Question For All Wedding & Event Producers

[Ben Balser, ACT]

When you capture, do you use the "Capture Now" method, and have you ever had audio sync drift problems that were verified to not be due to your audio being recorded at 44.1kHz/12-bit?

Personally, I did wedding/event videography for a few years, always used this to get whole hour plus long tapes, and never had a problem. I've never been asked about the problem, and know no one (that I am aware of) who has ever had a problem with Capture Now.

Having asked around, I hear the claim Capture Now has an audio sync drift problem, but can't find anyone who's actually experienced the problem, which leads me to wonder if this is not simply another FCP urban myth.

Appreciate all feedback.

[Kirk Leonard]

I usually log all my tapes and then perform a batch capture. When I know that the entire tape is a single clip, like an entire wedding ceremony, I perform capture now. I have never experienced audio sync drift problems. The only time I had something similar to this is during capturing the image froze. The capture continued but the video and audio was out of sync for the duration of the image freeze. That has only happened once and that was a long time ago.

[Ben Balser, ACT]

Ok, that freeze is a hardware problem. Yep, just what I experience. Anyone else using Capture Now just fine, or with problems?

[Richard Sprinkle]

I've used capture now plenty of times and never had an issue. Yes, it's better practice to log and capture as a general rule, but I can't think of amtime when I had a synch issue. There WAS some issue a few years ago that was reported that involved synch issues on long captures when capturing from certain Canon cameras. Could that be what you're hearing about?

[Ben Balser, ACT]

No, a few folks are claiming it is a current problem, and I simply am trying to document it. Although unsuccessfully. Problem with Canon cameras was folks recording at 44.1/12 rather than 48/16. I got lots of emails about that way back when.

[Andreas Frentzos]

I use capture now and capture 1 hour at once, I get the message that the audio does not match the sequence settings, and I never had an audio drift. That being said the only time I get an audio drift is when is when I capture using non controllable device (VHS) tape.

[Ben Balser, ACT]

Probably cause your audio in fact does not match your Sequence settings. Check both. When capturing from non-digital formats, be sure you don't have any odd frame off-set configurations. And the theory is proving more and more to be urban myth.

[Louis Bertucci]

I shoot in mini dv and capture the entire tape at once using capture now. I have occassionally run into the problem you describe but it has happened rarely. The solution is simply to shift the audio tract up or down line a few frames to correct the problem. I use various Sony cameras so I cannot relate the issue to one camera or the other. I consider this situation as one more thing to deal with in my editing but a minor issue in the overall scheme of things.
Louis Bertucci
Europa Video Productions

[Ben Balser, ACT]

AH! Now THAT is very interesting. And only by a frame or two, eh? Hmmm...

What version of FCP?
What Mac model, speed, RAM?

[Igor]

I've decompressed some mini DVD footage from .VOB files into .MOV files using Pro Res to be able to edit with FCP. Everything went fine, Audio was sync well at the beginning of clips but was getting drifted more futher down the line. By the end of 15 min footage the shift was about 1 sec. Is there any options how to maintain it, or the only solution to shift audio back manually during editing?

[Ben Balser, ACT]

How are you transcoding from .VOB to Pro Res, exactly? Something in the transcode is not converting the audio properly. What is the sample rate of the audio in the .VOB files? Mini-DVD, which means recorded from a DV cam, right?