Advice on syncing audio to video on TV show

[Lief Stevens]

I am working on a TV show and am doing location sound and post-production. It has a late show format with an interview, sketches, and a musical guest. It is recorded in front of a studio audience. It’s a two camera shoot. I am using a Mackie Onyx 1640 with firewire card and recording into Sonar 7 on a laptop. I typically use around 12 tracks. I am also sending audio to one of the cameras. We are slating at the beginning and end of each section.

I am trying to figure out what would be the best way to sync the audio to video. The video editor is on Mac and uses Final Cut. I am on PC and have Sonar and Vegas. I don’t have any experience with Final Cut and am not really sure how well it handles audio. I am thinking I should give video editor an OMF with all tracks and let him line it up to the slates. Then have him give me an OMF once he is done editing. After I am done editing I would export a stereo wav file for him to use when he renders the final version. Is this the best way to do this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Steve House]

What cameras are you using - do they support genlock and timecode I/O?

[Lief Stevens]

I think they are using Canon XL2's and there are actually 3 of them. I doubt they have genlock and timecode I/O but could be wrong. The Mackie doesn't have any way of receiving timecode. I do have a RME Fireface that does but I would prefer to use the Mackie. I think they run the video non stop and are syncing with the slate.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Lief Stevens

I think they are using Canon XL2's and there are actually 3 of them. I doubt they have genlock and timecode I/O but could be wrong. The Mackie doesn't have any way of receiving timecode. I do have a RME Fireface that does but I would prefer to use the Mackie. I think they run the video non stop and are syncing with the slate.

Wasn't thinking so much of timecode as wordclock. If your takes are long'ish there can be drift and what starts out in sync gradually drifts off as time progresses. The way the networks do it is they have a common 'house clock' that provides a master sync signal. This is fed to all the cameras at their genlock inputs and to digital audio devices as wordclock. That way all of their sample clocks are locked to a common master and what starts in sync stays in sync. But without genlock on the cameras and wordclock on the Mackie it doesn't look like that's in the cards for you.