The audio sync is consistently off by 2 frames. I then bring it into the timeline and manually sync each clip BUT I do not know how to save that new sync'd clip to my 'event' or any other folder for that matter. It simply won't let me remove it from the timeline. Can anyone help? I'm just trying to organize and label my footage before I start editing. I've never had to many issues doing something so basic.
Final Cut Pro X, Mac OS X (10.7)
There may be an easier way, but you could simply publish the clip using the Share menu, select the level of quality you want and write it as a file in a folder somewhere. Then go back to FCP X and import the exported clip into your project ... audio sync fixed!. It should be easier, but it seems like I have to do a lot of workarounds ... perhaps because I do not know all the tricks yet 🙂. As a side note however, one of the few times I have seen that level of missed-sync between video and audio is when I got the video clips from an AVCHD camera that had recorded over 10 or 12 minutes. Many of these cameras break up the clips into sequences of 10 minute clips. If I try to read in one of them into my editor, I usually have an audio mis-sync of around .5 seconds. However, when I use a utility like ClipWrap that has a "Read Multiple as Span" capability, it reads in the sequence of multiple clips and assembles them into one long clip that represented the entire recording. In these "spanned" clips, I have noticed that I do not have the audio sync problem. Just wondering if that might be your situation. Hope this helps.
stephen
Actually, what you want to do is select the clip in the Event Browser and then select "Open in Timeline" from the Clip menu. Note - this is NOT the same thing as placing it into a project's timeline.
You can then make your sync changes and after that, those changes will apply to whenever you use that clip for future projects.
Great info Hafken. Thanks for that tip.
stephen
Thank you both for the help! I'll definitely give it a shot as soon as I get the chance.
hafken,
I didn't mean to click 'correct answer'. The problem with what you're talking about is that if you then delete the sync'd clip from your timeline, it will delete that clip from your event browser as well. This is a major issue with FCP X. I cannot begin to explain how frustrating this program is for me. I'm trying to edit the most basic of shorts and can't even get past the audio/video syncing stage because of this program. Do you have an answer for how to sync a clip without having to keep it in your timeline forever? I have dozens of clips I need to sync and any advice would help.
Hafken gave you the corect way to do it Deleting a clip from a project timeline will not delete it from the event browser. Are you editing in a project or in a clip timeline? You only adjust the sync in the clip timeline.
Why is everything two frames out of sync? Was this shot on some DSLR?
Again, when I say to use "Open in Timeline" that means to select the clip in the event browser. The thing in the upper left hand corner. Then choose from the Clip menu the option "Open In Timeline." This will then let you make changes to the clip as it exists solely in the Event Browser. It will show you the clip's video/audio inside a timeline, but the timeline is not for any project. As Tom describes, it is the "clip timeline."
To actually do the resync, you will need to detach the audio from the video. Then you can move the audio (at the sub-frame level by zooming in) to sync it.
FYI, you can actually do this for any clip, even ones in a project timeline. Changes you make in a project timeline however will not affect the "master" clip it came from in the event browser, or any other instance of that clip. So that's why, in this case, I'm telling you to make the sync change in the Event, so that whenever you do use that clip for a project, the changes will also be used.
Finally, if you are talking about syncing audio and video where the audio is from a separate source, that's a slightly different process. If that is the case, you need to select both the audio and video in the Event Browser, and choose "Synchronize Clips" from the Clip menu. This will create a compound clip inside the Event browser with the application's best attempt at doing an automatic sync. You can manually (re)adjust the sync by following the instructions above -- open the clip timeline and make your changes.
Hope this helps. I know the app can be confusing, especially coming from, well, anything but iMovie I suppose. Try to hang in there though.
Thank you for the quick responses. I will try this again as soon as I can. Tom, I shot this short with a 5D DSLR with audio/video recorded separately. It appears as though every auto-sync FCP X does for me is off by 1 or 2 frames. Do you know why this happens? Or if there is a way to fix it without individually re-syncing each clip?
I appreciate the patience hafken, it definitely is confusing for me right now, since I'm so used to the older FCPs.
The Canon DSLRs, maybe others, shoot with a one or two frame delay. It's just poor technology. There's a lag in digitzing the image in relation to sampling the audio. When you're syncing audio in FCP you're syncing based on the clip's waveform. if it's not in sync then the audio you sync to it is going to be out of sync as well. You have to manually adjust the audio of the DSLR footage before you sync the external audio.
Please help me...
