Sync & Drift for Digital Audio Recorders

[Roger Shore]

Originally Posted by Ken Marsley

Converting 44.1kHz to 48kHz after the fact will do nothing for your sync issues.

No, but if your externally recorded audio is sampled at 44.1KHz, and you are intending to try and both 'sync' and mix this audio with your camera audio (which will already be 48KHz sampled), then it's useful to sample convert, to the same sample rate as the camera audio, for mixing on the NLE timeline.
Using a good quality sample rate conversion should not change the duration of the track at all.

I think there may be an element of 'cross purposes' in this thread. Clearly, there is no substitute for doing the whole thing correctly in the first palce, but in some cases this option is not available.

My procedure you linked to in post #11 was originally written for those wedding videographers who were having problems using radio mics, and needed something small to slip into the groom or celebrant's pocket, to be able to close mic the details of the vows etc.
At the time, the little Olympus WS200S (which has a reasonable specifiaction for the price) offered a useful cheap solution to the problem, but usually required 'syncing' the audio to the camera audio, in post. At that time, some people were still using minidisc recorders as well, and of course the same problem arose.

Because the actual wedding ceremony 'take' could often be quite long, any sync problems could be significant. Some people preferred to cut everything up into small sections, and resync bit by bit. My procedure was an attempt to suggest a way of syncing the whole of a long take, in one go.

Obviously there are limitations - particularly, as Steve points out, where the externally recorded audio is in some compressed format - but I felt the procedure might offer a reasonable chance of achieving some improvement.
As it used free programs, it was probably worth a try, I felt!

At the end of the day though, there is of course no substitute for the 'real thing'.
Were that not true, why would anyone bother to pay the extra cash required for pro kit?! :-)

[Ty Ford]

Originally Posted by Ben Moore

What is the best way to deal with drift using digital audio recorders? I have a 20min clip from a Olympus DS-40 and it will not stay in sync with the audio from the camera (VX-2100). I converted the file to 48k 16bit. and played with the speed of the clip but so far no luck. Best thing I can think of is to chop it up every couple minutes and resync. What is everybody else doing on this issue. (Using Premiere Pro CS3)
Thanks
Ben

Ben,

Were you shooting HDV in the VX-2100? If so, that's MPEG-1 audio. Did you con vert it when you brought it into the editing system?

You're probably hosed and will have to do the periodic edit, but that's better thn being totally hosed.

I feel your pain.

Ty Ford