Editting from multiple Zoom recordings of the same event plus local iPhone

[SoundTeam]

Hello

Newbie to Premier here, though have been using Audition since it was CoolEdit in the 90s, on multitrack sound design.

I recently offered to edit a short play we perfrormed on Zoom, but I'm getting mself in knots over sync.

We recorded both sides of the zoom call separately and then shared the files.  I also recorded at my end ona second camera location (an iPhone).

We clappered it at each end.  Now I need to line the video and audio up in the multitrack, before I can 'mix' it.  I suspect this migth count as a Multi-cam, but I'm not yet familiar with that workflow, and I'm not sure I shopuld be complicated it with that just yet.  But I'm poreared to learn, if that's the righjt route.

My first issue is with precise lining up.  I am using frame markers in each clip, each set to the clap as it arrived from the far side to the 3 clips (far side zoom, near side zoom, near side camera 2).

I can see that the audio clap occurs partwau between the frame points, and differntly in each oif the 3 clips, of course.  Is there a way of adjusting the position of the clip by times less than one frame?  I know that makes no odds for the video at 30FPS, but that does leave me with up to 30ms or so stagger on the sound.  As both near and far video will be on the screen, this could become a lip sync issue.

After we solve that, I am not sure how I deal best with the workflow to lock all sound and all video to one reference.  I can lock to the far sound clap from the far sound track, but then the near sound as picked up at the far end is delayed.  I guess I'd need to do a job on the audio tracks so that the near side actor is only on heaard from the nears side audio, having synched on that.  And vice cversa for the far side actor.  That soudns liek a lot of editting, and may be a problem if the actors talk at the same time, which they do.

Have I made this over-complicated?  Am I missing an easier workflow concept?

Thank you

Paul

[gerikp]

You'll want to view your timeline in audio units and you will able to adjust at the subframe level. Right-click at the top of your timeline where your timecode is and pull down to "Show Audio Time Units" then zoom in and you can move your clips more precisely. But before you do that I would make sure your clips are in Constant Frame Rate and at the same Frame rates. You can transcode your files using Handbrake to convert them to Constant Frame Rate. And just make sure your clips are all the same frame rates like 24fps, or whatever you are using.

[SoundTeam]

Brilliant.  Thank you.  And the top on frame rate was spot on and a life saver.  Zoom at 25 FPS fixed, the iPhone 29.98 variable!   Hopefully Handbrake now fixing that. 

next thing is to figure how just how to line up, when I have two ends of a zoom call, both with their own audio track that includes the other end, but with just their own video.  I guess I need to settle on one of the audio streams (eg actor 1) and line up the clap from actor 2 as they arrive at that actor 1's recording, and check that the video from actor 1 lines up with its audio as heard from the actor 2 feed.  And then think about how to key in the iPhone second camera of actor 2, I guess the same way.  The tricky part is if I want to use any of the audio from the iPhone in the mix, but maybe that will work out ok.  

many thanks again

[gerikp]

Glad I could help. Unfortunately, I just helped with the easy part, lol. I'm sure you will figure the rest out. But reach out if you run into any more roadblocks.

[Rag and Bone]

Yes, use the multi-camera workflow.

It's a fun way to work. If you follow the steps on that page, you should be good to go.  If you prefer a video tutorial, google finds lots of them with a Premiere Multi-cam search.

In the "Create Multi-camera Source Sequence" dialog box you can choose to sync by timecode, markers or audio waveforms. There may be enough audio in common to sync by waveform, and it costs nothing to try, but it sounds like you're ready with the markers anyway.