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Syncing audio -- discuss your method.

Okay, so in a different thread, syncing audio was brought up. In writing about it, I thought it likely that there is probably a great deal of variation in how each of us does this. I think it'd be good to hear the different methods, and of course I'm particularly curious to hear from those who do this professionally. As far as I know, I'm doing it bass-ackwards.

Antihero was the first time I'd ever sync'd audio. I edited visuals first, using in-cam audio, then sync'd. I tried Pluraleyes, but decided that it's really only helpful if you sync all audio, for every single shot, before editing. Editing before syncing makes Pluraleyes pretty much worthless.

So, I ended up not even using my slates. Almost every shot was synced with dialog -- every time someone spoke a P, T, K, etc. I'd go frame by frame, barely watching, but mostly listening to the very beginning of that hard consonant. Drop in timeline, and give it a listen, with both in-cam audio and external audio playing. About half of the time, I nailed it on the first try, and the other half, it was almost always within a single frame.

This workflow went rather quickly. It was tedious, and I hated every minute of it, but I got it done in a couple of (very) long days. This is an 83-minute movie, with relatively fast-paced editing.

I feel like this method worked pretty quickly and effectively, but of course I'm not going to be offended if anybody more experienced points out that my method is ill-advised. I think everyone who has done this should weigh in with their experiences -- noobs and pros, alike.

Cheers!
 
I've officially been on a set with separate sound recording... they're going to have a nightmare synching it as the slate guy and the person keeping the records weren't always on the same page. They had some repeated takes, some misspoken takes and some misnumbered takes. I'm glad I'm not doing the synch on that... I'll stick to my in camera recording.


Like this, a frequent problem I had manually syncing to the slate was that my slate guy was trying to keep tabs on what was what with a person recording it all..... and stuff would easily get misinterpreted and I'd find myself listening to each and every clip trying to find the ones I wanted that sinced..
 
I've officially been on a set with separate sound recording... they're going to have a nightmare synching it as the slate guy and the person keeping the records weren't always on the same page. They had some repeated takes, some misspoken takes and some misnumbered takes. I'm glad I'm not doing the synch on that... I'll stick to my in camera recording.

:seeya:

I wouldn't want to be around when the editing guys get hold of the footage "What the....? Who's responsible for this?!" :lol:
 
I just saw people going nuts about it on another board.

Maybe the 2 frame offset issue is something that comes up when trying to sync with the camera original footage - I always convert to ProRes first though, so that may be why I've never experienced it.

I never even knew such a thing as pluraleyes existed until about a month ago, and don't really see the point of it.

To save time? My last short had about 3 hours worth of source footage. I threw all the footage on a timeline along with the audio, hit go on pluraleyes, and had everything synced and ready to go an hour later. I'm not actually sure how long it took to do the syncing because I grabbed dinner while it worked.

Here's another good reason to use it...

they're going to have a nightmare synching it as the slate guy and the person keeping the records weren't always on the same page. They had some repeated takes, some misspoken takes and some misnumbered takes. I'm glad I'm not doing the synch on that... I'll stick to my in camera recording.

a frequent problem I had manually syncing to the slate was that my slate guy was trying to keep tabs on what was what with a person recording it all..... and stuff would easily get misinterpreted and I'd find myself listening to each and every clip trying to find the ones I wanted that sinced..

No need to slate, clap, or try to track which video clips go with which audio take. Pluraleyes figures it all out for you. Put your day's footage and audio on the timeline, hit go, get coffee, start editing.

If you ever shoot with multiple cameras it will also sync those, so you can either have it create multicam clips, or just create a timeline with multiple angles synced on adjacent tracks. No timecode, jam-sync, etc. I've also used it to sync audio from multiple recorders and multiple cameras simultaneously - I don't like to do this as it just tends to complicate things during editing, but if you need to, it will.

I wouldn't want to be around when the editing guys get hold of the footage "What the....? Who's responsible for this?!" :lol:

Unless, of course, the editing guys had pluraleyes! I don't mean to sound like a commercial for Pluraleyes - I'm not affiliated with them or anything - I just couldn't imagine working without it now. It's like having an assistant you don't have to pay, or feed. It's not 100% perfect, and there are situations where it doesn't work well, but they are generally very predictable. I'd much rather spend my editing time on the creative side than waste it syncing things manually.
 
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Maybe the 2 frame offset issue is something that comes up when trying to sync with the camera original footage - I always convert to ProRes first though, so that may be why I've never experienced it.



To save time? My last short had about 3 hours worth of source footage. I threw all the footage on a timeline along with the audio, hit go on pluraleyes, and had everything synced and ready to go an hour later. I'm not actually sure how long it took to do the syncing because I grabbed dinner while it worked.

Here's another good reason to use it...





No need to slate, clap, or try to track which video clips go with which audio take. Pluraleyes figures it all out for you. Put your day's footage and audio on the timeline, hit go, get coffee, start editing.

If you ever shoot with multiple cameras it will also sync those, so you can either have it create multicam clips, or just create a timeline with multiple angles synced on adjacent tracks. No timecode, jam-sync, etc. I've also used it to sync audio from multiple recorders and multiple cameras simultaneously - I don't like to do this as it just tends to complicate things during editing, but if you need to, it will.



Unless, of course, the editing guys had pluraleyes! I don't mean to sound like a commercial for Pluraleyes - I'm not affiliated with them or anything - I just couldn't imagine working without it now. It's like having an assistant you don't have to pay, or feed. It's not 100% perfect, and there are situations where it doesn't work well, but they are generally very predictable. I'd much rather spend my editing time on the creative side than waste it syncing things manually.

I'm not familiar with Pluraleyes-I suspect I can't afford it if it's top end gear ;) But it does helpful!

I'm lucky so far because I only use one camera on my projects, but I imagine I get using two camera for various shots and angles, it might get pretty fun indeed! ;)
 
Pluraleyes is under $200 I'm pretty sure? Also, there's a 30 day trial so if you did just have one big project you're covered. It works with FCP, Adobe Premiere and I think there's a standalone version too. Big-time time-saver.
 
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