Audio Syncing Workflow for Hundreds of Clips

Hi, Guys. I'm very new to FCP X and have a question about sound syncing workflow. All the tutorials I've seen have just said to select the clips you want to sync and then they explain how to do it. However, if you have hundreds of clips to sync, what's the best way to select them? I brought in my shoot day folders as keyword collections. Then I went through and made notes about slates in the "notes" column (I never want to change clip names, in case link is lost). I did the same for sound.

I couldn't put the clips all in one "bin" and sort by the name in the notes column to line up all the sound with picture (the 'date created' part of the name column prevented this) So, I had to select both picture and sound keyword collections, highlight the picture and then scroll down through dozens upon dozens of clips to find the matching audio. I then synchronised the clips and put the new picture in an event titled "Synced Clips" and I renamed each of the sync clips to contain, Scene, Shot and Take number.

This was very tedious - I find the workflows for Avid and Premiere much less work. I would love to hear about the most efficient way to handle this process.

Also, I'm not quite sure how to handle my MOS clips, so I can put a duplicate of them in the same event with the synced clips. In Avid, I would just make a subclip or pseudo .sync clip of the MOS clip and rename it and put it with the synced footage.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello!

Just a few questions...

What, if any, timecode settings were used? Jam sync? Free run?

have you tried 3rd party solutions like Sync n' link? or plural eyes?

Thanks for the response. Timecode was not jam synced. They are both running time of day timecode, but the sound's timecode is incorrect. I can't afford Plural Eyes at the moment. I haven't explored Sync n' link yet.

For my MOS clips, I decided to record one piece of blank audio and use that to make pseudo synced clips, which I am renaming and putting in the event/bin with my actual sync clips.

If you have many hundred of these AND they are all jam-synced Timecode pairs then there is a tool for that :Sync-N-Link X. It is great and does much more but it is quite expensive. Only you will know if you save enough time for the money ...

assistedediting.intelligentassistance.co...k%20X%20-%20Help.pdf

Thanks, Francois. Good to know, however this is the one of the very first projects I'm cutting in FCP X and I'm not sure how many more I'll be doing, so have to hold off buying third party stuff for the time being. I don't have jam synced timecode either. I guess it's sort of like "auto sequence" in Avid.

what I am about to write could solve your problems, and yet, cause much more. please test it for yourself before you commit. This has worked for me, but, is rather silly when programs like sync and link exist, and have the ability to acount for timecode drift.

For projects on a budget, and because I was curious if it would work, I have used what I call the poor mans sync.

assign all your video footage a "camera angle" meta data of "Camera" or something else.
with your audio, use something like "Audio"

then do a Multicam sync based on those "angle" parameters, and use Timecode as your angle ordering option.
Turn off "use audio for sync". do this on a day to day basis, never a whole "production" at once

If every thing is set right, your audio will appear on one track and your video on the other, they should be spread out based on timecode, essentially giving you a lay out of what happened during the day, start to finish. You'll even see when the crew broke for lunch as a big gap.

(I have found that doing audio and video as separate multicams, has worked better) if this is the case, you'll have to copy and paste, say, the audio, into the "video multicam"
(you'll have to have a empty track in the mulitcam, and have it set as a "Monitoring angle" to do the paste function.)


if all that worked, you should see that there is a very distinct pattern that both your audio and video will share. (i.e., when did they break for lunch.)

now, tell FCPX to "sync to monitoring angle" and align an entire angle to the other, (it may help to use the position tool first for the whole angle at once, to rough it in"

Check your fist and last clips, and probably every thing in between. use "sync clip to monitoring angle" during this part.
(I find having camera as my monitoring angle works best, as audio can move at a subframe level)

*** if there is any timecode drift between camera and audio, may the edit lords have mercy on your soul***

assuming everything is perfect, you will now have a perfectly synchronized day 1

Now, make compound clips of your two angles, Call them something like "Audio sync Day 1 and Video sync day 1)
(this step seems odd, but in my poor mans experience, not doing so will cause the Clips to paste incorrectly during the next step)

Now copy these compound clips (from your muliticam angle) and paste those two compound clips into a new empty project.

In your new project tell FCPX to "break apart clip items"

Now you should have a project with everything from your synchronized multicam, on your project timeline.

Now you can start trimming and cleaning up all your synchronized clips, and start making compound clips out of all your clips. ( I have yet to see a difference between a "synchronized clip" and a compound clip ((aside from the compound clip icon)) but please, do test your whole workflow before you do anything too crazy!!)
***you can double click into a compound clip, you can not do so with a synchronized clip, be aware!!***
Name the compound clips based on what is actually in them, say, "clip 1 + audio file 42"



Is this a long a tedious task? YES! but it does work ,and if the client or you (with your time) is willing to pay for it...

Otherwise, Purleyes has a 30 day trial. however, if/when you get black clips when you import back into FCPX... you'll have to do a lot of work anyways.

I think those are most of the steps, and yes, I know it's silly. :woohoo:

Thanks for the extremely detailed breakdown, FernKraft. Unfortunately, my audio timecode doesn't even remotely match my video timecode. The production made no attempt to do this. While I can see your method working, I'm not sure if it's less time consuming than my solution. At least I figured out how to sort footage, based strictly on the notes column, so now I can I don't have to do so much scrolling and my video and audio will be butted right up against each other, which is a huge time saver.

I think it would be nice if FCP X could automate this process more. In Avid, you can use a command called Auto Sequence, which lays all video and audio out, in sync, on the timeline, in once simple step (provided you have matching timecode)

Premiere can actually sync all clips in a bin just by analysing all the audio.

One thing I do really like about synced clips in FCP X is that you can easily edit them after the fact.

in regards to your timecode... how does it not "even remotely" match your timecode? does each clip have a completely different timecode? is one, or both, device/s not "crystal sync" or was one device not using "free run"? I'm more just curious if anything in the future runs my way.

thanks in advance.

When I say they're not even remotely in sync, I mean that the audio timecode is hours and minutes off. The sound crew made no attempt at sync with the video. I guess an offset could be figured out though.

Hi Scott,

Sync-N-Link works exclusively with jam sync timecode. You can set a frame offset, but it must be the same for all the clips in the exported event. That probably wouldn't work for you, since I figure the offset will vary between takes.

So I guess the best thing you can do is what you are actually doing:

- Once you've added the take info in the Notes column for video and audio clips, you can sort them by that column, so the audio for a corresponding video clip stays close to it for faster selection. Make sure you turn off any Grouping options in the Browser (although you've probably figured that out already).

- Then, go the the Clip menu and choose "Synchronize clips". Make sure, under "Custom Settings", you check the "Use audio for Synchronization" option if you have reference audio on camera.

Alternatively, you could use the "poor man's sync" as Marcel says. I recently used a similar method on a multicam project:

- I would create a multi clip with all the takes for a particular shot (e.g. 1-1-1, 1-1-2, 1-1-3pu, etc.).
- Each of the 3 cameras would be place in a different angle, and the audio files in the 4th angle.
- I would adjust sync using "Sync Selection to Monitoring Angle".
- If the reference audio in camera has an offset (typical of DSLRs like 5Ds) you can select all the audio and nudge one or two frames. This way you can adjust several takes in one step instead of opening each take in its own timeline.

The downside of this method is that you don't have individual sync clips for each take, but a multi clip for each shot. Nevertheless, you can easily navigate the multi clips from take to take if you place markers at the beginning of each one, and reject the slates.

Well, I hope this helps. And good luck with the project!

Jesús
@jesus_edits

S.Clements wrote: ...I can't afford Plural Eyes at the moment....

That is unfortunate since this is the situation it's most useful. In five minutes it could save you five hours of work, and repeat that savings on every future similar project. I had a project last year where the time of day was wrong on all cameras and audio recorders, yet PluralEyes sync'd thousands of clips in a single operation with no problem.

Plural Eyes has a 30-day eval version; I think it's fully featured but might have a watermark on the output. You could at least try it. It can also be used on Premiere, FCP 7, Avid and Sony Vegas. I don't know if a single license covers versions for those other editors.

Thanks, Joema. It's definitely on my wish list/soon-to-buy list. I see that a single licence supports all major NLEs. I've never needed plural eyes capability on my Avid projects, because timecode was always jam-synced, but I agree, it would definitely come in handy.

Another free solution would be to use Davinci Resolve 12. There, you can put your audio and picture in the same bin and auto sync based on waveform. If you can limit stuff to more or less what would logically go together ( by day or morning/afternoon) it wil speed things up a bit. It works brilliantly and blindingly fast. You have the option to keep camera audio or replace it with production sound. Then just render out footage in the same codec as what you shot as indidual clips and you're all synched up. I only wish FCPX worked as well. The first time I tried it in Resolve while making dailies from BMCC footage and SD WAV files, it floored me how well and fast it worked. It never got confused. Give Resove a try since it's free....

That's a good idea, Paul. The only limitation I can see with that is that, technically, you are losing a generation. Even the apple ProRes white paper confirms that you can have generation loss with that codec. I know it's digital and has no effects, but it's still a bit worrisome. However, I guess at the end you could relink the picture to the camera original, in some offline/online workflows.

We'll if you were that concerned about gen loss, you could do the sync in Resolve, render out WAV files only with the newly regenerated time code, bring them back into FCPX and then sync them back to the original camera files based on time-code. But I really think that the "loss" of one generation in a digital workflow isn't worth worrying about.

"Even the apple ProRes white paper confirms that you can have generation loss with that codec."

You're working over nothing. ProRes can have generational loss, but only after DOZENS of transcodes. Being digital means nothing, it is the compression algorithms that cause the generational loss. You won't see any with ProRes until you hit the 15th time or so you transcoded it. Going to Resolve and back to FCPX you won't see any degradation in image quality at all, period.

You're worrying over nothing.

Ok. Thanks, guys. Much appreciated. I will look into using Resolve in future.