multi-CLIP sync?

Hi,
Can fcpx 10.1.2 do multi clip sync?
what I mean is this.. ex

say
folder A has 10 completely different video clips with embedded audio
folder B has 20 completely different audio clips (better recorded)
say 10 of those audio clips match up with the 10 video clips in folder A

Can I get FCP to sync up the 10 video clips with the matching audio clips in folder B?

sync by audio analysis (not TC or markers)


everything I can find online only shows 1 video clip, and you already know what audio clip belongs with what..
In this case, I have no clue what audio belongs to what video.
In reality, the example above should be about 500 video clips and 1000 or so audio..

thanks
Kurt

For now, creating Sync Clips is done one at a time.

FCP X only matches multiple clips when creating a multi cam.

Pluraleys is the popular 3rd party option for mass syncing based on audio waveforms. But this leaves you with a big sync project vs individual clips which you can apply metadata to- so I've never bought into it's awesomeness.

And if you had matching TC for both, there's also Sync 'n Link.

If you had some form of jammed TC you could rely on, Sync 'n Link would be the perfect solution.

But if the media you receive are so messed up that you don't know which external audio clip belongs to which video clip, and you even don't have any TC or time/date reference to help you out, you indeed have a problem.

You still should be able to batch-synch them with PluralEyes, but it is a convoluted workflow: www.danmccomb.com/product-reviews/best-p...deo-with-pluraleyes/

You also can find an excellent (some say better) alternative to Pluraleyes here : woowave.com

- Ronny

Here's the process I came up with when doing second-souce audio sync on the TV show I'm working on.

• Once you've imported your audio and video clips, sort them so that they're in descending order by creation date/time. This will mean one of two things- if you're files were recorded with time of day TC, they'd look like this

VIDEO CLIP1
AUDIO CLIP1
VIDEO CLIP2
AUDIO CLIP2
VIDEO CLIP3
AUDIO CLIP3

If there was no universal reference TC, then the creation date stamp will still list files in the order they were created- in that case, the list would look like this

VIDEO CLIP1
VIDEO CLIP2
VIDEO CLIP3
AUDIO CLIP1
AUDIO CLIP2
AUDIO CLIP3

In either case it makes it relatively easy to pick out what goes with what, baring any extra audio or video clips from false rolls.

Ok, so set your media filter to HIDE REJECTED. Once you've done this, select your first audio and video clip and choose the sync command. Once you've done this, while the original audio and video clips are still selected, hit the DELETE key. This will mark the two original files you've just sync'd as Rejected and hide them from view (note they're never deleted and can be viewed at any time by changing the Event Filter view).

This means you're progressively cleaning up your Event as you go, hiding 2 original clips and leaving only the new Sync Clip visible. This is especially helpful when you have LOTS of clips to sync.

To speed up the process, remember that OPTION+COMMAND+G is the keyboard shortcut for creating Sync Clips. Also, I mapped the keyboard so that COMMAND+O is "Open in Timeline". After you've sync'd 2 clips, I always do this to make sure that the audio and video waveforms are lining up.

Remember that if you sync 2 clips and they turn out NOT to be matching items, you can just UNDO back a couple steps to get you back to before you sync'd the clips.

Finally, to save yourself time turning off channels you don't want in your timeline later- if you don't want the original camera audio, select ALL your sync clips and open the inspector and turn off the Camera audio. It's much faster to do this at the start on 30 clips than after you've done a bunch of editing and you need to do it to hundreds of individual clips in your Project.

Thanks..

Ronny, I tried woowave but it crashes.
Tried 2 different versions on 2 different OS's..
left them a message..

DP..
Ill see if your workflow works in my case. Ill need to contact the client too see exactly how the 2nd audio was recorded as far as time/date go..

PE synced less than half.. not too good.

thanks
kurt

Having no clue how this was recorded, of course be aware that if recording was started and stopped on either the sound or picture, that there could be more than 1 video file for each audio clip, or vice-versa multiple audio clips to sync with a singe video take.

What sort of Event is this? Syncing these via a multi cam, even if there's only 1 camera and 1 second audio source, may be the way to go.

If this is the case, use the inspector to label all your Camera Angles, since Final Cut uses this information when creating the multi cam.

I have approximately two cents to add. Depending on how long these clips are, and how good the audio is, you could get it sorted with a multi cam clip. Even if you want to keep your media separate, it will help you figure out which clips match up. Just make all the video Angle A and all the audio Angle B. Set Angle Clip Ordering to Content Created. If you want, you can just use the multi cam clip in your edit. If you want to make separate Synced files, you can use it as a reference to rename the clips to make them easier to match.

Jinx!

I think those are excellent suggestions!

- Ronny

Thanks guys..
I was wondering if multicam sync could work somehow on this, but wasn't sure..

anyway its running now.. I'll know in 2015 sometime how it comes out

kurt

I'll know in 2015 sometime how it comes out

If you're lucky

- Ronny

Hi DP

How to do this:
Once you've imported your audio and video clips, sort them so that they're in descending order by creation date/time

I can never get the sorting to highlight, its always greyed out.. (Sort by)

thanks
Kurt

I never noticed this before, but SORT BY options are only available in the Thumbnail View, while GROUP CLIPS BY options to be available in both Thumbnail and List view.

I usually work in Thumbnail view, because depending on how long your clips are, you can usually see similarities in the waveforms that will help you match two clips for sync'ing

thanks.. i just got sort by enabled... wasn't sure how i did it until you mentioned thumbnail view...

still trying various sync multicam modes to see what I can get..
lately they been syncing with zero clips actually being synced.. without changing anything, earlier i was running 75% getting synced

many directories full of files to go... for now I am just trying to get a relyable sync setting.

Wow, bad luck to get this sort of project. If you're having that much difficulty, it's well worth communicating with the production on how they went about things (assuming that you're in contact with them). If you will be working with them again in the future, you have to tell them to get it together! If they are going by just syncing audio waveforms, then they must ensure that the camera audio is at least passable and that they use a decent clapper board slate. Also, it's very helpful to get the audio guy to name his files properly... ideally they match the camera (or at least which camera).

A thing that jumped out at me is that you say they have something like twice as many audio clips as video clips. How is that? Are the separated as lav and boom? Are they on different subjects? Did the recordist just stop in the middle for each take (unlikely)? Do you simply have a ton of wild sound recordings, in which case those aren't supposed to sync at all. You have to determine what all the extra sound files are first. It's actually more common to have the camera start-and-stop and sound keeps rolling, especially with DSLRs. I suspect you're dealing with that since you don't seem to have jam synced timecode.

Also, if you're in list view, you do sorting by clicking on the column label like any spreadsheet program. So click on "content created" to sort by ascending or descending. If you have both the audio and video in the same event, you can see roughly when they were created, and that may help you find out which ones go together.