Music Video slo motion audio technical help

[Ashley Stracke]

We've shot music videos in sync with slomotion before, but we always made the tracks ahead of time.

However on our most recent shoot, we just played the track in Quicktime Player at "2x" speed.

I can sync the video up in FCP7, but it always drifts. Is there a simple mathematical solution to this? I have FCP7 and Twixtor, and I also have FCPX which I rarely use but could use it to solve this problem if there's a solution there...

If there's a clever way to get my footage to not drift, or not drift as much, I'd love to hear it.

Everything was shot at 47.95fps, with a timebase of 23.98

I'm wondering if the 2x speed would ever sync up with 47.95fps footage anyway, or if I'll need to speed up the footage a bit.

I'm hoping theres something I can do to make the edit easier, but if I end up just using little pieces that I sync individually, I'll do that!

 

[Ashley Stracke]

the footage seems to work pretty well at 134%, but still drifts. I think because Quicktime Player doesn't have a hard stop on the slider for "2x," so perhaps the person handling playback dragged it to "almost 2x" or something, which is why its drifting?

 

[Marc Wielage]

You really should make the track ahead of time, for reasons like this. Workflow tests are mandatory for non-standard-speed situations. Getting a good playback operator is absolutely crucial.

I don't see a solution except to varispeed the picture or varispeed the sound until you find a speed that doesn't drift. Or have the editor manually drop or add frames during the edit to compensate. If every shot is only a couple of seconds, technically speaking, the shot won't ever last long enough to drift.

 

[Ashley Stracke]

Thanks but I know all of this already and it's in my above posts. We always make tracks ahead of time but got slammed on this particular gig. I found 134% to work best to sync it to the Quicktime Player 7's dodgy "2x" setting. Was hoping other people would share their quicktime player experiences or something. Every shot is only a couple seconds in the music video so it will be fine, just have to re-sync every 20 seconds.

You really should make the track ahead of time, for reasons like this. Workflow tests are mandatory for non-standard-speed situations. Getting a good playback operator is absolutely crucial.

I don't see a solution except to varispeed the picture or varispeed the sound until you find a speed that doesn't drift. Or have the editor manually drop or add frames during the edit to compensate. If every shot is only a couple of seconds, technically speaking, the shot won't ever last long enough to drift.

 

[Paramon Ivanovich]

he he, good thing it's not a talking head,
the only thing i can think of is to sync each cut separately, i did the same mistake once, and man it's a pain

 

[Marc Wielage]

Every shot is only a couple seconds in the music video so it will be fine, just have to re-sync every 20 seconds.

Yep, that was also my suggestion as well. Having worked on about 300 music videos in my life, I can tell you that's pretty standard procedure.

The only time this can get hairy is if you run into a long take, which I have seen before. Be warned that there are visual artifacts when you varispeed at odd numbers (like 134%). Double or triple is not so bad, but there will be horizontal motion issues (like judder) here and there.

I have never heard of anybody trying to playback a QuickTime on set for music playback, so that's a new one on me.