Automatically syncing multiple clips and lots of audio like PluralEyes possible?

[Tangier Clarke]

You’re right. I should have been more clear about what I meant. It doesn’t absolutely require the timestamps for syncing, but rather it tremendously helps for organizing the content in list view to prepare for syncing.

I could use the slates from the picture and listen to various audio, and try other sifting methods to label the shot/take etc just to be able to sort the clips in a way that I can identify which to sync or multicam.

-how’s that for a run on sentence

Not ideal, but yes it’d doable. If FCP X had the batch capabilities of PluralEyes, we’d be golden.

Tangier

[Matt Scholes]

Did you ever figure out a good workflow to sort this?

It’s basically the only reason I’ve not entirely abandoned Adobe PP yet

If you aren’t willing to change you shouldn’t be editing” – Richard Marks

[Tangier Clarke]

Yes, I did. I still wish it was built in and frankly the benefits of FCP X (in my opinion) far outweigh using this feature in PPro.

My solutions require two options: 1) LTC Convert (now LTC Aux), 2) Tentacle Sync Studio

Without going through the entire process here’s what I’ve developed:

-Footage with LTC (on one audio channel provided by a Tentacle Sync or similar device) slaved from a recorder such as a Sound Devices unit.
-Use LTC Convert to rewrite the Quicktime timecode track with the LTC
-Import picture and audio files to FCP X
Export XML (because Sync N Link X doesn’t support LTC nor does FCP X)
-Import to Sync N Link X
-Send back to FCP X as synced multicam or synced clips with naming based on the audio files (which retains the scene/shot/take info)

This has been a great workflow for me and though it sounds long it’s very fast. I sync days of footage in minutes with all of the metadata in tact in file naming the way I want. This also organizes clips that couldn’t be synced.

I’ve worked with Gregory Clarke Intelligent Assistance over the years to incorporate features for Sync N Link X to be able to dynamically decide whether it should make a multicam or a synced clip.

The other option is to use Tentacle Sync Studio as well. This is relatively recent though. For too long it was not able to send individual synced and multicam clips to FCP X and when it could do any of those there were often problems with the results. It’s gotten a lot better and may be worth another look.

Mind you I developed the above workflow for narratives, but it can work for anything that has timecode between picture and audio that can be synced.

What I have sought to achieve over the years as I looked for solutions in PrPro, WooWave DreamSync, PluralEyes, FCP X, and a few others is the following:

-Maintain all metadata after syncing including iXML.
-Keep original audio from the camera always available.
-Individual synced clips in the browser/media pool instead of a timeline of synced clips.
-Support for LTC .
-Maintain the creation timestamp when exporting media.
-Being able to batch sync your media.