Okay I'm officially pulling my hair out now.
I am prepping an edit for a feature film, shot on the Canon 7D and I need to work out a nice and easy route to syncing the sound with the WAV files that I've been provided.
The story so far... I have managed to import the 7D footage with no problems, in fact it looks stunning, I'm importing at DNxHD 120 (i'm also getting the sound from the camera as reference). So I have a bin with hundreds of clips with sound and picture. So far so good.
I've also imported the WAV files from our sound recordist which consist of 4 x Mono tracks and they all play and sound fine.
So I have the two components required, my plan was to use Autosync, just like I used to in the good old days of film, by marking the clap on the slate and the sound and bam, new clip in the bin with sync sound. However when I try to do this I get a grouped clip insted of a new subclip. I am assuming this is because my picture already has sound. So I end up with a grouped clip with the original camera sound and two new channels on 3+4 which was from the WAV file. No use.
I'm assuming if I can import the picture without sound then Autosync will work fine, the question is how do I import the quicktime with no sound. I don't see any option to do this.
Or is there another method of syncing that I'm just plain missing. I did think about making a sequence of all the rushes and laying the sync onto that, but then I end up with a sequence, not clips to work from, which is not ideal.
Any solutions would be much appreciated.
Keith
Project is 1920x1080 25p - MC 4
How about making a duplicate of all your clips and dragging them to another bin. Original clips with sound are handy as a sync reference.
Select all the copied clips, unlink them, modify tracks to have only a video track then relink them. This will give you video only versions of all imported clips that you can autosync to.
We used this on a RED feature last year, should work the same with 7D footage.
Other methods would be to turn off the audio recording in the camera, delete the audio using QT pro before you import, or use Metacheater to make an ALE that could be modified before batch import, but the above method does have the advantage that you have a version of your clips with audio.
And would save you re-importing anything that you've already imported.
Only other problem may be that your imported mono wav files may all be saying they're A1. You may need to modify them to be A1,A2,A3 and A4, or get polywavs instead of four mono files.
regards
Brian
Arrrgghh, it's going from bad to worse.
Thanks for the workaround suggestion Brian. I tried the method of unlinking all my rushes and then modifying to just having V1 track. But now when I try to relink I get a thread error and Avid quits... Yikes. I may have to re-import all the stuff again. All the original clips that I duplicated from are offline as well and won't relink. Must be a bug I guess, I'm on version 4.05 as well
My audio files are coming in as one clip with 4 channels of mono sound, so they are all fine...
K.
Ouch, that doesn't sound good. I have checked this workflow here on a V3 machine with some 7D 25fps footage and it worked fine. It did throw up a "CM Tracks not found" error when relinking but it did relink correctly.
In my search for a solution it seems that a bus thread error could be many things. Poo
Following on from my original question and seeing as I'm going to be sucking the stuff in again, does anyone know of a way to import the video only of a quicktime clip that also has sound. Seems like such a simple thing to be able to do. You can do it when digitising after all. Hmmm...
K
i sense a feature request...
Owner, Emperor - Bill Nelson Media Group
Managing Partner - FirstLight Independent
www.forrobbingthedead.com
Absolutely. Import Quicktime sound and audio options tab. Yes please.
Also if the Canon could record TOD TC then that would have helped a great deal. I'm gonna try recording some media on the Canon with the sound turned off, just out of curiosity to see if it would have made the process easier.
Don't know if this will work, but I remember that the order the clips are listed in the bin affects the priority of assigning tracks when autosyncing and making group clips.
So I would try sorting the bin so that the audio clips are above the video clips. Then when you autosync, the audio clips will provide the foundation of the new groupclip, and the video/audio clip will be added onto that. The name will then be taken from the audio clip.
I can't remember exactly how it works, but I know I was doing something similar a few years ago and found that sorting the clips in the bin so they were added in a particular order was important.
cheers
Campbell
wrightie:does anyone know of a way to import the video only of a quicktime clip that also has sound.
Can you use the bin with the clips in it, modify the clips to turn off audio and batch import?
Otherwise, using MetaCheater to create an ALE of all your Quicktimes and then importing might be the way to go. Just remember to turn off audio before importing!
-- Kevin
Campbell,
Many thanks, I've just imported and tried a couple of clips and indeed the position of the audio file in the bin, before an Autosync function, does effect the dominance of the audio (ie having the audio clip above the picture clip in the bin replaces any original sound that was brought in with the picture) So this could be a possible solution for me.
Does anyone know of any downsides to wokring with grouped cips for the edit rather than subclips? I don't want to get to the end of an edit and have any nightmares.
Keith.
Thanks for the advice Kevin,
Can you enlighten me a bit more about the MetaCheater route you suggest. I'm not familiar with that workflow.
Thanks in advance.
There was a problem awhile ago concerning group clip audio and OMF creation I believe. I THINK it was cleared up but not sure. Really screwed me on a MultiCam job.
Test it out.
Jef
_____________________________________________
Jef Huey
Senior Editor
I can't think of any issues. If it is a group clip then the audio files from the Canon will still be present as alternative clips on A1 and A2. But you should be able to ignore those while you edit.
If your media is mxf then you'll be exporting AAFs of the audio, which would avoid any OMF issues that Kevin mentioned. But you should probably test your workflow from start to finish on a short sequence first.
There is a "Commit Multicam Edits" command when you right-click on a sequence with group clips. This flattens all the group clips out, which might be useful before exporting an AAF. It does mean that the audio and video lose their link, so you would probably only do this at the end of the edit. (basically you can't match-frame back to the synced up group clip anymore, only the original source clips).
So I don't think there would be any problem, but you should go with whatever feels most comfortable to you, especially if it's a big project.
The simple answer is you create subclips with just the the video and then autosync with the audio clips.
e.g. set in & out, have just v1 selected on the source tracks, drag to bin or use subclip button/shortcut.
Edd Maggs
www.eddmaggs.co.uk
Thanks for your further advice. The problem with subclipping is that I'm gonna be working with possibly thousands of clips. That's a lot of legwork before I even get down to syncing the stuff up. I just need a quick way of stripping the sound from the Quicktimes either before, during import or after import (I tried after and I ended up with no media, read above)
To cut out all this legwork it would make sense that we should be able to select what channels to bring in during the import dialogue. You can set the resolution fine, but another option to just import video or sound would solve any of these issues and possible long winded workarounds.
Does anyone know how I 'talk' to Avid to suggest this option for future releases?
Many thanks
© Copyright 2011 Avid Technology, Inc. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Site Map | Find a Reseller