Sync video/Audio footage to Master Audio track

Recently given 3 different camera angle footage with no timecode attached!!!

The recording was of a musical filmed from Left, Right and Centre positions in the theatre. The footage per camera unfortunately has breaks (for tape changes) or overlaps. Each camera footage though does contain audio track but taken from each individual camera mic.

I have produced a Master Mudio track taken from a direct feed from the mixing desk.

I am looking to sync each cameras video footage to the Master Audio and produce my 3 camera angles as 3 new individual files (1 camera angle per file) with the master audio giving me my new timecode. Once this is achieved then a new projct using multi camera edit to produce my final copy using the new timecode against my Master Audio track.

My attempts at syncing have not been successful as being just a frame out at the start is obviously giving me a major difference at the end of the clip. Most clips are 25-30 mins long.

Please do you have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Mark

How much stopping and starting is there on the cameras. Are the stops/starts just for tape changes or were they randomly stopping a starting throughout the show?

There are a couple of ways to get to your destination. Here is one.

You'll have to get individual clips without stops and starts/continuity breaks in them. You can do this by marking complete shots with no breaks in them and exporting at the same compression settings.
Once you have discrete media files for each continuous shot you can build a sequence where everything is synced to your master audio track with a camera on each track. Match your sequence TC to your audio master TC (Sequence Settings= Apple-0 thats a zero not an oh, timeline options tab) and turn on timecode overlays in your canvas.
Select each clip in the sequence and go to Modify>Timecode and type in your master TC in the Timecode window and add a reel name. This is the grunt portion of the job.
At the end you should have all your clips with TC related to your master audio file. You can then create a multiclip sequence (Modify>Multiclip Sequence) and start cutting. Read up on the multiclip sequence settings in the Help file to get a handle on the options. Depending on the specifics you could also build basic multiclips for each section of the show and string them together on the timeline. Depends what your overlap situation is.


You could also stop at the point where you've built a sequence with everything stacked and synced to your audio track and just razorblade your cuts and use clip visibility or track on/off to fake the multiclip. It's what we did before they gave us the multiclip function in AVID and FCP.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Andrew,


Thank you so much for your response, tried digesting the info you have suggested, almost there!!

An example of the footage from a camera is;

act 1 with master audio running from the start of the sequence the first video image kicks in roughly 21 secs into the overture. This clip lasts for 41 mins with an overlap into the second clip which runs for the rest of the half. I intend to save this sequence as camera 1 act 1. For act 2 again with an overture video clip 3 starts before the Master audio and then stops after 20 mins then roughly a 1 minute break before clip 4 starts then another break of 1 min before clip 5 which runs to the end.

The issue I am having is syncing the 5 clips from the camera (with or wothout breaks) with the Master Audio track. Setting a tiemcode after and exporting then producing a multicam edit with all 3 cams I am ok with, it is just the syncing of the clips to master to produce my 3 cameras.

Youre advice earlier was fantastic but if you could help me narrow down this syncing issue i would be forever in your debt.

Again look forward to your response.

Mark,

PS is it adviseable as well that an gaps that are in the video run to fill with a black filler? I will look into where that feature is now

Andrew wrote:

The part about the video starting in sync and then drifting means it's something other than what I thought at first. It's unlikely that your drive set up is causing any drift. If this was the case, stopping and starting playback would allow it to "catch up" and get in sync again. Does that happen? However if any of your drives are more than 90% full it can cause "non-linear" problems so it might be best to try and fix your problem with just your video drive hooked up. How full is it and the sample drives? How full is your system drive?

So video goes slowly out of sync from master audio even though the camera hasn't stopped and started? Which one is faster? Do all the clips, once synced at their start, drift over time against the master audio?

What I'll need to know now is how was everything recorded. What camera? I'll assume PAL format. How was the master audio track recorded? 48/16? 96/24? DAT? Is the audio timecoded? What was the TC generator?

How was everything captured/imported and why does the video not have timecode?

Andrew,

Syncing issue as follows.

FCP set for Dv-Pal all footage shot in PAL format, i do not know the people who filmed it but i do know one of the cameras was a PD170. I was given the footage as .avi files on a hard drive which have 720x576, 25fps, compressor DV-PAL, and a audio rate of 32khz 16-bit linear. We had paid a company to come in and film and edit the footage, after the filming they said they did not have time to edit and provided the footage on the lacie drive previously mentioned without timecode.

The Master Audio was taken from a direct output from the mixing desk onto 48 hard disk recording system at a rate of 44.1/24 and then mixed in Pro Tools. I do not have a timecode against the audio but i could produce one. This master audio is at 48bit

I converted some of the original video footage today to 48bit by exporting to quicktime but still having the same lagging/drifting issue. After 36 mins the video/audio camera footage is lagging 4.3 seconds behind the master audio file although it is sync'd at the start.

The camera footage has not stopped or been edited this is the longest clip i have. All clips seem to drift over a period of time.

This is now really giving me a headache trying to sync these clips.

Any feedback greatly received.

Mark

> The part about the video starting in sync and then drifting means it's something other than
> what I thought at first. It's unlikely that your drive set up is causing any drift. If this was the
> case, stopping and starting playback would allow it to "catch up" and get in sync again.

I don't completely agree with Andrew here. A drive incapable of keeping up with real-time video can either play it back poorly (which would result in playback drift -- stop the playback and restart and sync snaps back together), or the drift could have happened during capture, which would make the drift a permanent part of the clip, which would result in what you see -- sync drifting in an identical way during every playback. Since you didn't do the capture, it's hard to tell if your drive is problematic.

Take the external playback out of the equation and play your clips in QuickTime Player. Do they drift out of sync?

> is it adviseable as well that an gaps that are in the video run to fill with a black filler? I will
> look into where that feature is now

You can, but you could also use markers to establish sync relationships among multiple clips in a timeline. Also, make sure that after you sync up everything, you save that sync timeline in its entirety rather than editing with it. You'd want to preserve the sync work so you can return to it. You can always copy things from it.

To be honest, I think you should have logged and captured the camera angles rather than one big capture. Logging and capturing would allow you to split up the clips from each angle into neat self-contained clips at the first stage. Yes, you'd have to spend more time syncing, but you have to do that anyway when you have cameras starting and stopping. And a five-minute clip is far, far less likely to have sync issues than a 30-minute one...unless your field audio was also drifting (perfectly possible in this case, given the poor specs they chose -- 32kHz? Starting and stopping? NO TIMECODE?).

Use audio spikes to line up sync, scrutinize the sync very carefully, then use Andrew's method and assign common timecodes. Even better, after you do that to the clips, line them up in a timeline and assign the timeline the same timecodes as well.

I think good old-fashioned elbow grease at the syncing stage is the way to go here. It'll be slow and boring, but you'll gain back the time during the editing stage when you have to execute creative decisions that might disappear.


www.derekmok.com

md@mdc Wrote:

> After 36 mins the video/audio camera footage is lagging 4.3 seconds behind the master audio file although it is sync'd at the start.

In the horribly atrocious situation you have found yourself, this is now a Good Thing. Good because you now know something to start with.

You can now start by slowing down your audio by by .2%. Go back to the most original version you have and do the time stretch and other conversions in one step for best quality.

You could think about doubling video frames that will be covered up by other shots. - but that would mean doubling a frame every 20 seconds. So forget I said that.

Now your sync should be close enough to sync each camera to that track with monir adjustments. Make a sequence with master audio and make three exact copies of that. Now you will lay each angle into one of those sequences and work out the sync kinks.

You will find that one or more cameras lose or gain a few frames when places on a sequence with the master audio. Just find convenient places - places you know you won't be using that camera angle - to insert or remove the right number of video frames, spaced evenly through the program.

When you have it really figured out, you will have three synced angles to edit with MultiCam or (what might be easier if it's a one-off job) oin another sequence. You may want to expert / reimport the angles first.

Those people had no idea what they were doing - apparently they found out before turning down the edit. But it should look fine when you're done.