Syncing film to music without timecode

Back on the case with the video for Kirsty’s debut single ‘Feels Good’. I’ve been experimenting with how to sync the film to sound and have come up with a method that works quite well without the benefit of a camera that has time code. It’s a bit time consuming and it involves chopping the song up into seperate parts. eg: in this case the track arrangement is

*a- Intro , *b -verse 1, *c - verse bridge, *d - Chorus 1, *e - Solo, *f -verse 2, *g - verse2 bridge, *h - chorus 2, *i - end solo

When filming, I had preceded each of the audio parts of the arrangement with a one bar (four beat) click. Working on the intro I shot four angles simulating a four camera shoot using the built in mic of the camera to capture the audio. Because I shot it in the music studio I was able to use Logic to play each part of the song back, alternatively on location I could have used a CD Ghetto blaster (or Ipod with speakers) with each track on the CD being a part of the arrangement as outlined above.

Once I had recorded my four angles for the intro I was keen to see how it worked in Final Cut so I captured the takes as seperate clips and edited then down using the last of the 4 clicks as a cue. I created a film sequence on Final cut named Intro to correspond to the audio clip. I then imported the same chunk of music, again editing it to the last of the 4 clicks. Using a great function on Final Cut called multiclip I was able to view all four clips at the same time, doing some fine editing to make sure they all synced up. Then while reviewing the clips I clicked on each clip that I wanted to see in the master editing window until I had a complete take of the Intro I was happy with.

To cut a long story short I then repeated this process for each seperate segment of the song/film arrangement and at the end I bounced each part into a master programme with the full version of the song,  I then stitched the edited (bounced) film parts together for a seamless end result. The only thing to watch out for here is to make sure your film clips slightly exceeds the length of the audio part. This way you have the necessary cross fades into each subsequent part of the arrengement. If it’s too tight the edits will be too short and you will have to go back a few steps to sort it out.

Keeping each segment of the film as a seperate sequence makes it easy to go back and re-edit any part that needs adjusting though, just re-bounce the file and place it back in your master programme.

Kirsty Music - Feels Good

We are currently working on the debut single for Vocalist and Electric Violinist Kirsty. The song entitled ‘Feels Good’ is an acoustic guitar based song featuring electric violin and a strong dance groove.The track will be completed this month and then a video will be craerted prior to release in March 08. For the promotion of the single we will be doing a radio tour in Scotland and playing small venues in preperation for the main release. For the ‘live’ version the song will be performed acoustically.