Sync ALL your clips in a single manipulation with premiere CC?

[Declan Smith]

Hi Marc

You didn’t say how many audio channels you need and whether you need to retain the sound in your clips or replace it with separately recorded sound. There are many ways to tackle this, but I prefer to have all the sync sound I need, synched and embedded in the actual video file up front before I start editing, rather than use ‘magic’ merged clip functionality of any NLE. This means that the sound stays with the clip if you copy the file or want to use it in a different programme.

So, here are some options, all of them will require work upfront.

1. If you have two channels of sound recorded externally and wish to replace the sound in the video file, use PluralEyes 3 clip by clip, to sync the sound with the video and create new video files with the sound replaced. This is fairly straightforward.

2. if you have multiple audio channels and/or want to retain the video file audio, then there is a two step process for each video clip. This is going to get a bit deep:

a) Use Pluraleyes 3 clip by clip, to sync the external sound to the video, then export Audio to create new trimmed audio files that are synched and trimmed to the same length as your video clip. Ensure that you drag the audio files and the source movie file to the icon that creates takes so they all line up in the window.

Note that pluraleyes 3.5 only creates one audio file from one of the takes so use version 3! You will build up a new set of audio clips that will be trimmed and synced to the video file they represent but will still be separate. Yes this is manual, but once you’re in the zone, it shouldn’t take too long. This is where organising media and file naming are really important.

b) Use the free command line tool, ffmpeg, to create a new video file containing the video file and the new trimmed audio clips . Detail below show how to do this for a video file and 4 external audio clips. (removing the video files own built in stereo channel):

ffmpeg -i videofile -i TrimmedAudio1 -i TrimmedAudio2 -i TrimmedAudio3 -i TrimmedAudio4 -vcodec copy -filter_complex "[1:a][2:a][3:a][4:a] amerge=inputs=4" -channel_layout 4.0 -c:a pcm_s24le -c:v copy

e.g.
Video file: S001-1.MOV
Trimmed Audio1: 1_T1_SUN16001_1.WAV
Trimmed Audio1: 1_T1_SUN16001_4.WAV
Trimmed Audio1: 1_T1_SUN16001_5.WAV
Trimmed Audio1: 1_T1_SUN16001_6.WAV
Output video file: S001-1_mc.MOV

ffmpeg -i S001-1.MOV -i 1_T1_SUN16001_1.WAV_for_S001-1.MOV.WAV -i 1_T1_SUN16001_4.WAV_for_S001-1.MOV.WAV -i 1_T1_SUN16001_5.WAV_for_S001-1.MOV.WAV -i 1_T1_SUN16001_6.WAV_for_S001-1.MOV.WAV -vcodec copy -filter_complex "[1:a][2:a][3:a][4:a] amerge=inputs=4" -c:a pcm_s24le -c:v copy S001-1_mc.MOV


Using media info on this will show the following for my example:

c) Once you’ve done that, import the new video clips into Premiere and select the audio channel that you need prior to adding it to a sequence (this shows what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw_ewUzl5Rc) i.e. in the project panel select Audio Channels -> format is Mono, number of channels 1. The reason I do this is to keep the timeline simple and have full control over routing channels in a multichannel setup and being able to apply audio effects to channels individually (which you can’t do with Adaptive, it’s not very adaptive!). Multichannel audio support is also different between applications

To make this less of a task, structured file naming should be used so that you can wrap up the file creation with ffmpeg into a script.

I know this is a long explanation but hopefully you will find something useful in there.

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

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[Andrew Kimery]

[Marc De Coster] “So, my first question is: Is there a way to select all the video rushes and all the audio rushes and ask Premiere to synchronize them all together? “

Yes, you can use PPros built-in multicam feature to auto sync everything. I use it frequently for 1 camera shoots that have 2nd system sound. For a doc web series a did a while back they would shoot with 2-3 cameras plus 2nd system sound for 8-10hrs a day and I would select everything done that done and tell PPro to sync it up (for that amount of footage it would take 15-20min IIRC).

-Andrew

[Marc De coster]

Hi Delcan, thank you for your answer.

Wow, now that seems complete!

I still don’t know how many audio tracks I’ll have to deal with. I guess that it will depend of the scenes.
And I don’t know if I’ll have to retain the audio from the video rushes, I suppose not
Though I don’t think I’ll have the time to export audio one by one then export all the rushes again before I begin to edit. We are short time here.

But I’ll try what you propose on a shorter material because it seems really easier to deal with once it’s done.

Thanx again

Marc

[Marc De coster]

Hi Andrew, thank U for your reply

I had the same idea but I wondered how the multicam would respond through a “basic” editing (match frame, trim, out of sync, reveal in bin, reveal in finder, XML, etc …) If you say that it’s ok, well, great, I’ll make some tests this morning. I hope that the multicam is the answer 🙂

Thanx a lot

[Marc De coster]

wow … I’ve just tried to sync my rushes with the multicam function but it’s not reliable. It works for some shots but it also make fancy stuff with other (for exemple put video shots on video 2 and video 3whereas they got nothing to do there!
Well, I made the sync with the audio ref because I don’t have timecode with these rushes. Maybe that it’s better with timecode.
I thought Premiere would be easier to use with synchronization. Never mind. I’ll use Plural Eyes and deal with the small bugs with the merged clips

But thank U anyway