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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Automatically Sync dual system sound

@shooter. Currently it's for matching audio and video. It has no application to multicam. What would you want an app to do with multicam? Automatically make multiclips?

@alex It absolutely requires the camera and sound department to keep on top of sync. As does every method that uses matching TC. (Mutlicam, Avid Autosync et al).
Clips that can't find a match are listed for review.
There is no preview - that's simply not possible within Apple's XML Structure. However it's non-destructive so you can look at the results without changing anything.
As I posted earlier in the thread, we don't currently offer a demo version, but we do offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. We are considering whether we can do a limited clip version as a demo so that might be coming up shortly. (The problem with a regular demo is that you could just use the demo on the day you did your synching and we'd have no sale. :) ) If we do a demo it will be limited to the first 10 or so video clips that it encounters in Bins, or the first 10 audio clips encountered in a Sequence.

Philip
 
Philip Hodgetts said:
(The problem with a regular demo is that you could just use the demo on the day you did your synching and we'd have no sale. :) ) If we do a demo it will be limited to the first 10 or so video clips that it encounters in Bins, or the first 10 audio clips encountered in a Sequence.

Philip
Click to expand...

Of Course I understand, Its hard to convince Producers or Post Sup. thats All... I would love a Demo.

So it does give a read out of Clips that dont match? Does it also keep TC and Clip name, blah blah, and Save it into a Text File or Format that can be copied and pasted? Thats Very helpful, in earlier Builds of The RED it was hard to keep Camera Jammed(w/o Clock-it), and It didnt send TC out the LeMO. So there were occasional mistakes on the first clip of a card or Drive.
 
Alex,
Demo is being worked on as a clip-limited demo.

Currently it gives a dialog of clips that don't match. I'll add the text file readout as a feature request for a future version. We aimed for a simple product that could actually ship :) but are happy to consider feature requests (working on those that come up more regularly first). In fact we're actively considering feature requests. This was going to be a whole lot simple (basically just reproducing the Avid functionality) but grew because of beta tester feature requests.

Like FCP, the linked clip (from a pre-editorial synch up) has the original video clip name (we add "synchronized" to the name to distinguish it from the original source clip) and the TC of both video and audio is in the clip information. (Just like doing a sync'd done in FCP.)

Philip
 
Philip Hodgetts said:
Absolutely! Avid did the first part of what Sync-N-Link can do 15 years ago. We set out to provide the same functionality for FCP users. However, we went much further than Avid, by allowing you to edit first with camera audio and *then* replace camera audio with your multi-track audio. AFAIK you can't do that with Avid. it's always a game of leapfrog :)
Click to expand...

Yes, it is. And I didn't intend to minimize the usefulness of your contributions. I just like to point some of these things out for the "why do high end features and television programs use Avid" crowd. Your software is a very welcome addition. Good job.
 
Alex,

If you're still reading the thread. Over the weekend Greg implemented export of the text report of non-matching clips found, and is confident he can make a clip-limited version. (It's complicated for Sequences particularly). He could have that done before Christmas. If you want to send me a PM about what else you'd like in the report, we can explore implementing it. (Or post it here and others can comment on what they'd like as well.) We'll try, but no guarantees. :)

Philip
 
Philip Hodgetts said:
Absolutely! Avid did the first part of what Sync-N-Link can do 15 years ago. We set out to provide the same functionality for FCP users. However, we went much further than Avid, by allowing you to edit first with camera audio and *then* replace camera audio with your multi-track audio. AFAIK you can't do that with Avid. it's always a game of leapfrog :)

philip
Click to expand...


Pro Tools does all the links back to the ISO tracks in source BWF file when it is needed by the sound editor. In Media Composer I bring in the multitrack BWF, subclip the mix, AutoSync from the mix and the V clip. When I need to find the source because I want an ISO, I do a matchframe back to the source.


Michael
 
sven, nothing planned for PPro - yet. We have plans to take another of our applications to PPro so logically, once we get into that project it should open the way for us to port over Sync-N-Link. Given that we're a small company with a lot to do, it may not be quick. Sorry.

Philip
 
spherico said:
Hi all,

As Mark and Philip mentioned my sequenceLiner - this is an easy way to line up both video and audio from a days production. It also allows to view or correct tc offsets of the different devices.

And yes Philip we are a bit competing with the auto-sync. I do have an app which is running fine here on some productions since some month, but I can't sell it till next year because I made a stupid contract. So Philip does have the better cards :)

The thing with dual sound is a bit more complicated than most people think.
First of all any audio or video recorded must somehow have the same timecode, that can be achieved by using a camera which supports free run TC (TOD), the audio HDR will do that anyway. Also the famous LockIt cam help there. One thing during the days production - when using free run tc - never shut down any of those devices.

It also depends heavily upon AV, V, A data came into Final Cut.
In case you captured AV linked files you can't get rid of the cam audio as it is still in the captured file and Final Cut will always keep that in mind - that might lead to some trouble at a later state of the project.
Also capturing AV data from the camera to different files is not such a big help as the referenced mov file still refers to the external audio - and Final Cut keeps that in mind as well.
So the save way would be to capture/transfer 2 times - one time for video, one time for audio. This is not a nice option, but save.

Another thing is to organize things within Final Cut. As video or audio may be transcoded the date is not reliable when tc is compared - there can be the same tc on any day. So keep your projects as clean as possible.

Doing sync and and replace cam audio with external audio or mix those does work fine within Final Cut - no problem as long everything stays online. If you need for ever reason to reconnect you'll get a problem as Final Cut sees the camera files with their original audio plus the external audio - and here you got a problem.

It gets even a bit more more complicated when you want to do multiclips. With multiclips and external audio you do have some options.

The easy one, which never happens - except you do by hand and make a batch export, is that all audio and video do have the same length and timecode . Then you can sync by Timecode or In. This works fine and reliable in any case.

Second option, if video tc matches, is to make subclips. But subclips are not really one of the strong features of Final Cut and will fail if you got into the offline-online trap.

Next is to match all clips included to a common in and out and then create a multiclip using the In option - this will work until you got into the offline-online trap.

So conclusion of this is: do what Mark said. Export all your clips as movies before you start the real edit - helps to sleep better and saves you lot of time in case something happens.

Just some thoughts
Andreas
Click to expand...

Couple of questions....

1. How do you best go about this export as self contained QTs with this new synced audio?

2. Is there not a big quality loss in the picture quality as you are now re-compressing to QT a clip that was just compressed out of .r3d-land JUST before the syncing took place?

I liked Mark's idea about having this software do this automatically if it could be an option.

Yet again, another feature that would be remarkable in a REDCine PRO application, available in a dream-world for $1,000. The be-all-and-end-all of processing apps. Should be REDCine. Pro. Please. RED?
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
Several nasty bugs there - the big one is that the trim window will often fail to work correctly.
Click to expand...

We had no problems with merged clips on a recent longform; however I don't think the editor uses the Trim window - are there any other things to be aware of?
 
Merged clips in FCP

Merged clips in FCP

Mark L. Pederson said:
here's an example of a bug/issue - which we have also hit several time when editing with linked files -

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8146195

We've seen other bugs cutting in FCP with linked/merged clips - typically things start to go bad when the project is larger - like a feature.
Click to expand...
As far as I understand, most of the issues with merged clips in FCP seem to appear if/when you ever have to reconnect them.

Here is what I have seen happen just recently on a RED project with merged clips in FCP 6.0.6.

1. The relationship between merged clips in the timeline and their master clips in the Browser is broken
2. Match frame on merged clips in the timeline only loads video in the Viewer
3. Trim Edit Window skips multiple frames (sometimes seconds) the first time you hit next/previous frame key (just like described in the Apple Discussions thread mentioned by Mark)

Here are some threads from Apple Discussions and Creative COW.

Moving project breaks merged clips...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2025366

merged clips won't reconnect
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=556664

Trim Edit Window Issues
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=249961

Bizarre merged clips playback problem in TRIM mode - RED TO QT422HQ workflow
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1042516

Multiclips created from merged clip
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1029657

merged clip after xml export problem
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1067624

As you have already mentioned Mark. Merged clips in FCP can easily become the "KISS OF DEATH" for long-form projects. Sad, but true.

I disscussed this briefly with Scott Simmons on twitter. I guess the only way to avoid problems with merged clips in FCP is to either never media manage projects containing merged clips in any way, or as Mark suggests, to make self contained clips of all the merged clips before editing.

If anybody finds a workaround or fix for projects having problems with merged clips, please share. The only way I have found to really fixes these issues, is to recreate the merged clips.

I wonder if FCP 7 have any improvements for working with merged clips. If the problems are already there in a FCP 6.0.x project, opening it in FCP 7 obviously fixes nothing. They way things are now, I would really hesitate to start editing with merged clips in large FCP projects. Scary as hell.

Time to give some feedback: http://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

Sync-N-Link looks like a huge time-saver though. Cool product! Now we just need Apple to really fix the issues with merged clips in FCP, and make the media manager handle both merged clips and multi-clips reliably :smiley:

What is the best workflow for dual system sound in FCP? Use FCP auxTC reader to merge BWF stereo mixdown with video, and then use Sync-N-Link in the end to swap in the multi-track audio after picture lock?
 
Thought I should chime in again and tell you all how it worked out in the end. After much testing back and forth, the editor on the project found a solution that seems to work.

This requires that you have your original logging projects with all the merged clips in a healthy state. Make sure you also make a backup of your project files before attempting to fix anything.

1. Open your logging project and your damaged editing project

2. Copy the contents of your sequence(s) from the editing project and make a new sequence in your logging project

3. Paste the contents you copied into the new sequence and choose "Use Existing" when you get a question about master clips.

I can not guarantee this solution will work for your project, but it seems to have fixed it this time.
 
I know this thread is getting old, but I have one more quick note about merged clips.

These strange bugs mentioned above seem to appear when the audio timecode begins before the video timecode inside a merged clip. Is this the case for others too?
 
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