Recording straight to Pro Tools

[Bruce Guido]

Hi all,

I'm soon going to shoot and edit a short here soon with the Red, and the owner of the Red doesn't have the new audio board so we needed to find an alternative audio recorder.

Since this is super low budget, we're going to use a mixer with the boom (and occasionally some lavs) and record straight to Pro Tools on a laptop. We're going to have a mic mounted on the camera that's going to record the reference audio feed and then sync the wav files created in Pro Tools in FCP.

So my question is, will I have any trouble syncing the audio files in post? Will there be any drifting or lagging with the audio? Of course at the beginning of each take we'll use a clapper for synching, but as I worry and am not able to test this process, I was wondering if this workflow will work. I'm having nightmares that we record great audio and video, but when I try to sync the 2 there's lag.

Also, when I sync the audio in FCP, what is the best way to link the video to the audio so when I'm cutting and dragging footage I don't have to select both the video and audio clips?

Thanks!

 

[Dylan Cusson]

I recently went through almost exactly the same scenario (only difference is that we didn't have a clapper, so syncing was slightly more difficult).

Overall, you shouldn't have any problems syncing the audio to the video, and (at least in my experience) there was no drifting or lagging.
Although, depending on your laptop, Pro Tools can prove to be a bit troublesome if your computer isn't fully up to speed. On my older computer, Pro Tools would intermittently stop recording due to hardware buffer issues; so, if the laptop being used is a bit older, make sure to optimize your settings as much as you can so as to avoid any buffer issues or errors that would otherwise ruin the take.

As for Final Cut, once you get the audio synced properly, you can link the files together (cmd+L). Just make sure you have Linked Selection on (shift+L) and the audio and video will move and cut together.

Hope that answers your questions, if you need any more help just let me know and I'll do my best to walk you through the process.

Good luck on the shoot!

 

[Bruce Guido]

Thank you! That was the perfect response I was looking for.

 

[David Rasberry]

I recently bought a MOTU UltraLiteMK3 firewire audio interface, primarily for acoustic analysis work, but also as a double system recording interface for Scarlet down the road. Absolute pristine audio performance, but the main reason I selected it over several other options is that is has full linear time code support. It can act as clock source or genlock to a camera. You can jam sync it to the camera then disconnect and let it free run if you don't want to be tethered.