Sync TASCAM audio with Camera Audio

[PeteRoy]

I recorded Audio with a TASCAM recorder and I want to sync it with a video from a Canon camera

How can I sync the audio ?

Thank you

[kozikowski]

In your video editor, you open the picture and the sound track from your Tascam. Use the closing of the clapboard and the clapboard noise to sync the beginning of the shoot or take.

Clapboard3.jpg (48.83 KiB) Viewed 97 times

"Camera Mark!" (bang!)

There should be one of these at the beginning of each individual segment of the show.

You can get into trouble at the end as well. If there is some doubt that the video and sound are running at the same exact speed (Sampling Rate), do one take with the clapboard upside down at the end of the take.

"End Mark!" (Bang)

Use that take to set the editor speed correction and then use that correction for everything else in the whole show unless you change the camera or the recorder (or both).

If you didn't use a clapboard, you guess at it.

Doesn't have to be a fancy-pants clapboard with the zebra paint job and magnets. Somebody goes out and claps their hands in view of the camera and in front of a microphone. You may have seen some podcast people do that.

Koz

[kozikowski]

One other note. The video sampling rate is 48000, not the more usual 44100. Make sure everything is set for 48000, although the video editor shouldn't care.

If nobody said this yet, Audacity doesn't edit video.

Koz

[DVDdoug]

Most video editors allow more than one audio track (and to shift the audio) so you can often align the waveforms, especially if there is a clapboard or hand-clap. A couple of times, I've used an short alignment tone at the beginning that's picked-up by both mics. Then you can mute the track from the camera.

[kozikowski]

And the proof of all these is lip sync. The first time you get close enough to a human speaking to watch the lips and they don't match the sound, you know you got it wrong.

You can have a lens problem, too, although that's a little more exotic. If you're shooting a performance with a really long lens (far away) and you have both camera sound and a talent microphone, those two sounds are not going to line up from distance-through-air delays.

Fair warning once you get good at this, you won't be able to enjoy a recorded performance ever again.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

Fair warning once you get good at this, you won't be able to enjoy a recorded performance ever again.