Help - editing after synching the audio

[Hurcan Yilmazer]

Hi
Its the first time i have to edit with external audio in a such big project. And im very confused.
I have red footage with scratch audio and 4 separete external audio files for every clip. So any suggestions for the workflow for editing these on premiere in a pc?

I was thinking to put all the footage in one sequence and synch the audio one by one and edit the footage by choosing the footage with the best sound. But this way i have to choose the footage from a timeline and it will be hard to go back and forth since there are hundereds of clips. And when i have to put the clips on top of each other i will have to deal with 12 channels of audio.

So im ttying to find the proper way to do this? Any suggestions?

Best regards

 

[Eric Santiago]

Chances are not all channels were used.

You can check RCXPro to see each channel or just import into Premiere/FCPX/Avid and it should state if there are four used channels.

What was the recording setup for audio?

 

[Hurcan Yilmazer]

Dragon as a scratch sound and zoom h6 as an external recorder 1 boom and 3 sennheiser lavelier mics connected.

 

[Eric Santiago]

I take it you dont have TimeCode so you'll have to sync it in Premiere.

I would suggest FCPX on Mac since its so fast and keeps you in R3D world.

Im stuck at Premiere CC so Id have to check what sync options are like.

There is Plural Eyes but that doesnt work with RED files to date.

You'd have to convert your R3Ds to some form of QuickTime or whatever format you are working with.

 

[Zhibo Lai]

I sync with Epic scratch audio in Premiere all the time. The new updates in CC for sync sound has made workflow much better than before. It is time consuming though, but has been working well for me:

1. select your Red clip with scratch audio
2. shift select your good audio clip (so both audio and video clips are now selected)
3. right-click for pop-up menu and select merge audio and use all tracks by waveform
4. this will create a new merge clips with Red video and all the audio tracks from your good audio
5. I move this new merged clip into a new folder label SYNC FOOTAGE. this way I know what's been synced or not.
6. now you have to double check the merged clip to see if Adobe got the correct sync point. It's been about 85% correct for me, if not, then you gotta do it manually
7. Repeat steps 1-6 for all clips.
8. Once all done, you just pick clips from your SYNC FOOTAGE folder like normal and insert into your timeline as you'd normally would. All the synced audio clips will drop in its proper place.
in previous versions it would come in as a nested clip, which was a pain if you need to slide the audio or disable tracks, or color grade your original R3D RAW file. now, problem solved. works like a charm.

 

[Hurcan Yilmazer]

Eric and Zhibo thanks for your helpfull instructions. I guess i will be going with the premeiere synching method. But will give pluraleyes a try just to understand that workflow also.

Best regards
Hurcan

 

[Eric Santiago]

Eric and Zhibo thanks for your helpfull instructions. I guess i will be going with the premeiere synching method. But will give pluraleyes a try just to understand that workflow also.

Best regards
Hurcan

Would be nice if PluraEyes can support R3Ds.

For now, FCPX and Premiere are the only ones that will stay native throughout that thankless process.

I say that cause Im in the middle of syncing a short with no scratch audio from camera

 

[Tom Visser]

You should make some notes to those responsible for the production, how important it is to utilize people who utilize timecode equipped sound recorders. It may be cheap to hire / buy a Zoom for production, but your going to pay for it in post.

 

[Mike P.]

Or at least send reference audio... Honestly the process (in FCPX anyway) is not difficult and it's quite fast (and background tasked for the most part). The problem is that it can get pretty cluttered, as there is essentially a second set of linked clips in your media pool.

There's really no excuse not to have a scratch track or reference track... Something tells me someone messed up on the short Eric is working on, and were basically like, "oh well, they did it off the clapboard for 100 years; it is (*was*) an industry standard."

 

[Eric Santiago]

I for one have been having a ton of fun in FCPX as far as syncing clips.

I might come up with a tutorial soon on this since its my second crack at it first one was a full feature with over 800 clips (this had a scratch at least).

Im not gonna lay blame other than you get what you didnt pay for

The beauty of FCPX is the 1/80th sub-frame editing option for sound.

Sure beats Avids 1/4 perf option.

If anyone cares to hear my steps, just PM me or post here and I'll start writing this stuff down

 

[Brian Merlen]

if you haven't cut already id say just hire an AE to sync it BEFORE CUTTING...plural eyes works but takes forever to process (using try really hard). offline online workflows can help tho, in general i think too much emphasis on RU is to cutting r3d raw, which makes sense if your not going to conform, but any offline online workflow conforms...and they don't need rocket x in their bay to get a rough edit either on the dnxhd36 lol!!!...hell resolve lite is free and syncs on auto, theres no time code huh? time code would of made this a one step fix in both Avid or Resolve lite! those bastards on set lol! id emphasize the one step automatic fix, post is going to lose a lot of hours from that screw up! ps I'm available and great at syncing..

 

[Mike P.]

The only reason I don't like converting is because it essentially doubles your data/storage requirements, and doesn't give you any benefits other than speed. And with a decent computer and contemporary NLE (FCPX, but Premiere even more so) you can use the .r3d raw files which are essentially the same filesize as 1080p proxies.

Any equally valid question is why *don't* you recommend using the r3ds? If your only reason is "speed", that's not a very good one since r3d files are so easy to cut realtime nowadays. What sort of online/offline/conforming do you need to do when you're workflow is basically round-tripping using the .r3ds?

 

[Marc Wielage]

Any equally valid question is why *don't* you recommend using the r3ds? If your only reason is "speed", that's not a very good one since r3d files are so easy to cut realtime nowadays. What sort of online/offline/conforming do you need to do when you're workflow is basically round-tripping using the .r3ds?

I often point out that two of the biggest filmmakers in the world using Red -- Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh -- both choose to convert all their Red material to lower-res files for editing, then only go back to the original camera files for conforming at the very end of the process. Granted, both are doing lots of visual effects, but I think there are still a lot of advantages in lightening the burden on the editing computer by not forcing it to debayer and​ play images in real time.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I often point out that two of the biggest filmmakers in the world using Red -- Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh -- both choose to convert all their Red material to lower-res files for editing, then only go back to the original camera files for conforming at the very end of the process. Granted, both are doing lots of visual effects, but I think there are still a lot of advantages in lightening the burden on the editing computer by not forcing it to debayer and​ play images in real time.

Those guys shoot quite a bit more material than the average reduser... For short films and even longer formats without too much material r3d's work great We do it all the time. But there is a point where the r3d's start creating lag. I'm guessing it's partly due to the file pointing on any server gets to slow if the search involves two many files and folders, r3d's are split in folders and also sub files. So a huge amount of r3d's makes the file structure more complex to reach into than a file structure with proressfiles. That together with the bigger file sizes can make it a bit problematic at times. But the reason why peter use proxies is one 3D/stereo and two the use of avid and three the amount of vfx. His material go trough a big pipe before they even get to editing which is far bigger than what most use. Stevens films I think could be cut native but then he's editor needs to step away from avid which I think is not happening too quickly. And for those features you got quite a staff both for DIT purposes and editor assistants then syncing and making proxies is quite a small task compared to all the logging they do.

 

[Mike P.]

Thanks for your input Marc. I do understand/appreciate using easier-to-use files solely for editorial. I was honestly just a little concerned that there was some other reason I wasn't considering.

I never doubted that studio pictures use proxies, but I also get the impression they have a lot of money to throw around to do so and ultimately rely on outsourcing files for various aspect of the picture (colour, vfx, compositing, etc. all done by different houses). When all of those aspects are done in-house and controlled by the same (small) group of people, I think (hope?) it becomes less necessary to have the more universal compatibility of OpenEXR/TIFF/DPX/prores/DnxHD/etc.

I also wouldn't be surprised if -- and this is totally anecdotal and unsubstantiated by anything -- both PJ and SS just go with the flow in terms of the editorial files. If their editorial dept says "we're using proxies", I don't think the directors would be like, "you don't need to, so use the raws or your fired." Chances are the Assistant Editor or DIT does all the transcodes and sound syncing stuff before the editor/director even has a say or sees the footage. Personally, if that stuff happened to all my footage behind the scenes without requiring my input (proxy module?), I wouldn't refuse to use the properly synced and balanced proxies. The reality is I don't, and if I can save HDD space and transcode time, and it doesn't really affect my workflow, I'm not going to needlessly go through a transcode/conform process if I don't need to.

EDIT: Beaten by Bjorn...

 

[Marc Wielage]

I never doubted that studio pictures use proxies, but I also get the impression they have a lot of money to throw around to do so and ultimately rely on outsourcing files for various aspect of the picture (colour, vfx, compositing, etc. all done by different houses). When all of those aspects are done in-house and controlled by the same (small) group of people, I think (hope?) it becomes less necessary to have the more universal compatibility of OpenEXR/TIFF/DPX/prores/DnxHD/etc.

Naw, it's actually cheaper to edit this way, because you can have three or four simultaneous editing stations going on dealing with multiple versions of the movie and different scenes, all networked. And it's much more affordable than you might think, particularly when you start considering the pipeline, I/O, backups, and so on. I know of quite a few recent indie films that had maybe 50 visual effects in the entire project that were still edited using proxies. They did this mainly so that people could edit on laptops and cheap computers at other locations without having to worry about the immense overhead of dragging along massive files. Nobody wants to have to drag along 10TB or 20TB of files every time the project needs to be re-edited or changed.

I think people should use uncompressed (or at least 444) files at the very end of the conforming process, but it's just not necessary when you're just trying to go through shots and pick the best ones for artistic and performance reasons. And as far as audio goes, if the audio timecode matches the camera timecode, you can automatically sync up in the editing timeline in seconds, even for large amounts of material. Literally, you can sync up 4 hours of material in about 20 minutes in Avid or Premiere or FCP. To me, RedCine-X Pro is just a piece of software to temporarily view footage and create dailies. You still need to organize the footage in bins, create edit lists to share the material with other departments (like graphics, VFX, sound, and color), and all the other details that are part of everyday workflow.

 

[Brian Merlen]

well both Ppro and FCPX do create proxies (or can if you seq settings are different then the source material)...Avid now does background rendering too. Just cuz its happening in the background doesn't necessarily mean its cutting it native (tho they all can cut natively).

I set up an SNS Evo for a little company I freelance with. We have 5 Z400 HPs (bare bones) all cutting at once, sharing bins AND projects! The cheapest SNS Evo model is only like 7 grand dude! So you can have a little post house set up with obsolete computers, and cut 4k on it off a friggin Cat5E ethernet cable!!!

So I think smaller operations might do things differently sometimes, but proxies can help synergy come to a project... have it cut by many at once... I was very impressed with the operation I set up with SNS, it works great and considering these machines are dated and not being upgraded at all (Ive begged for SSDs for years now lol)...It does the trick man...

Larger places have a lot of overhead...Proxies exist for a logical and well thought out reason, and if a conform is done properly, its irrelevant that the movie needs 10 formats to get SFX, GFX, rough cut, final cut, grading, on set management, dailies, syncing, etc...


I always used to push the cut native party line, but just do a proper conform...Resolve for instance I can cut the whole thing and grade it in a 1080 timeline setting, set it to 6k when I have it finalized, and then kick it out to 4k or w/e... there are many apps doing different things to use proxies, but in all cases it makes stuff faster and makes sense...besides if you got a rocket x, and your a couch editor (i do tons of it, love it, no judgements here) I think in almost all cases some degrees of proxies makes sense? idk man too many workflows these days lmfao, they are like snowflakes!

 

[Eric Santiago]

Just wanted to add here that FCPX Audio SubFrame Editing is amazing.

Being able to nudge 1/80th of a frame is sick

Wanted to add that a batch of Synchronized Clips came up one frame short.

Not hard to fix with the SubFrame but need to submit a bug report to Apple on this one.

Below is a sample of the frame hi-light and if you can picture nudging that audio track in 1/80th increments of that hi-lighted area:

 

[Marc Wielage]

wSo I think smaller operations might do things differently sometimes, but proxies can help synergy come to a project... have it cut by many at once... I was very impressed with the operation I set up with SNS, it works great and considering these machines are dated and not being upgraded at all (Ive begged for SSDs for years now lol)...It does the trick man... Larger places have a lot of overhead...Proxies exist for a logical and well thought out reason, and if a conform is done properly, its irrelevant that the movie needs 10 formats to get SFX, GFX, rough cut, final cut, grading, on set management, dailies, syncing, etc...

I think that makes total sense, Brian.

Just wanted to add here that FCPX Audio SubFrame Editing is amazing. Being able to nudge 1/80th of a frame is sick

You can edit down to the sample level in Pro Tools (1/48,000th of a second), which is a program designed solely to edit, mix, and process sound. Trying to cut sound in a picture editor like FCPX is kind of like using an axe to dice up cheese: I guess you could do it, but what you really need is a very small knife capable of really subtle work. There's a reason why every major film and TV series use Pro Tools to cut, process, and mix their soundtracks -- and that goes for dialogue, FX, and music.

Note that Pro Tools can be inexpensive and very fast to use, so it's not a question of time or money. FCP can do certain things adequately, but I wouldn't want to mix or color-correct a project on it.

 

[Eric Santiago]

You can edit down to the sample level in Pro Tools (1/48,000th of a second), which is a program designed solely to edit, mix, and process sound. Trying to cut sound in a picture editor like FCPX is kind of like using an axe to dice up cheese: I guess you could do it, but what you really need is a very small knife capable of really subtle work. There's a reason why every major film and TV series use Pro Tools to cut, process, and mix their soundtracks -- and that goes for dialogue, FX, and music.

Note that Pro Tools can be inexpensive and very fast to use, so it's not a question of time or money. FCP can do certain things adequately, but I wouldn't want to mix or color-correct a project on it.

Agree, and as a musician and a Pro tools user (for over 10 years) I would have loved it if I can bring R3Ds into Pro Tools but in this case its overkill.

I'm just syncing slate to sound due to non-scratch track on R3D clips.

I dont agree that FCPX is like an axe to dice up cheese to some degree.

Sure we can all just use these amazing tools, but at this point in my workflow, there is no R3D compliant audio sub-frame option other than FCPX.