-
Syncing audio to video when video has no audio. Got that?
I am in the process of making another of my stupid videos. Since the sound is important on this one I used my Tascam audio recorder to record the audio. I had a boom mic hooked up to my G7 to make sure I had a good signal to sync to. Unfortunately I forgot to turn on the mic!!!
So, I have video with absolutely no audio, and a nice clean audio file. Is there anyway short of just eyeballing it, to get the audio file in sync with the video? Another problem is, given my “state of the art” workstation, the playback is so choppy, even with proxies, that it’s almost impossible to eyeball it, so all I can really do is line it up and render out a scene to see if it’s synced, but the scenes are over a minute long with green screen so it takes like 5 hours to encode even with bitrate set to 4, and if it’s off I have to do it all over again.
Any tips or shortcuts? Or should I just re-shoot the scenes? They never come out as good as the first time so I’m dreading having to do that.
Help!
-
7 Replies
-
You could go to sleep and hope that gremlins come during the night to do your work eyeball syncing… Or, you can do it yourself. PluralEyes requires an audio guide track recorded on the video clips, so eyeball syncing is your only choice.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
-
Use a clapper board when filming.
-
What format are your proxies? If you’re not getting smooth playback then what’s the point?
Are you on the latest version of PPro with the nice proxy workflow? I’m not, so maybe there is something I’m missing.
Can you not at least change to a codec that will play back nicely – DV25 or something?If that’s not possible (or a pain) you could:
-export the entire sequence (video only) into a very computer-friendly format
– bring that back into premiere and drag it onto the top track
– move the audio to sync it with the scratch video
– delete the scratch video track and the proper video should be in sync -
Seriously, Tero? A clapper board? You’re talking to a guy who FORGETS TO TURN THE MIC ON!!! 😉
As for what codec I’m using for proxies, it’s a DNX SQ 720, so, come on, what’s the problem? I’ll tell you what the problem is, the sluggishness of the original 4K files doesn’t go away when you use the proxy, for me anyway.
What I ended up doing was creating a new project, brought in my videos and audio files, created a sequence for each video, and plopped the appropriate audio file. It scrubbed and played a LOT smoother. I synced up the audio, only took about a minute or so, then exported each sequence. It worked great but unfortunately I had to go out so I just chose the one code I knew would export sound AND video, h264. As I’ve told you before, Premiere Pro won’t encode DNxHD so I didn’t want to chance that, plus it doesn’t export audio.
Anyway, problem solved in a way most of you would be horrified to do, although I think Dave pretty much pegged what I ended up doing.
-
[Duke Sweden] “Seriously, Tero? A clapper board? You’re talking to a guy who FORGETS TO TURN THE MIC ON!!! ;-)”
Could you remember to get in front of the camera and clap your hands sideways? You’d get an sync point that would correspond to audio and you could also see the clap for visual sync.
-
Dave – I’ll bet you I DON’T! There’s a little green light on the back of the mic when it’s on, but I’m almost never behind the camera when I’m setting up, I’m in front looking into my swivel LCD and lining up my shots. I’ve forgotten many times before, I’m sure I’ll forget again.
Tero – This is my workflow. A vague idea pops into my head. I search Google for appropriate background images. I then create a sequence for each one. Usually, the next day, I set up my green screen, set up the camera, adjust wb and ISO if need be) with my lights on, hit “record” once I mark out my spots (in my head, mind you), get in front of the camera, THEN remember to hit record on the external audio recorder, and then literally make up the story as I go along. No script, no set ideas, whatever pops into my head, nothing written down.
Hence, I get masterpieces like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwbXoOmrYGo
For me the glitches are part of the “charm” (assuming anyone other than my brother sees them), but not having an audio track to work with can be a bit of a pain. You could say lesson learned, but experience has shown me I never learn 😉
Thanks for the support, guys! -
Sorry, Tero, I responded to you in the previous comment. Two humorous side notes, in the video above I also forgot to turn on the mic. In that case I had no audio so I played the clips and spoke the “dialog” (again, whatever popped into my head).
The other humorous sidenote; the last time I DID remember to turn on the mic, I forgot to turn it off. When I went to use it a few days later the batteries were dead. Such is life at B&N Studios 😉
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up