Audio video sync workflow?

[Ryan Wallis]

Hi All

I've been using FCPx for a while and my skills are still a little crude to say the least! I'm booked in for some courses next month and cant wait. So sorry if this is horribly basic!

My biggest issue is putting the speeches together to the point that I hate it, unlike the rest (even the ceremony) which I love cutting.

I operate alone using a Canon XF100 with shotgun mic along with 2x Zoom H1's. I use one with a lapel mic for ceremony and the other sits near a speaker. For the speeches I place one Zoom either on the lectern or top table and the other near a speaker, which obviously this means I have to sync the audio.

Now its not so much about how I should record audio, how I should deploy the Zooms, what method/software to use to sync (theres a ton of opinions and suggestions online and I've been playing with FCPx's internal sync feature) its more about what stage I should sync?

Experts (as in edit guru types, not wedding video guru types) say cut all of your vision first and then add audio but I find that quite tough as I tend to think that the content of the speech is more important than the vision...What I mean is that if there is a great audio moment but I don't have vision of the speaker I'll just use a cutaway, the funny moment might not be captured on video but obviously I can still use it...which to me makes cutting the vision first seem the wrong way around!

If this isn't making sense then sorry but I really just want to know what others do and suggest. This is really slowing me up and I need to develop much much better ways to do this and improve my editing skills and speeds.

Sorry for the long post. Any help much appreciated.

Cheers

[Adrian Tan]

Hey Ryan, I'm definitely no expert, but I usually sync audio before I do anything else. For me, it's a case of dump all footage and sound into a timeline, then ask Plural Eyes to sort it out while you go get a snack. Then keep the synched audio with the vision when you do any cutting.

If you cut before synching audio... I think this makes Plural Eyes's job harder, doesn't it?

[Ryan Wallis]

Hi Adrian

Thanks for that mate. It seems obvious now but I had never used any syncing software before and was just doing it myself! Someone else suggested I just sync the footage I need to be synced (much of it is cut to music) and then start the edit....as I say, it seems simple now!

Is Plural Eyes considerably better than FCPX's sync feature?

[Adrian Tan]

Never used FCPX at all, so can't say! I'm pretty sceptical it would be as good though.

[Dave Partington]

Hi Ryan,

We use multiple XF100 cameras and multiple Zooms (H1 and H4n).

The very first thing we do in any software (including Premiere Pro and FCPX) after keywording is sync the footage.

Because we're using multiple cameras we are creating multicam clips, but you could just sync if you wanted. Nothing to stop you creating multicam clips with one camera and lots of audio though.

We also happen to have (and use) Pluraleyes, and have used it since FCP7 and on in to Premiere Pro CS5,5.5 & now CS6. Pluraleyes is excellent software but brings with it lots of issues, including the fact that it creates duplicate references to your media in the project. You can choose to live with it or clean it up. We clean it up most of the time when using Premiere Pro.

However, we never usually bother with Pluraleyes in FCP X because the multicam sync feature just works most of the time. They each have their failings, but at this point I would stick to using the built in FCPX sync and see how you get on before spending any money,

[Ryan Wallis]

Thanks Dave

Sounds like good advice. I have tried the FCPx sync feature and it seemed to do the job on a simple task so hopefully I can just use that.

I'm haf way through an edit now and I'd like to start again. I think the time lost to start again would be gained by syncing it to start with...

Thanks for your help guys, greatly appreciated.

Cheers