[Mike Fly]

I am – Version 6.06.

So in FCP 7 you can have an unlimited number of sequences in a project? That’s sweet – that was really my only complaint!

pluraleyes is great software!

Mike Fly
themikefly.com

[Mike Fly]

I’ve been using the H4n with my T2i for a while now and I’ve figured out how to make the syncing process work fairly efficiently – It’s all about the guide track!

The most complicated workflow I’ve done so far was a 2-camera (T2i + 5D) and 7-audio channel (2x Zoom H4n) shoot.

It involved running a Primary H4N with (4 inputs) into a second H4n using the headphone jack (3 mic inputs plus the primary H4n).

Then I split the audio coming out of the Secondary H4n – one line to a set of headphones to monitor, the second I split again – one line to a wireless lav transmitter (the receiver went to our B-Cam) and then a hard line to our A-Cam as sync guide tracks for pluraleyes.

I shot and dumped cards on a per scene basis to keep media organized for post.

I used automator to rename the files off the cards (Zoom A and Zoom B) to the file names wouldn’t be a problem.

Then in FCP all I had to do was drop A-Cam on V1 and B-Cam on V2 (both cams gave me a dual mono mix, so I deleted one of the audio tracks on each of them to lighten the workload for pluraleyes).

Then for the audio, I linked the 4 channels (I & M) for each Zoom’s files and put them on tracks 3-6 (Primary H4n) and 7-10 (Secondary H4n).

I sync on a per-scene basis to keep the workload as light as possible for pluraleyes and now, I rarely have a problem.

I’m 30 episodes into a 50 episode web series, and it took me 4 shoot days (about 20 episodes) to figure out this system and it works great. Now my post process is flying by.

If I had another 5D or T2i and a wireless lav for a guide track, I feel confident I could add it to the mix as well.

The only hiccup I’ve had so far is that pluraleyes doesn’t seem to like it when you have over 40 or 50 sequences in your project. I’ve had to break it down into 10-episode batches to keep pluraleyes from having issues.

– Mike