Questionable Quicktime Movie Sync?

Hi Spocintosh,

Thanks for bringing this thread back into the light of day.

Well, in the time since Rohan's initial and informative replies I've worked on a variety of different scoring projects and am still mystified as to why QT audio will not play in sync with the extracted audio.

First, let me say that I've never run into an instance where the burn-in and Logic's timecode counter were at odds (other than when I had the wrong frame rate selected). I'll lean towards the "negative" and say that perhaps, maybe, the most discrepancy I've ever seen is less-than or equal to 1 frame. But for sake of my point, I'll say that I've never seen discrepancies between burn-in and Logic's counter.

Now, that's not to say that picture sync is always great when running under Logic. For example, I place a stupid orchestra hit sfx right on an edit of a superhero hitting a villan in the jaw. Like, like RIGHT on the first frame of that scene. Well, experience has shown me that sometimes it's necessary to "telegraph" that kind of thing by placing it a frame early for maximum visual/aural impact (all depends on the nature of the sound's attack as well as visual details). OK, fine. Having to do that has nothing to do with Logic or QT being in or out of sync.

But goddammit if sometimes that sfx doesn't sometimes sound like it's been sync' d improperly! Very commonly in the course of a production I'll get into the habit of start/stop/start Logic because I know the first "start" is going to play back the sequenced data (MIDI, audio) predictably out-of-sync. This is absolutely infuriating.

Funny enough, though... when it comes to embedding the music directly into the movie file within QTPro for presentation purposes, the sync is always what I thought it should be while working in Logic. And if it's not, I know I have to go back to my Logic song and tighten things up.

I have no further insight to offer as to why there are discrepancies aboundinig in playback of QT files along with Logic. Or the other way 'round. Or however it works, and I wish someone would tell us.

FWIW, I think Rohan gave it his best shot at trying to explain how these things work. I don't know that he's privy to additional details about how things sync up within Logic over the rest of us. Certainly his resume shows us an enviable career at scoring to picture and I'm sure he's making good decisions about how to deal with sync amidst the circumstances. But I agree that there should be absolutely zero guesswork when it comes to understanding Logic<-->QT Sync. It's a computer, right? How can the multi-frame fudge factor exist? It ****** me off continually.

Thanks again for bringing this subject to the fore.

Hi Spocintosh,

You want quick replies (sometimes)? Post on this forum! 🙂 where there's a lot of interest on the part of many dyed-in-the-wool Logic users to learn more about scoring/post techniques and Logic's inner workings related to same, amongst other things.

There's also a strong contingent of pro users here who are sick to death of the bugs and strange behaviors yet continue to use the program because a) they love it anyway, b) changing to another program would be extremely difficult amidst years of experience on Logic, where the program has become an extension of their very being, and c) hope beyond hope for improvements in the near future.

I'll say this, tho, that if "c" doesn't come to fruition soon there maybe be, out of sheer necessity -- and wishing to bring more joy to music creation -- a bit of an exodus. Not a mass exodus, but an exodus nonetheless. That's my prediction, anyway...

PLAYING BACK VIDEO FROM A SEPARATE DRIVE
This is my method of working also. But in times of sheer laziness I've played back picture from my system drive (always audio from a separate drive) and had no problem other than those already mentioned in this thread. But Logic WILL give me problems if I have two songs open at once which both point to the same movie files (such as when I'm working on two different but adjacent cues in separate files); then the movie will then stutter its playback.

And regarding the re-rendering of waveforms, the only time I've ever seen this (and I've only seen it once) is when the disk is running out of space.

Looking forward to continued dialog with you about these subjects.

...and most of Logic's users will never ever use
movies at all. Even if they do, they mostly do MUSIC,
film scoring. And try to notice frame accuracy with
strings...you'd be happy if every audio/midi is in
sync to the scene, but not to frames. I mean, for
music there's no problem at all.

I have to disagree with you here. While I would imagine that for ADR to look right you have to worry about single-frame discrepancies, the same holds true for music. Composers work very hard at deciding on and composing to "hit points", especially in action/adventure films, and if the musical hits are sloppy against picture by a few frames, it's softens the impact of the musical hit; at worst it appears as though the composer doesn't know how to "make" hit points.

On the sync front, I need to spend more time studying/mulling over what you've written. Thanks for all of this info and for describing your approach and workarounds.

-=iS=-

I'm learning a ton myself. But on a slightly melancholy note, I'll say that spocintosh's mention of Norway made me pine for Scandanavia. In particular, Finland, Helsinki, and fish for breakfast. Anyway, back to the video...

🙂