Audio alignment software?

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi all. . .

I'm currently editing our next feature film ("The Land"), and have been using our Scarlet's camera audio tracks for the edit. It may be too late to do this now via software, but is there a program that will read my 788T's audio files and align them with my camera audio within my Premiere Pro timeline?

Thanks much!

Stephen

 

[Jason beaumont]

plural eyes

 

[David Peterson]

Way too late to do this. But very obviously you should have used (back during the shoot itself) the timecode in your 788T to also be sent into your Scarlet. Meant all the syncing could be done in a blink of the eye.

Lots of options now for TC:

Plural Eyes is now your best bet, or depending on the NLE you are using then it might already be built in.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I'm currently editing our next feature film ("The Land"), and have been using our Scarlet's camera audio tracks for the edit. It may be too late to do this now via software, but is there a program that will read my 788T's audio files and align them with my camera audio within my Premiere Pro timeline?

If the camera files timecode and the audio WAV files timecodes do not match, then I would hire an assistant editor to manually sync them all up with the clap stick. This has been done since the beginning of film sound going back to 1926 or so, and it's not very hard to do. An experienced assistant can sync up at least one take per minute (maybe double that), so in a normal 8 hour day, they could do roughly 1000 takes. Most shoots do maybe 200-300 takes per day, so even if they just did one day's material for a few hours each work day, it wouldn't be that complicated or costly.

The advantage of having an assistant doing it is that they can also prep the editing bins, organize all the footage, create dailies for viewing by the director, and back up all the material, all of which is the drudge kind of stuff that neither the director nor the editor should have to do. A good assistant will pay for themselves many times over, even on small films.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

I think you assume I have a budget Mr. Wielage. At this point, it's all, as they say, "in the can."

I'm going to call Red Giant to see if they think they can save me some time.

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[David Peterson]

As the very first reply said: use PluralEyes!

And as I also pointed out, your NLE (which one are you using??) might already have this built in.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I think you assume I have a budget Mr. Wielage. At this point, it's all, as they say, "in the can."

A good assistant editor will save you time and money. Bear in mind there are college students and all kinds of young people willing to start in an entry-level position like this at a reasonable wage, plus the credit and experience. Heck, I think even an experienced union assistant editor only gets $300 a day. A freelance person might make as little as half that, and to me, that's not a huge budget item.

The other great thing about an assistant is just having a second pair of eyes on the footage to watch out for glitches, bad data, filename issues, bad timecode, and all the other things that can kill otherwise-good shots.

It's amazing to me how often people look for a technological solution to problems like this, when to me the answer really boils down to "hire a guy" (or a woman).

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Adobe has some built i. Synching like plural eyes. I had luck with that, but for future i go with time code (those times i dont record straight in to the camera from sound devices preamp) as its just to cheap to now days.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Adobe has some built i. Synching like plural eyes. I had luck with that, but for future i go with time code (those times i dont record straight in to the camera from sound devices preamp) as its just to cheap to now days.

Don't forget there are Wild Lines, Ambience Tracks, and Wild Tracks that roll when the camera is either not at speed or not rolling at all. You still need a human to sit there and log this material.

I also know of many, many productions that don't roll with any audio at all in the camera, so for that, you do need matching timecode and/or an assistant to sync up the material. I can think of many situations where an automatic solution will not work. What does help a great deal is to have perfect timecode in the camera and perfect timecode on the soundtrack... but there are always situations where it doesn't happen. As one example: I can recall a show where they had set up six cameras to cover an explosion, four of them high-speed. Just to help the editor, I made a point of dropping in the on-set explosion sound just at the moment it ignited (in slo-mo), which was all done by eye. Little things like this help, particularly when they're watching the takes later on.

 

[Jason beaumont]

Plurals is simple, you literally highlight all the footage, and all the sound files and hit sync, and it does creates a new sequence with everything completely sync. Anything it cannot sync it will put to the end. as long as the scratch audio is good it has 100% success rate. its very good software . as another member stated , if its a small project you can simple use the "synchronize" feature in Premiere. All you do is highlight the clip and scratch audio, and the professional audio. Right click on the clip, and select synchronize in the menu, a small box will appear, select audio and hit ok, premiere will then line up your clip, scratch audio, and professional audio together pretty instantly. Then all you have to do delete the scratch audio and your all set.

heres a quick tutorial if you need step by step https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OKiDPjj1Ms

 

[Jaime Vallés]

Premiere can do this already. Select the audio and video clips you want to sync, right click on one of them, and select "create multi-camera source sequence." From there, you select "audio" from the "synchronize point" section, and bingo.