Sound syncing multi-clips in a 20 minute ProRes444 file? Tips please.

Matt Stevens · October 30, 2015

Gents and ladies, this is my first 8mm project with sync sound and I have four 20 minute ProRes files of my footage. In each 20 minute stretch of footage I will have mutiple scenes and take and each one needs sound synced up. But the only way I know how to do this in Premiere Pro is to select each scene, drag that individual scene into my timeline and then sync. But that would be insane as I would have all of those sequences in my timeline and have to move them around like a jigsaw puzzle (there are 7 takes of the scene featured in the pic below). The sound will ONLY be linked to the clip in the timeline.

I would like to sync the sound files to each section so that when I put the video in my SOURCE window, the sound is there as well. The sound synced up for each individual clip.

Is this making sense?

Now there must be a way to do this, either in Premiere or maybe Prelude, but I have had absolutely no help over at the Adobe forums. Seems if you are not popular or a full time poster you get ignored.

I am on a Windows 7 based PC with Adobe CC (latest) so I have Premiere Pro, Prelude, etc. I have never used Prelude as I have just upgraded from CS5.

Thanks in advance.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Matt Stevens

Adrian Sierkowski · October 30, 2015

Can't you just right-click them, choose link, and then drag into a new bin? Then it should prompt you to rename the clip and treat it as a single video/audio.

Matt Stevens · October 30, 2015

I was completely unaware of that feature. i just tried it and it works so thank you.

Adrian Sierkowski · October 30, 2015

My pleasure. There may be an easier/better way; but it works for me on the off occasion i need to fire up an NLE.

Jay Young · October 30, 2015

As far as I know, and as a long time Premiere user, there is no way to accurately sync separate audio and video elements OFF of the timeline unless both elements contain timecode and you can tell the computer to align each element by timecode - however this may not even be possible in Premiere.

What Adrian is talking about doesn't actually SYNC the audio to the marker, but will LINK the two separate elements together which is perhaps what you wanted.

You may get a faster answer by trying /r/premiere

Edit: Very interested to see your project when finished!

Edited October 30, 2015 by Jay Young

Matt Stevens · October 30, 2015

Thanks Jay. I am actually having a hell of a time getting started because of the DIGITAL footage we shot. The last two days of shooting were for an interview style scene that is the backbone of the story. We used the Sony FS700 but unfortunately the assets for one of those two days are not being read properly by Premiere Pro or Prelude.

What this means is takes longer than 2.75 minutes (most of what we shot) are split up into pieces and Premiere (and Prelude) sees them as separate clips/takes. This makes it impossible to edit and sync sound.

The second day's footage is being read and imported properly. They copied the contents of the entire camera card so Premiere sees and understands it all and I have full clips.

Below is a snap of my system. See those four video files? Those are NOT four takes. That is one take split up into four pieces because the assets were not provided to me correctly. You can see the folder structure on the left.

The XML files for each clip is in each folder so the data is still there. i just need to find a way to put it all back together.

From what I understand the 2K data was recorded with the odyssey-recorder. That´s an external device you can attach to the FS700 an record directly into ProRes or DNxHd Codec. We recorded ProRes. But how I wish I knew how to import the data!

Jay Young · October 30, 2015

So, ProRes support on Premiere is wonky at best.

You recorded ProRes, as I understand (I don't usually use ProRes so your mileage may vary), ProRes is only decoded in 32-bits on Windows as QuickTime is only available as a 32-bit program.

Now that we have this framework, I can understand what's happening. Your files are being truncated at 4-gigabytes as that is the filesize limitation on a 32-bit system.

64-bit ProRes decode is available for (Mac OS X 10.8 or higher only).

As far as my reading this morning, I have not been able to find a better explanation. I don't believe you'll be able to do anything about the file size limit on a Windows machine while using the ProRes format.

DNxHD might be able to work around this problem. And of course DPX would get around this issue completely (which is what I use).

Matt Stevens · October 30, 2015

The Sony camera records the files in pieces. As you can see at pic below. So it is inherent in the format. When contents are copied to the hard drive complete (the entire folder structure) Premiere can understand this and treats the split up files as one. But for some reason that is not happening with my 2k footage, which was recorded to an external recorded and not the Sony FS700 camera card.

This screen-grab shows the contents of the camera card (which Premiere Pro understands and presents as one file, not many).