song syncs to the end of the take.
7) If you have access to the camera originals, edit the music from your fixed timelines onto 1 track of the camera master. (Be careful not to erase your master…DUH!)
8) Redigitize the takes with the new synced audio track
9) PROFIT!When you start to edit, edit in the music from the digitized footage onto the timeline along side the master music track you are editing to. Any sync problems will be readily audible when played with the master music track.
If you don’t have access to the camera originals, or you are hesitant to attempt to alter them, export your fixed timelines as footage, and edit using them as source.
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Holy smoke… ONE “extra step”??
Edit back to the CAMERA MASTER?
Why not just use LAYERS of your raw footage each synced to the audio track from the CD?
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[NearlyClueless] “CD played on a speaker and recorded through the camera mic on the assumption that it would sync to the CD track in post. 12 Angles worth of this. It really doesn’t sync”
Start by making sure you have a good factoty cd that is the same version of the song that was played during filming and converting it to aiff from itunes.
Often when we make digital copies of cd’s and play them back on our drives there are problems with the quality of the cd media used or the read/write laser head in the burner or maybe it’s a scratch or finger print on the disc. This can cause jumps on playback, maybe just one or two bits on the surface of the cd in the reader. If this occurred during your shoot you will never get the sync on. I’ve been given cd’s where this was obvious as you could hear whole words jump.
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