Restoration project: Trying to Sync 16mm Film Transfer to Broadcast TV Audio

I have some 16mm silent film shot at a Hollywood event in the 1960s & had it scanned at Fotokem in Los Angeles. In addition to the 2K scan files, the lab also provided me with a 24fps Quicktime of the footage.

Recently I found a portion of the audio from this event from a network tv broadcast & am trying to sync the two together--but because of the different original frames rates, even when I find an anchor point, sync tends to drift.

Does FCP X have any built-in tools to deal with something like this? Any advice/suggestions are appreciated!

The silent film cameras of the 60‘s often had a spring mechanism. I owned an old Bolex 16mm when I was a film student in the 80’s. If a camera had a motor, it almost certainly was also blimped for audio and then ran @ 24 fps, constantly and reliably. It had to be considerably bigger and heavier and more expensive then. You knew if that was the case because then you had no trouble with the synching.

The chosen frame rate of the silent cameras wasn‘t accurate, running faster in the beginning and slower towards the end of the reel (or better: end of the take, you had some 20 - 40 seconds, depending on the frame rate) not by much, but not suitable for external audio. I never added sound to my own Bolex films.

This sounds incredible to modern videographers’ ears, but having synched audio was ridiculously complicated or required very bulky equipment up to at least the mid 80s, when, finally, some Betacams didn’t need an external recorder. I’ve seen my beloved Bolex used for news reel B-roll (because it was so compact) very frequently in 60s' and early 70s' reports. By then motorized cameras had become smaller, they could be handheld.

From what I know today I’d say try to synch the short timeline clips using speed changes, markers and so forth, what you seem to have tried already. There is no way to figure out what ‘real-time’ actually is.

And people have tried. You probably heard about the famous Zapruder film, showing the assassination of JFK. Nominally 16 fps, the operator had freshly tightened the spring so that the crucial seconds supposedly ran @ 18,3 fps. But there is no way to be positively sure, although these few frames had been scrutinized and scientifically analyzed to death.

My first films were done when I was 13 years old on my father's old Brownie 8mm wind up camera. I still have it.

Since the sound is probably more stable than the video, I'd Speed Blade the video clip where necessary, and adjust various portions of the video to keep time with the steady audio.

Or you can work the other way around.

Or if both are steady frame/sample rates, retime one to fit the other.

And be sure your Project sample rate for the audio matches the audio you are importing to use. Maybe have the audio resampled in Compressor to match what you need in FCPX.