Backwards audio to video workflow

[Eli_B_Squirrels]

Hey all, I produce a podcast that has a significant amount of editing work. It's part history, part fictional so lots of SFX, bits, character work, etc. We're adding video to the show and I'm looking to see if I can take my finished Audition project and match all my cuts & edits to a video track in Premiere. 

Doing all my cuts in Premiere first and then going into audition to do the rest would effectively double my work time, so I was hoping there was some automated sync that takes the video track and automatically cuts it wherever I already cut the audio. 
Admittedly probably a miracle ask, but hoping someone has an idea!

[Henrik Heigl]

Hi,

I'm not sure what you want to accomplish, but I guess if you cut all in premiere and you only want the Podcast part you just need the Audio part to export in MP3 or wav format that should do the trick. If there are some video sequences with sfx that you do not want in the MP3-Part I guess you could mark them in Premiere not to include in the exported file so that you only have to cut all those silenced parts automaticaly out in Audition and thats it. Hope that helps.

[Eli_B_Squirrels]

Hey,
Thanks Henrik for responding. I get what you're saying, but I'm definitely not doing a great job explaining what I'm trying to do. It's sort of the opposite. I'll try and clarify-

First I edit the podcast as I usually do in Audition in a multitrack session. All my presets, leveling, and sound effects, and many many cuts happen there. Let's say for example I record for an hour and twenty minutes and ultimately cut the podcast down to an hour, trimming out various stops and starts, errors, etc. while adding SFX and tweaking levels as I go.

What I'd like to do is take the raw video I captured and match every cut that I've already made to the audio in Audition. Like if I'm editing in Audition and I cut out a five second silence from 00:00:03 to 00:00:08 (and cuts like this are done 50 times per episode), is there a way for Premiere to read my cuts in the Audition multitrack and automatically make all the same cuts to the corresponding video track? 

I know typically you would edit video first and then send the audio to Audition, but I'm trying to do the opposite. If I trim the podcast in Premiere, I would have to do an entire second pass for SFX and leveling in Audition afterwards. So I'm trying to do the audio first and then just have the video match it afterwards.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks again for your time.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

I don't think that there's any software around that would do that! Even a pair of human ears would have some difficulty, I think. Not the least of the problems is that there's no reverse reference in your audio in terms of timecode other than relative to the track start. In an old SMPTE timecode system where you get absolute timecode locked either to the audio or video you'd stand a much better chance of reverse matching individual shots and edits, but the Audition/Premiere link was never intended to work like that - as you've already noted.

If I was doing something like this, I'd do it the other way around - do the primary edit in Premiere and do the round trip exercise and sweeten the audio in Audition. And because of this lack of absolute time linking, you have to be careful; if you accidentally cut audio out, the sync will be lost when you return your mix to Premiere. Audition works fine as a 'sweetening' tool but in practical terms, that's really as far as it goes, I'm afraid.

[Eli_B_Squirrels]

Thanks as always, Steve. I suppose that was the answer I expected but was hoping would be different! We're usually down to the wire with our edits as is, but I'll play around with that method and see how quickly I can get it done. Appreciate the response!

[Henrik Heigl]

Hi,

as steve said that would not be possible in an automated way. It CAN be done maybe if you have on the Audio AND the Video at the beginning some "Clap" like from a Clapperboard that is on the Audio AND the video track. Then it would be timesynced and you can cut how you like and audio and video tracks are linked. Hope that helps.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Henrik, with the best will in the world, I don't think that you appreciate how this works at all - linking everything with a clap only works if you do no temporal edits to the timeline. The moment you disturb the frame synchronicity by removing part of it, you have no reference left whatsoever.