Sound not Synching!

[Bruce Watson]

[Drake Silver] “Recently we shot some footage on the iphone X with (freefly movi gimbal system) and recorded sound separate to sync later, (48Khz) into my sound man’s recorder — on trying to sync footage with the sound today, we simply… can’t get it to sync!”

Yes, well, Apple has some interesting ideas about video. iPhones used to shoot a variable frame rate. And this would loose sync with sound recorded on the same iPhone. I remember filming some stuff where the iPhone lost sync with itself (I still can’t wrap my head around that) after just two or three minutes. When I finally checked, my NLE said it was seeing something like 25.7 fps. It was a real PITA to edit, but with enough cuts you can slip and slide the audio for each clip to get all the individual clips to reasonably sync. But that was years ago.

I don’t know if Apple ever wised up, or whether they believed they were trail blazing (believing it won’t make it true Apple). I just remember that’s when I swore off iPhone video. I seem to remember that some of the NLEs eventually figured out what weirdness Apple was doing and added drivers that could convert their variable frame rates back to reality. That said, I had quit playing with it before that so have no experience in that area beyond what I’ve read.

Anyway, something you might want to look into. When in doubt, believe the sound recorder over an iPhone. Just sayin’.