Best way to sync & organize separate Audio/Video clips in FCP 7

[Steve Crow]

I think the answer lies in re-exporting each clip with the new high quality sound – a product like Plural Eyes or Dual Eyes might save you a step or two but it can be done manually just as well.

Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com

[Stephanie Joan]

Here’s another vote for Dual or Plural Eyes (Dual Eyes in a standalone app, while Plural Eyes works in your NLE).

You can arch the Dual Eyes demo on the product page:

https://www.singularsoftware.com/dualeyes.html

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Stephanie
https://www.theculinarylife.com

[Matt Campbell]

Dan, I’m currently doing this type of work as well. I’m having mixed results with Plural Eyes. My timeline contains about 80 clips along with external audio. PE sync’d about 70-80% of it accurately. The remaining clips did not sync, however I was able to sync manually all in one sequence. In your timeline delete the camera audio and then select the video and new audio and use the Link function, under the Modify menu or Command L on MAC. The in your timeline you can simply click on the clip and drag it back into your browser. I then recommend taggin that clip as manual sync. The you can move the new clip to whatever folder you’d like and it acts as new media.

I wouldn’t recommend exporting the PE sync’d clips as self contained media, because then you’ll have generation loss in quality. However, you can try the above or export reference media. But with a large project, reference media can be problematic.

hope this helps.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Steve Crow]

Hi Matt,

Re: “In your timeline delete the camera audio and then select the video and new audio and use the Link function”

I don’t see how that could work – if you delete the camera original audio, there’s nothing to sync the good audio to. I often manually sync my Zoom H4N good audio to camera audio but I do it simply by dragging the Zoom audio underneath the camera audio soundtracks and then matching waveforms

playing both soundtracks simultaneously tells me if I did it right…if I don’t hear any echo or two completely different soundtracks then I’m golden – at that point I can hit control L as you suggest and unlink the bad audio from the video clip and can also link the good audio to the video clip instead. If I want to take the extra step, I can then export just that section of the timeline to create an entirely new clip with good, synced audio.

All the best Matt

Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com

[Matt Campbell]

Steve, sorry, I may have misinterpreted that. I simply meant to delete the camera audio after the good audio has been sync’d to it.

And if you export those new clips, I would only export reference files or try my other method. If you export new clips as self-containded files, you’re going to have gen-loss with each compression pass. Reference files and the other method, will not have any gen-loss, its simply referencing the original media and not creating new media.

With gen-loss it then becomes harder to color correct and color grade your footage. It’s more likely to break up and get noisy on you.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Ryan Petrus]

**There’s actually an app called DreamSync, a standalone application that’s built for the novice user as well as professionals. It syncs your footage and audio into one single clip so that it can then be imported into applications like iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut X, or any other editing suite. 
https://dreamsyncapp.com
Both apps are effective depending on your editing workflow and how much (or little) time you want to dedicate to learning another interface for syncing audio/video footage.