audio problems with PAL and NTSC footage

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audio problems with PAL and NTSC footage

Hey guys, hope you can help.

I got sent a music video which is running at 25fps. I exported a reference movie for my mate to sync the cd audio to and he has re exported the audio at 48Khz. He's using Cubase.

I've imported it into my timeline and everything syncs up great.

Now I've been sent an anamorphic version of the video at 29.97fps.

Now the audio doesn't sync up.

I know that there are differences in the audio for PAL & NTSC, but if the audio I'm using has just been exported at 48Khz and not a 'frame rate', shouldn't Final Cut be able to reinterpret the audio, so it can be used in a PAL or NTSC timeline?

4x 2.5Ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

4x 2.5Ghz G5, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Mar 21, 2007 10:58 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 21, 2007 11:13 AM in response to Manc27

That wouldn't be something Final Cut would have any way to detect or take care of. But in a perfect world the NTSC and PAL version should be exactly in sync with each other. I'm guessing they did a different type of conversion, for example perhaps the original was 24fps. They would have sped up the PAL version and done all the tricks for the NTSC one, putting the timing off by about 4%.

Did your mate perhaps retime the audio for the PAL version?

In any case you or the mate can retime and sync the audio for the NTSC version. For best results do it from the CD again.

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Answer 2

Mar 25, 2007 4:37 PM in response to Manc27

Go back to the CD audio. Red Book Audio CD specs call for a sample rate of 44.1khz and a frame rate of 29.97df. Import the CD audio into STP and resample the sample rate to 48K. Save as AIFF file at 48K 16-bit. This should import into FCP just fine, and then by sync-able to your 29.97 video. make sure the video time format is 29.97 drop frame to match the audio.

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Answer 3

Mar 25, 2007 6:12 PM in response to Jim Schafer

For converting 44.1 audio to 48, I find it fastest to drag the audio CD files directly into FCP's export queue.

If you have a PAL version of the clip or sequence in which the mixed audio is in sync, you might try using compressor's advanced format conversion to make a self-contained movie in the format you are trying to convert to. That may help keep the audio in sync.

hope this helps -

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