-
Wireless + Wired sources becoming desynchronized in Zoom H4N
Recently our company picked up a Sennheiser AVX system to up our in-house sound production capabilities (we were previously all-wired). I am by no means an expert when it comes to capturing sound, but on the occasion that the budget doesn’t allow for a professional audio engineer, that responsibility falls to me.
Our loadout when we run sound is a Zoom H4N with a lav and boom. Previously when we had both mics wired we experienced no issues, but since introducing the AVX system with the included lav I have found that the lav is consistently a fraction of a second behind the boom. I don’t know the proper way to calculate the difference but by my estimation it’s about 1/30th of a second behind. So far we have used phantom power on the receiver on every occasion.
My solution to this has been to just manually adjust it once I get into Premiere, but I was wondering if there’s anything I can do in the Zoom to prevent this or a smarter way in post to correct it than just manually adjusting it in the timeline. If anyone has any solutions I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
-
2 Replies
-
[Dan Sudkamp] “Previously when we had both mics wired we experienced no issues, but since introducing the AVX system with the included lav I have found that the lav is consistently a fraction of a second behind the boom. I don’t know the proper way to calculate the difference but by my estimation it’s about 1/30th of a second behind.”
Yup. Latency. The AVX is speced at about 19ms IIRC.
The easiest and best solution for you is to only use wireless when you can’t do it with wires. Wireless is a last resort, not a first. And this latency problem is just one reason why. Said another way: just because you have it available doesn’t mean you have to use it.
Second easiest solution would probably be to use a clapper board. Makes sync easy and exact. Hollywood has been using clappers since the dawn of talkies. If it’s good enough for them…
-
Thanks for the reply, Bruce!
We will definitely continue to go wired whenever possible, but lately have had a series of situations where wireless was necessary, hence the investment in the AVX.
We do have a clapper but rarely use it. 90% of the time I just run the footage through Pluraleyes and it does the job fine, but because the Zoom H4N is pushing out a single stereo file it syncs them as one file, so they remain slightly out of alignment due to that latency. I guess I can just start manually separating the tracks before sync, rather than after – that is probably the only solution with our current hardware loadout, as I haven’t figured out a way to separate the tracks inside the Zoom.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up