[David Miller]

Wow Alex!

I’ve been working on this problem for two months! Yesterday I found that if I could import the mix into AE and change from no compresssion to 32 bit floating that the audio from the protools session would show up (Finally!) in sync. It was a very confusing issue and I talked to a lot – a lot – of people about why the sound files showed up the proper length in quicktime player pro, and after effects but would not show up in my sequence or even on import into the viewer with the proper length. They are about 2.3 seconds short of the show length.

This has been crazy trying to figure this out. Thanks for caring enough to post your results and share it with the community. I’m still anxious about the problem but at least there is some workaround for it.

david

[David Miller]

Hey Kent

This is a rascal of a problem and even if you do everything right it’s still not clear when it will show up. The only way that I have found to solve this problem quickly is to open after effects and set your project up for the correct frame rate. Render only the audio at that frame rate with the correct sampling rate. Then open quicktime player pro and add the track to your exported movie. Then you can re-import into FCP, dump the video track if you want in a sequence and then you can use your audio which will be in sync. Any other way and I couldn’t get FCP to work no matter how I mixed up the various combinations. I have had to do this in both 6 and 7 for this project. I know there must be ways to set this up in the beginning but here is at least one bit for a real world solution when you’re in the thick of it.

[David Miller]

so I understand that I should have set up the project at 23.976 (which on the interface doesn’t exist). I understand that I should take a lot of flack from the pros here. Next time I’ll set the project up differently than what I did. 24 was a nice even integer and it seemed to make sense. No .98’s or .976’s. But this is what I got and I was hoping there was some underlying knowledge on the internal structures of FCP that would, at the very least, be revealed. My fault.

What I don’t understand is why I can get it to work if I bring it into QT Pro player or render it in an AE project at 24fps but I cannot get it to sync in Final Cut. Why can two other programs read it properly, and the core program cannot, when it clearly states that it is set to those properties?

I don’t want to get banned from Creative Cow. I just really want to know how Final Cut handles sync issues.

david

[David Miller]

I use this term because that is how it is listed in the presets for Final Cut Pro. It states: Use this preset when editing with Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) 1289x720p 23.98 fps material with audio set to 48 kHz.

In fact in the custom box it does not allow for the option of 23.976 but only 23.98, 24, 25 etc.

Could this be the problem of why the protools session cannot conform to the synch that the quicktime player can handle?

thanks
david

[David Miller]

Got it. So why on the same hardware can I get something in synch in one simple program – QT Pro Player and not with FCP given that the base hardware foundation is exactly the same? One works, the other doesn’t.

The other thing that you might be able to point me to then is which hardware I can genlock to a blackburst generator so that everything is working from the same clock. Is that an Aja board or BlackMagic boardor do I have to go back to Media 100 or Avid to get this kind of “basic hardware” to use on a project where sound has to be in sync with picture?

[David Miller]

Hey Gary

Thanks for taking this on and responding to the post.

We did choose to have everything at 24.0fps. But when the protools sessions came back to us they were out of synch even though they swore up and down (and I visually confirmed it) that they were working at 24.0fps.

We aren’t using any cards like the Aja or Black Magic for processing. In retrospect it would have been better to make it 23.98 although that option was not available in Protools – only 23.976. It was these differences that made us decide to set the foundation at 24 and keep it all uniform.

The crazy thing is that Quicktime Pro Player sees it at 24.0 and everything is in synch. I bring the same file into FCP and it is out of synch in the 24.0fps sequence. I try to set up a new sequence with the preset of HD – Prores which defaults to 23.98fps, import the footage, tell the sequence to not conform to the 24.0fps of the clip so that it stays native to the preset, import the audio and it’s still out of synch.

So why QT Pro Player can do it and I can’t in FCP?

best
david

[David Miller]

that worked perfectly. Thanks for the insight and advice John.

david

[David Miller]

the only way that I can think of trying other than exporting a ref and putting it through cleaner is to look at https://www.flip4mac.com/. They have an encoder that may work within the export of FCP but I haven’t tried it.

good luck
david

[David Miller]

Thanks John – I’ll try this. I was able to export an xml sequence and open the file in excel. It had the chapter markers etc in the cells with it but not the timecode of the sequence. But I will try this other avenue as well. Thanks for the response.

david

[David Miller]

Sorry I didn’t post my platform – MacOSX 10.4.8 – AE 6.5

david