Please help this Avid Editor to sync in Premiere

[thijs.leegwater]

Hi everyone,

I have a project where I need to sync things up. I recorded about 15 clips of video. For audio, I used 2 wire mics that I had running for the entire duration of the shoot. So I have 2 long audio files.

The videocamera had no TC, so unfortunalely I cannot use that for syncing. 

Luckily Premiere has the function to sync through audio analysis. So I dragged everything on the timeline, selected all and right clicked "synchronize". 

Except... I couldn't. It was greyed out. The reason for this seemed to be that this function only works when you select 1 clip of video and 1 clip of audio. Once you have selected more than one videoclip the synchronize option greyes out. Since I have 15 videofiles and 2 audiofiles on the timeline, this is a problem.

My solution to this was to select 1 clip, and 1 audio file. Hit synchronize and do this 15 times over until everything was synced. 

I feel like there should be an easier way than this, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you.

[R Neil Haugen]

Do that in the bin, put them all in one bin. Select all, right-click/Create Multicam. It will take the separate audio as the lead item for syncing.

The Long Form guide (mostly written by Jarle) and his follow-up blog post giving further multicam details are the best documentation on Premiere's multicam process.

Adobe Long-form and Episodic Best Practices Guide 

Jarle’s blog expansion of the pdf Multicam section: Premiere Pro Multicam

[thijs.leegwater]

Thank you, I have tried this method and it almost gets me where I need to be.

This creates a multicam sequence. One long videoclip with all video in it, and audio synced.

Now the first clip I shot is in track 1 within the multicam clip. The second clip is on track 2, the 3rd on 3 etc.  So whenever I go to the next clip on the timeline I need to switch cameras, so to speak. 

Then I discovered the simplify sequence function. I selected "flatten video tracks" and "remove vertical gaps on video". This gave me a nice timeline where all video was V1 and the 2 wire mics on A1 & A2.

The audio from the camera was still all over the place. The audio from clip 1 is on A3, clip 2 on A4, etc. 

Unfortunately it is impossible to delete vertical audio gaps so these I just move manually.

But there is a bigger problem. Somehow any audio that is not on A1 or A2 I can't hear. I see a waveform, I see the audio meter jump but hear nothing.

This happens after I have simplified the sequence, before that I can hear all tracks just fine.

Any idea how to prevent this?

[R Neil Haugen]

They've had an issue with audio on 'lower' tracks for some users, supposedly fixed in the public beta. That might be it.

Or it might be the audio choices in the create multicam window, I'm not sure.

Did you read through the multicam bits I suggested? As if you didn't, you may well have not done things as well as you needed.

[thijs.leegwater]

Yes, I have read through your links. Couldn't find anything on settings that disable audio tracks. I'll have another look as this was not the problem I expected to come up.

In the meantime, ill just use the Synchronize function one clip at the time. This seems to be the most bug free workflow.

Thank you for your help.

[R Neil Haugen]

This is always more complex than we'd like it to be.