Megaload of a syncjob

[Declan Smith]

I had a similar issue with 300 video clips and about 1800 audio files, although I had no timecode to sync to. The only way I could sync was to match the separately recorded audio to the main camera audio, so this may or may not be relevant.

I tackled it this way. First I reviewed all the video and named them appropriately (Adobe bridge bulk rename really helped here) and luckily my sound files had shot/take in the file name (which were mostly correct!), so I knew which audio files went with each video (i.e. scene1 take 1 etc). This is just to make the job easier so I can look at the filenames and know which ones are associated with it. This process took about 3 hours.

Next I used pluraleyes to sync each video clip individually with it’s respective audio, then exported the trimmed audio to a new directory. Note that pluralyeyes will only embed two channels with a video clip, hence having 8 channels (which is what I had also) means you need to create trimmed audio. These trimmed audio clips match the in/out points of the video. I then repeated this for all video clips.

This again will take a little while, perhaps 2-4 hours depending on how much you have because there is no batch facility in pluraleyes, and you will have a few clips that you will need to manually sync BUT, doing this will save so much time later, particularly if you are editing drama. I simply don’t think any tool would have been able to help if I left this until after the main edit and tried a sync then (because pluralyeyes can’t cope with breaks in the edit from the same sound file etc).

When you have created trimmed audio for all your clips, open up Premiere import all your video and all your TRIMMED audio. Next you can create merged clips with Premiere. Each merged clip contains one video + the 8 track (or 6) tracks of associated audio (easily identifiable because of the naming done earlier).

When you drag a merged clip to a sequence, it’s a mess and way too many audio channels, so, what I have done is to make a sequence per clip which contains the merged clip and all its audio. I then use this 1 clip nested sequences as my source clips for the main edit by dragging them to the timeline and edit like a normal 1Video 1 Audio clip, makes the main timeline very slim. Later in the edit when you are ready to hone the audio, you can simply go into the merged clip and select which audio you wish to use (by muting the other tracks). Your main timeline stays simple.

The things you lose doing this are the ability to storyboard your project in the project window icon view (as you will just see a sequence icon), and if you were hoping to roundtrip to resolve for colour grading, resolve won’t understand nested sequences. There are ways around this though. Also, you won’t see an audio waveform displayed on the main sequence until you click ‘Sequence->render audio’. This creates the waveform peaks.

So although there was an initial outlay in time to organise and sync the footage, it will now be so much easier in the edit. I can choose easily, which channels I want to listen to, I can control the mix between the boom and the lav mics on a clip basis, and more importantly, I can picture edit first and sort the sound out later knowing I have no major issues to worry about.

Hope this helps

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Chris Borjis]

as long as the cameras have audio, what I would do is use premiere cc
multicam and sync with audio option, then just edit it from there.

It does a pretty rock solid job of syncing audio from audio sources to match.

[Samuel Enblom]

Thanks for your answer! Plural eyes actually managed to handle most of it!

However, I have a few clips where its no audio at all (mute audio channel), so in this case I was hoping I could use the timestamp… Problem is, I really dont know how to see the timestamp. I can’t seem to find any tutorial on google either, do you happen to know how to?