Moving video between the lines

[Mike Velte]

You can either nudge a clip one frame by using Alt+, or . Or Shift+Alt+, or. (for 5 frame nudge).
Also turn off “Snap” (an icon in the left upper corner of the timeline), just turn it back on or life gets miserable.
Snap is a safety feature designed to prevent small gaps or overlaps.

[Ravi Makhija]

Hey,

Thanks for replying quick.

I know the magnet icon in the top left deals with snapping to clips. I think I realized later what I wanted to do was move video between frames, say have a video clip come in half way between frame 3 and 4.

I’m used to audio where you have the freedom to move audio clips very precisely, and if I understand it correctly now that has to do with audio’s sample rate being much higher than video’s sample rate (or equivalently, fps.)

Is video limited to moving by frames? Are there ways to get around this issue? Maybe by increasing fps? Can you increase fps for a segment of a video file?

I feel like those who make music videos must use some kind of work around, to get those “hits” between video and music on point.

[Jeff Brown]

Video is pretty much limited to frame movements. But, it would be rare that sync within one frame (1/24 to 1/30 of a sec.) would seem “off”. Most people don’t even notice lip sync that is off by 2 frames.

Maybe you just worry too much ;>). Judge the A/V sync by actual playback, not by the audio waveform display.

-jeff

[Mike Velte]

[Jeff Brown] “Most people don’t even notice lip sync that is off by 2 frames.”

I suspect you are correct, especially those folks who watch SD video stretched across a wide screen TV.

But I guarantee that every editor here can detect out of sync lips by much less than one frame and that is why you can change the time display mode of the timeline to Audio Units. Then zoom way, way in and you can move the audio track by one sample (1/48,000 of a sec).
(the menu at the upper/right corner of the timeline)

[Jeff Brown]

Well, OK. I can only see sync to the frame, but maybe I’m slow (probably). My main response was that you can’t slip video by less than a frame without major hoop-jumping. Audio, yes; to the sample, as you mentioned.

-jeff

[Ravi Makhija]

What ups!

Jeff, when you suggested me worrying too much I realized my video wasn’t rendered. However after rendering it I still noticed a slight delay between this audio hit and where the video clip comes in. Maybe it’s because I’m a drummer.

Mike that was a good point about lip syncing, I’m guessing the pros use an instrumental and vocal track separate, and hence have the freedom to stretch/move the vocal track to fit the lip singing. Unfortunately in my case it’s pretty much a beat and video clips.

Well I had some ideas thought I would share for those trying to do similar things.
1 – If the event where you want audio/video synced doesn’t have much audio before it, you might be able to get away with time stretching the first part of the audio so that the first part ends at the end of a frame, letting you sync that audio/video hit.
2 – Ideally, the tempo of your song would be 60, 90, or 120BPM. This would line up nicely with 30 fps and you would have 1, 1.5, and 2 beats per second respectively (please check the math!). So whenever possible you can use software/dj cd player to change the tempo of the audio slightly to the closest among 60/90/120BPM.

Yeah it’s kind of a long-winded method but hey, if it works it works.

Thanks for the feedback I will surely moo at the cowmunity again in the future~

[Ravi Makhija]

O, Jeff we were writing post at same time. What do you mean by hood-jumping?

[Jeff Brown]

Ravloo–

“Hoop-jumping”, from an idiomatic British/American expression “jumping through hoops”, meaning to have to do extra work, extra proceedures. I suppose from the circus trick of having animals jump through hoops/rings.

Sync-wise: If you are trying to get edits (cuts) to sync to a beat, you may find that putting the edit just ahead of the audio makes things look more in sync. Try it for yourself…

-jeff

[Jonny Tully]

Just found this thread looking for a similar thread.. am working on a 25fps pal project and needed to move my video to sync less than a frame in movement.

My fix:

copy everything in the sequence
start a new sequence at 50fps (or 59.94 if in ntsc)
paste everything into the sequence
make your minor adjustment
copy everything
go back to your original project
paste

fingers crossed the sync will be spot on.. worked for me on one project so far, will have a few more to do

[Richard Spierings]

Hi,

I am experiencing the same problems here in CS3. As a music video editor I try to sync the video with the audio as precisely as possible.
And since Premiere Pro doesn’t let your video clips move in steps of half frames or smaller it’s hard to sync it. (CS4 is able to?)

I tried to change the timeline to audio measure units. This works, but only for one video layer in the timeline. If you want to sync multiple video clips or layers to one audio track, it’s impossible…

I tried Stick Tully’s solution, but how do I do this? How can I create a new sequence in another timecode /base if my current project is 25fps?
And if I create a new project, I can only choose from 23,976, 25 or 29,97 fps.

So Stuck Tilly, how did you manage to make this work?
All help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

Cheers, Richard.