Synching multiple video clips with multiple audio clips from one shoot.

Hello all,

I'm currently working in a project where production has given me approximately 30 video/audio files and 20 corresponding audio files (better microphone) all from one shoot - so for example there might be a few cases where multiple video clips correspond with a single audio file and such. In seeking to synchronize these files into one master clip I've tried highlighting all of them and choosing "synchronize clips", but this seems to have failed as only a very small portion of the overall footage was synched. Next I tried highlighting all clips and creating a multicam clips (as I've heard this can synchronize audio with video as well), but the result was kind of a jumbled mess - I could tell that it tried to do the job I wanted, but it just got all mixed up.

Do any of you know the proper way to do this sort of thing, besides just throwing all the clips into one big compound clip and manually aligning everything? For reference the audio files are wavs and the video files are movs (and the I also have .THM files corresponding to the video files but I don't know if these are useful to my purpose in any way). Thanks!

FCPX won't import the .THM files.

Explain exactly what the difference is between all of the audio files? Where these 20 cameras shooting the same thing at the same time?

You may want to sync each camera/mic pair by itself. What would be the purpose in doing otherwise? Cause for each pair, once sync'ed, you'll want to go into that Sync Clip and configure the Audio Channels so only the mic audio channel(s) are active.

Then syncing all of those Sync Clips into a Multicam clip, IF they were actually 20 cameras filming the same thing at the same time. But that'd make for one hell of a cutting session.

Or are these 20 shots of the same event, chronologically one after the other?

Hi Ben,

All the video footage is from one camera, just broken up into 30 clips chronologically progressing. The guy also had a separate mic to capture the same stuff as he was filming, but the files aren't correlated in a 1 - 1 way. So for instance maybe at a certain point he had the mic running for 10 minutes straight, and somewhere in that same stretch of time he recorded two 3 minute video chunks (so the audio of those video clips overlap with a subset of that audio track, etc.

Does that make sense? Thanks.

OK, so we probably would do best with a multicam clip. This assumes all the video clips actually have clear audio recorded that matches the audio clips. Do they?

Assign all audio clips one Angle Name, assign all video clips another Angle Name. Then try setting up like this. I won't be perfect, you'll have to open it into the Angle Editor and tweak it, but it should be a good start. Using the "Sync To Monitoring Angle" options can make tweaking quick, too.

- Angle Assembly: Angle Name
Puts same names in same track, thus all video in one track, all audio in another. Assuming no audio overlaps other audio, and no video overlaps other video.

- Angle Clip Ordering: Content Created
Since the devices were not having timecode sync'ed on set with a TC Generator, I'm assuming.

- Angle Synchronization: Automatic
And check the "Use audio for syncronization" check box.

Okay; this sounds like it could work. I'm pretty newbish when it comes to multi-cam stuff so i'm just doing some quick googling on Sync To Monitoring Angle and how to assign angle names and then I'll give this a shot.

You may be best off checking the user manual. There's not much to it.
help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver23c76b1a

Okay I implemented the plan and it initially looked like it worked; but upon closer inspection the synching did not happen properly (actually one section of like 2 minutes was perfectly synched, everything else was off). Any tips on how to tweak this? Thanks.

Also, one quick way I can easily see the synch got jumbled is that the audio and video files are all numbered sequentially, and on the multicam clip i can see the audio all numbered properly, but the video tracks are all out of order.

What is the quality of the audio in the camera clips?

Try setting everything to Auto and see what happens.

It's got some noise but it's fairly loud and the voices are clear so It should be enough for the synch to work. I'll try setting it to auto and see what happens? If this doesn't and I just try to eyeball it, is there a way for me to select one audio clip and one video clip in the multicam clip and synch them right in place? So I can just go down the line and do that after I line things up roughly? Thanks again.

Yeah; no dice. Same exact result with auto. If I have to go the eyeballing it route; is it better to just make this a compound clip or still just leave it in the multi like this?

scotopia wrote: If this doesn't and I just try to eyeball it, is there a way for me to select one audio clip and one video clip in the multicam clip and synch them right in place?

Yes, I already posted a link to the user manual page that has that information.

Ah yes; Synch selection to monitoring angle seems to be doing the job. Thanks ben!