Fine editing in FCP

[Cody Walters]

If you were to do this manually you will need to enable your audio waveforms and match the clips to each other the best you can. Click on the button that looks like an arrow in the bottom left of the timeline. It will pop out a menu and you will find enable audio waveforms there.

This is why some people use clapper boards or simply clap there hands before the take begins. It is a spike in the audio that you can easily sync.

If you don’t mind spending $150, you can purchase software called Plural Eyes. It will sync all of your clips together and will save you a lot of time.

Cody Walters
JW Studio LLC
Houston Video Production
Houston Wedding Videos

Final Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D

[James Hester]

Hi – thanks for the reply!

The issue isn;t so much with what you’re saying here – it’s that I can’t slip the audio or video to exactly the right point. I clapped a marker, can see it on both audio tracks but I cannot match the two spikes to exactly the right point as it keeps jumping too far left or right. It seems a little mad that you can’t get it to the right position….?!?!?

[Geoff Dills]

are you turning off snapping?

Best,
Geoff

[Andrew Rendell]

FCP can only move the tracks in inuts of 1 frame, i.e., a thirtieth of a second, and that is too coarse an amount to line up the waveforms exactly, so you have to choose the closest you can get. Unless your cameras are Gen-Locked together (which is a way of synchronising them) this is normal.

In general you choose which audio track you’re going to use and people won’t notice a very slight difference in the timing of the vidion against te sound (as long as it’s within a frame). In real life the speed of sound is much slower than the speed of light so we do actually see things a fraction of a second earlier than we hear them, so you’re taking advantage of that facility of the human brain to percieve things correctly (but you’ve got to be very close to get away with it).

If you need to mix the tracks from different cameras you’ll have to export the audio to a sound editor to shift the waveforms by the right amount, otherwise you’ll get nasty sounding “phasing” effects.

[Michael Hancock]

You can slip the audio by samples. Do this:

Match frame your audio. Zoom all they way in. Hold Shift and move your playhead to where you want your new In point to be. Mark In. Cut back into your sequence.

It’s cumbersome, but it works. I do it all the time when we shoot double system sound and the VO is slightly off.

Michael

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Michael Hancock
Editor

[Mark Suszko]

Also, are you trying to move things only by mouse, or are you using the single-frame trim keys to help move the clips around?

[James Hester]

Guys – thanks for the replies – I’ll try these things out!!

My audio background needs to be shed like a snake skin, I think!! I’ve been reading up on tolerances etc for audio and video and how the eye deals with distance etc – I think I need to be a little less exact, however I have found that I’m still not 100% with the the 1 frame difference – when dealing with drums, the eyes can tell!!

I’ve used to work arounds for now – 1 – making a few different start points on my audio mixes – a couple of frames different each time so I can pick the right one and if it’s still not right, I’ve used the delay FX and 100% mixed the audio, adapting the delay time to get it right. Not ideal but it’s a start… I’ll try your idea once this work has gone off to the client….!

Enjoying my FCP learning curve – thank you all for your help!!

[Chris Wiggles]

The only way to do sub-frame adjustments is within the audio, you can’t do it with the video in the timeline.

Regards,
Chris