I use fcp 3 and when i capture my audio is out of sync? Any ideas?

Don't capture to the system drive. Use a fast external drive, FireWire not USB. Make sure you have enough spare room on the drive, a packed and fragmented drive won't capture as well even if it has enough space. Make sure you are capturing the audio with the same khz as the capture codec, 32000 or 48000. Check to see if you are capturing over a scene break or if there is drop-out on the tape. All of these things can cause a problem.

Could it be the mic i'm using?
A wired lapel on about a 20' xlr?

Not really possible. See if your on-camera mike has the same problem. I think it's related to the capture process. Do all tapes capture badly?

I checked the capture just using the on camera mic and there still out of sync? any ideas?

Do the files play out of sync in QuickTime Player?

Please tell us you system setup, computer, drives, etc.

I had the same problem with FCP before.
The solution for me was to trash the preferences and restart FCP.

Cleared the sync issues up right away.

I have found when FCP starts to act wonky, a simple preference trashing solves the problem.

BTW, the captured audio was not out of sync in the trimmer or while played in QuickTime, it only played out of sync on the FCP timeline.
But trashing the preferences fixed the problem.

I played it in quicktime and it was out of sync there as well.
Setup:
Mac g3 9.2.2
fcp 3
Calvary 1 TB External firewire
Sony PD 170

i did some more testing today.
I can capture a live video signal from a camera (not off a tape) and the audio is in sync but when i put a tape in the same camera to capture its way out of sync.

Might be the tape deck in the camera although I've never heard of this before. Has it ever been dropped?

I tried capturing from tape on a canon hv20 and it had the same affect out of sync.

I dont have anymore ideas on whats wrong its off by several seconds?

I played it in quicktime and it was out of sync there as well.
Setup:
Mac g3 9.2.2
fcp 3
Calvary 1 TB External firewire
Sony PD 170Has it ever worked with the audio properly synchronised? No disrespect but that is a very old & slow system. My iMac G3s are just very large novelty paperweights now.

Truth be told, almost any old system can capture a 25Mb/s stream -- I have an ancient (ten years old!) PC that I use to capture, then transfer to my Mac for editing. (Mostly because I really really like Scenalyzer Live for capture)

If the file is in sync in Quicktime, it would be an FCS prefs problem -- but your problem starts earlier. Out of curiosity I'd try the captured file in a player like VLC to see if the issue is with the file or with the playback configuration -- if the VLC player handles it properly maybe a reinstall of QT is in order.

It is technically very difficult for the audio and video to be out of sync -- the Firewire transfer is a muxed file, with the two components interleaved ... quite how the transfer could get out of sync I can't imagine.

Cheers,
GB

Actually, I've had this problem with an old G4 computer which I was using mainly for capture and it wasn't worth the time to figure out the problem as I had a fallow G5 sitting around which worked fine. I'm sure if I wiped the entire G4 and reinstalled only the OS and FCP it would have worked better. But who knows, maybe the capture hard drive was on it's way to failure. I've also had problems with audio sync on playback on all my machines when Time Machine kicks in so I now have it set to manual backups.

The curious issue is how a live camera capture is in sync but tape playback isn't. Since the FireWire video data stream is identical in both instances the only variable is deck control. Does a non-controlled tape capture suffer the sync issue?