Wacked audio - drifting and cut off, any advice?

I shot a band's demo reel for weddings, etc.

I shot on an HVX 200 and when I imported it into FCP:

1. The sound cuts out after 3 seconds and goes silent. But what I really care more about is:

2. When I try to align/lip sync the singer singing her song to the CD music they gave me, it's off. It starts out being in sync then drifts about 5 seconds later.

I have tried the following solutions and have been unsuccessful:

1. Changing the bit rate to 44.1, 48 and 96
2. Changing the depth to 16 and 24
3. Changed the speed of the clip to 97%, 98%, 99% and 101%

...and nothing has worked. Please advise.

Thank you for your help.

FCP 7.0.2, 10.6.4, 2 x 2.66 ghz processor dual core intel, 10 gb ram

> 1. Changing the bit rate to 44.1, 48 and 96

First of all, that's not the bit rate, that's the sample rate.

Secondly, you need to check the audio settings on your camera. Was it set to 48kHz? 44.1kHz? I'm not even sure the HVX200 has a 32kHz setting, but lots of consumer cameras do, and 48kHz is the one you want.

A CD is, unfortunately, 44.1kHz. Can't go any higher. But a mismatch of 44.1kHz vs. 48kHz should not result in drift as soon as five seconds into the deal.

In my view, you should always retime the audio to fit video, not the other way around. Audio is much more malleable and forgiving.


www.derekmok.com

Also, did the band sing along to the CD, or just sing their song? The likelihood of them getting the speed exactly right without a guide track is very small.

Jude Cotter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Also, did the band sing along to the CD, or just
> sing their song? The likelihood of them getting
> the speed exactly right without a guide track is
> very small.

Good catch, Jude!

I was wondering the same thing...



-Dave

Thanks for the input. It's definitely not the CD music. Audio is the same on what was recorded on stage and their CD. Same pitch, etc.

1. I have experimented with all rates and been unsuccessful.
2. When I play back audio, audio is off when watching the raw files.
3. I also had audio drop outs on raw files after a minute or two
4. It starts drifting after 3 seconds

I have tried speeding up both the video footage and the audio cd and had no success.

I tried compressing the audio using Compressor into 44.1 and dvc pro 720/60 and 48 khz and still had the same problem.

Any suggestions on what I can do to change the video?

Well barring finding out why, you could always cut around it. Unless you need to leave video up for a minute or more, you should be fine. Just synch the sub three or four second cuts to the soundtrack you're using.

Why did the sound cut out?

So it turns out the lip-syncing works if I slow the footage down at 112%, while I don't personally like the look, the client is okay with it, so weird to confirm the video around the audio but the gig is done and I'm on to the next project. However, does any HVX user out there have any idea why, when imported to FCP, it would play audio for 20 seconds at the beginning of each clip and then have an audio drop out and go silent the rest of the clip? When I play it back on the camera, there is no sound recording at all.

Is this because the camera won't record audio in true 720p frame rate? Never had this issue before and want to avoid it. Maybe it's a sign to trade in the HVX and get a 7d. Thank you.

It's something else. What format did you shoot to? Did you properly remove (or not remove) duplicate frames on import?



www.strypesinpost.com

Its difficult to guess about this strange problem.

This is a known FCP bug. I've had it happen a few times over the past years quite suddenly in the middle of a job with no apparent reason. Does this describe it:

You drop the audio you want to use onto your sequence with all the proper settings, but the longer the audio track plays, the more it drifts out of synch to video.


If so, try this.

1. Playout your video to a self-contained Quicktime at whatever settings you want it to be.

2. Start a new project. Bring in your Video playout and drop it in the timeline. Let FCP do the settings for you when it asks.

3. Bring in your audio and drop it into the sequence. Play back.

That do it?

When you have an audio glitch like that...audio cutting out or going off sync...you need to go into the L&T preferences, uncheck REMOVE PULLDOWN, and re-import the footage.


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