Sound syncing issues

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Level 1

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Sound syncing issues

I have searched around and found many threads on various websites about this, but none of them answer my question so -

I have a sequence in FCP 6 at 25fps. The video and audio were recorded seperately (DSLR and Zoom H4N). The project file was sent to me from a friend and it all worked their end, but when I open it, and reconnect all the media the sound goes completely out of sync with the video. He told me to "adjust the audio speed to compensate". How do I do this exactly? And is this the right way to go about it?

Any help, in plain English because I'm not a techie, would be greatly appreciated.

Posted on Jun 3, 2012 3:00 PM

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Answer 1

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Jun 3, 2012 5:59 PM in response to laurawarren1

When you say:

. . . when I open it, and reconnect all the media the sound goes completely out of sync with the video.

Do you mean the audio is the correct audio for the video scene, but is not in sync with video (fast/slow/drifiting) or do you mean it is completely the wrong audio for the video?

When you say:

The project file was sent to me from a friend and it all worked their end . . .

Do you mean the they had no sync problem, with the existing source audio and video as is, without any adjustment?

MtD

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Answer 2

laurawarren1 Author

Level 1

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Jun 3, 2012 10:07 PM in response to Meg The Dog

The clip is in the right place in the timeline, it lines up with the video clips above and it's the correct clip (my friend has merged the video and audio clips) but I believe the wrong part of the audio clip is in there. Actually it seems more like it's playing back too fast, I check the merged video and audio clips on the viewer and the clapper boards at the start are in sync but as the clip goes on it gets out of sync...

I got an error message pop up whilst reconnecting the media saying that some clips start and end points had changed and frame rate. But this shouldn't be, I'm using the exact same footage and sound files as my friend did.

They did initially have problems, in one scene the video was shot at 23.98fps and conformed to 25fps to match the rest. He said that the (seperately recorded) sound had to be adjusted to compensate. I don't know how he means to adjust the sound (as I thought using the 'speed' adjustment warps the sound horribly). And as I understood, sound isn't recorded in frame rate so surely there shouldn't be an issue? Also, it's not just the sound that goes to the 23.98 conformed to 25 footage that's out of sync.

Today I plan on going through and reconnecting the media again to see exactly which ones are causing the problem to see if it will help solve the problem.

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Answer 3

laurawarren1 Author

Level 1

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Jun 4, 2012 3:51 AM in response to laurawarren1

Right, I have found the exact files that are causing me a problem when reconnecting the media.

I mentioned I had a scene shot at 23.98fps and then conformed in cinema tools to 25. All clips from this scene come up with this:

But I HAVE conformed them to 25fps as my friend did as well so am I missing something? Why is this different?

The next group of clips I have a problem with reconnecting are ALL of the sound clips. They come up with this message:

The audio files I have are .wav files. I can't run them through cinema tools so I don't know what else I am supposed to do. Though when I go ahead and connect these files anyway and then in FCP select Modify > Timecode, this tells me that the video is correctly 25fps but the audio has been assigned 24fps. How do I change this if audio isn't even recorded in fps?

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