Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

I'm well versed in Pro Tools, but have very little experience in doing film sound/post. I'm helping a friend with the sound for a short film shot on DV. I'm recording the location sound with a DAT deck, but without timecode. We're using a basic slate for sync. I will be editing the video in Final Cut Pro 3 and assembling the soundtrack in Pro Tools HD.

My question is, what is the best approach to take with synchronizing the location sound in Final Cut Pro? Should I marry the location sound to the individual video clips before editing the video or is there a better way to go about it? This is the first time I've done a film project so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
-Larry

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

Have you tried any of the forums at:

http://www.2-pop.com

See if you can find any postings by Dan Forte. He knows his stuff.

Also, check out:

www.digitalfilmtree.com

You can call those guys and ask...

-Phil

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I've been searching through 2-pop, but so far haven't found what I'm looking for. I'll keep looking. I also picked up "Final Cut Pro 3 and The Art of Filmmaking", but it seems to lack any info on location sound and synchronizing it.

Anyone else?

Thanks.

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

Larry there are a couple of ways you can do this.
1) As well as recording the "good" sound on to the dat, have the camera mic, record sound straight to the DV tape. The rough sound will be imported to Final cut pro and edited along with the video. When the picture is "locked" get an EDL (edit decision list) from the editor and a copy of the final cut on VHS, 3/4, mpeg or whatever format you need and load the audio track from the movie into your protools session and then sync the original dat takes up to the "work track". Being that you will have to load all the required takes of audio into your protools session and then edit and sync everything manually this will be a very time consuming process which will depend on the length of the movie and the amount of edits and how fast you are at editing. The advantage to this is that you will be digitizing the audio.

2) You could have the editor load the dat dailies into final cut pro and sync them to picture with the sticks. From there he would edit as normal. When the movie is done he could export the audio to you and you have a "one to one" track to work with. This will certainly be a lot quicker for you but the disadvantage is that you are leaving it up to a picture editor to record sound and in my experience that is usally not a good thing. I'm not sure if final cut pro 3 has the ability to export sound files as SDII but if it has then you should request handles on the audio files of at least 90 frames so you can do any crossfading between cuts if needed.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Frank.

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Frank - thank you very much for the reply. As it stands, I will also be the picture editor. This is a short movie - about 12 minutes and it's to help out a friend who's directing it. It's really to get his feet wet directing and mine with the editing.

I would prefer if possible, to edit in Final Cut Pro with the sound from the DAT. Do you know if there's a way to lock the audio clips to their corresponding video clips outside of the timeline? I know once you have them lined up in the timeline you can lock them together, but I'm wondering if there's any way to do it in the bin or elsewhere. It seems as though the edit process is to double-click on the video clip in the bin and it shows up in the viewer where you set your in and out points. Assuming that your in point will certainly be after the slate, how can you use the sticks to sync in the timeline?

Thanks again for the help and the patience since this is my first time doing this.

-Larry

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

For direct experience, I'd email Larry Blake for what they did on FULL FRONTAL. I believe they loaded DATs into a FCP or into a PT first and then imported and synced in FCP... That audio was used for the Final Mix I believe (using OMF/PT).

His email is:
[email protected]

-PB

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

Larry, I'm not that familiar with FCP v3.0 but you should just be able to drag your individual takes to any point on the timeline and line up the audio with the sticks and then cut them down to whatever length you want and put them back in the bin until needed. It doesn't really matter where on the timeline you do this part of the project. In fact you can create a sequence just for this purpose and leave it open and then create a new sequence for the movie and drag your clips in to it as you need them.

Re: Audio sync question - FCP & PT
 

potatohead - thanks again. I'm anxious to see that film.

Frank - Sounds like nested sequences are the answer I was looking for. I just tried it and it works the way I was hoping it would.

Thanks!