FCP Audio Sync

I have about 100 clips from a music video shoot. There are individual cuts of the track that were used during production and lip since to for different shots. About 15 tracks that were used, that together create the whole song. However, this seems like it would make things difficult in the cutting of the video.

My question is, is it possible to connect each individual clip to the original song? So that the track (~4:30 long) can sit in audio track one. And when individual clips are selected for the cutting and dragged down to this sequence. In the time line it will register whether the clip is in sync or off my however many frames.

Thank you, if anyone has heard of this being possible please let me know.

Does the audio track have timecode? Was the camera slaved to the timecode from the audio playback, or was a visible slate with timecode shot at the head of each shot?

>In the time line it will register whether the clip is in sync or off my however many frames.

If i get what you are talking about, no. There is no way a computer software can figure out where exactly you are in a song based on video footage.



www.strypesinpost.com

It really seems to me that in this case, you're better off just doing it the old-fashioned way -- use your eyes.

There are ways to set up the clips so that you'd get those "off sync" numbers, but that's just the dead-eyed technical aspect. Those numbers don't tell you when you deliberately want to set a movement off from its original intended sync because it feels better. They don't tell you when you put a gesture from the second chorus into the first.

Plus, you have 100 clips. At any given moment in the 4:30 video, you're only going to use one clip out of 100. I think you'll end up wasting a lot of time trying to get all 100 clips merged with the original audio, than to just cut the video and shift things around when something looks out of sync.

You should do the "master syncing" (ie. in several timelines, put every clip in its entirety synced to the master track) and preserve the timelines in which you do the sync work. But I don't think you should waste too much time trying to merge the clips. My guess is that the payoff will be a lot less than the effort.


www.derekmok.com

For the 15 individual audio clips, there are three marks (sharp clicks) in the track that make it easy for me to connect them to the corresponding production audio of each clip. However this is different from they are not the original track.

"For the 15 individual audio clips, there are three marks (sharp clicks) in the track that make it easy for me to connect them to the corresponding production audio of each clip. However this is different from they are not the original track."

Could you rewrite this please? It really doesn't make sense.

I'm going to assume there is no timecode. You might be able to create aux timecode tracks for the clips and use them to sync up the material when it gets put into the timeline.

> Could you rewrite this please? It really doesn't make sense.

I'm sure he means that they had made different "versions" of the music playback track for different shots. Those "versions" are probably extracted from the overall music track, but don't have a technical relation (eg. timecode, start/end times) to the overall track.

That's easy to fix -- every drumbeat in a modern piece of music is like a sync mark. What's not easy to fix is trying to get 100 clips to merge with the same master track, which has a different duration and In/Out points from all those clips.


www.derekmok.com

and by master syncing...the editor will be able to bring in the individual sequences (1 for each clip w/ music @ 1:00:00:00 and the clip synced based on that timeline) drag and drop into the music video edit sequence, and each time it would write over the audio track, that which will not change because its identical in all the timelines @ 1:00:00:00.

At least thats what i gathered as a possibility of making this easy on the editor. Im the assistant editor by the way.

> the editor will be able to bring in the individual sequences (1 for each clip w/ music @
> 1:00:00:00 and the clip synced based on that timeline

Whoa whoa whoa...don't use nests! If you used 100 nests in your sequence, you'd have some major problems.

But, there's a way you can apply this principle without using nests.

If you use the complete music track with all your sync sequences, that means your sync sequence will have the music track with a sync relationship to every clip.

So, make sure the editing sequence has the complete music track, say on A1 and A2. When you sync up the clips with a copy of the master tracks in another timeline, put the master track on A5 and A6, and when you're done syncing, use Clip Enable/Disable (CONTROL-B) to turn it off.

So when you import an angle (clip) into your editing sequence, make sure you also select the master music track. Then you can paste them onto your editing sequence. By copying the master track along with, you make sure that the sync relationship stays intact. The paste will place the redundant master track onto A5 and A6, so you can just delete it. It's better than always replacing the master track, because a disabled A5/A6 audio track will not replace any levels, filters, or render files in the audio.


www.derekmok.com