Can”t sync audio with Video -2

[Mark Smith]

I have 2 clips – one audio wav file from my mix pre 6 and my camera clip, they have common time code but the audio clip starts before the video clip. I have tried every possible way to sync the clips and the resulting synced clip has no picture. I used the same system for another clip and it worked perfectly leaving a black area in the resulting synced clip where the audio started before the video with picture picking up at the appropriate time.

Now I’m syncing my second set of clips and no matter what sync method I choose, the result is a synced clip with the proper audio and no video even though there is common time code, decent audio on both clips etc… I’ve tried all the methods in the sync clips window. Is there some other root cause I should be looking for to solve the problem?

[Joe Marler]

[Mark Smith] “one audio wav file from my mix pre 6 and my camera clip…I have tried every possible way to sync the clips and the resulting synced clip has no picture…the result is a synced clip with the proper audio and no video even though there is common time code, decent audio on both clips etc…”

My documentary team uses the Sound Devices MixPre-6; it’s really good. Label all clips from each camera or recorder in the Inspector, then create a multi-cam clip and select sync on audio (not timecode). It is often best to use a multicam clip even for one A/V and one audio clip.

To label each batch of clips, select those in the Event Browser, then in Inspector press the “i” button at top, then give them a camera name. Without labeling each group of clips, the audio sync attempt often will not work.

After doing that I suggest marking the parent clips rejected using the filter “hide rejected”. Then keyword/rate only the MC clip. This is because ratings and keywords for the parent clips are not passed through to the MC clip and you don’t want to accidentally use a parent clip in the timeline.

Sam Mestman mentioned the advantages of using multicam over sync clips here:

https://www.fcpworks.com/sync-or-multicam-clips/

His procedure for prepping the clips for sync is here:

https://blog.wemakemovies.org/2012/10/fcpx-batch-renaming-advanced-multicam-sync/

[Mark Smith]

I tried the multicam clip route and that worked. It also gave me a clue as to why the synced clip was black. THe multicam clip – the audio and video clips were about 57 minutes in length- took a while to render and so the clip appeared blacktill after the render. The synced clip attempt I made could have had the same problem and I just didn’t realize it at the time. THe first pair of clips I synced successfully were each about 17 minutes and that happened super fast. The fact that the near hour clip took extra time might have been what threw me off. In any case I have synced clips I can go to work with .