Thread: Syncing tracks in music video

Hi
After what seems like an eternity we finally have all the footage for our music video. (Approximately 3 takes of each band member miming to the song + extra bits)
So it doesn't take us quite eternity to edit it could anyone tell us how we sync these together perfectly in Vegas9 so everyone's playing in time, we just cant seem to work it out!

Completely separately, we can never get the search function to yield any sensible results. Are there any tips how to use it on the forum?

Thanks

Sarah & Allison

Syncing (at least at our amateur level) is usually done by alligning the waveforms in the soundtrack.

I take it when you were miming, you were miming along to your recordings and you recorded the sound on the camera, yeah? (If not, now is probably a good time to go back and do it again or it's really going to be painful trying to align audio & video)

You won't use the sound from the camera in your final video, but you will use it for allignment.

SImply drop your video clip on the timeline which will create a video event AND an audio event.

You will already have your "proper" high quality audio on another audio track.

Now it's simply a case of lining up the peaks and toughs of the audio from the camcorder with the peaks and troughs from the main audio.

Look/listen for sharp staccato sounds (rim shots etc) which will produce a very short peak and line these up.

Job done!

Searching? Like Google, it takes a bit of practice to get the "feel" for what works best. Can't give you any pointers other than that I'm afraid.

Thankyou Tim
you are a gentleman, even if you prefer to be a beast! (we remember an earlier reply of yours!).
The method you describe is exactly what we did in our multitrack audio recording program to align tracks when recording the album!
Aren't we silly we were so in awe of this digital video lark we felt there had to be a more....digital method & not the analogue way you described!

Isn't there a way we can drop a grid on the timeline set to the bpm of the song, cos this would be very helpful for editing?
At the moment we can't get the cursor to the exact beats of the song, it drops either side of them.
We bought the Vegas Editing Workshop book you recommended & are currently reading it as a bedtime story to the kids!

Thanks

Sarah & Allison & Tina

Originally Posted by Sarah & Allison

Aren't we silly we were so in awe of this digital video lark we felt there had to be a more....digital method & not the analogue way you described!

I think it IS this same digital method that could be in your way . . read below . .

Originally Posted by Sarah & Allison

At the moment we can't get the cursor to the exact beats of the song, it drops either side of them. . . .

What I would do is ensure I had "Quantize to Frames" switched OFF. YES, off. This is actually much needed doing a type of fine syncing, you need to be able to disregard the strictures of exact frame snapping - or "quantizing". And THAT, in these circumstances does require "wiggle-room" and THAT is definitely analogue and not digital. Try this and see if it works. It should.

Originally Posted by Grazie

"Quantize to Frames" switched OFF. YES, off.

A crucial point, which I neglected to mention. Thanks Grazie.

Yes that works a treat Grazie, we can now line things up.
We did read about turning off Quantize to Frames in our Douglas Spotted Eagle book but it said only for when working solely with audio so we disregarded it!

Many thanks


Sarah & Allison