[Todd Madson]

I have several hundred megabytes of quicktime video that
was produced with a fairly decent digital camera. Problem:

The audio and the video aren't precisely synchronized.

I need to offset the video from the audio about 2 frames (put
the video 2 frames ahead of the audio). It otherwise looks
great but reminds me of somewhat badly dubbed japanese Karate
films of the 1960s.

Would Final Cut Pro/Express be able to do this?

Are there any other commercial/shareware programs that can do
this?

Thanks.

[scottiB]

You can do it in iMovie: extract the audio onto a separate track and adjust.

[Uncle Skeleton]

I wrote a program to do similar things once:

http://nsorscher.home.comcast.net/apps/Sync.html

since then I've discovered how to implement "save-in-place" for quicktime movies, so if you want I can add that to the app (and also a command-line interface), to make it kind of a batch-sync utility (but I won't bother if you're not going to use it). The advantage to this over iMovie/FCP etc would be that this would not have to re-render the video on import or export; there would be no new file writing of any kind actually. Would that be helpful?

[nate_02]

I believe Final Cut Pro has a tool that will correct that. I've never used it but I think I came accross it once.

Otherwise, like ScottiB said, just do it in iMovie.

[Todd Madson]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
I wrote a program to do similar things once:

http://nsorscher.home.comcast.net/apps/Sync.html

since then I've discovered how to implement "save-in-place" for quicktime movies, so if you want I can add that to the app (and also a command-line interface), to make it kind of a batch-sync utility (but I won't bother if you're not going to use it). The advantage to this over iMovie/FCP etc would be that this would not have to re-render the video on import or export; there would be no new file writing of any kind actually. Would that be helpful?

This might actually work. I find iMovie unusable (the latest version) on my G4/400 - it's just too slow. I've tried Final Cut Express in the store and it seems nicer but a more specific tool would be better. I'll give it a try on a test movie and see how it works.....thanks for the suggestion!

[Uncle Skeleton]

oh you said MB I was imagining hundreds of movies over hundreds of GB... my app should do you just fine as is, especially if it's just one file. Just save your changes at the end (there's no "are you sure" warning) and don't set any "anchors," because after that it will start scaling only parts of the video, when what you want is just to slide the audio back and forth (which is what it will do if you don't set any "anchors"). Also there's one known bug (in Apple's NSMovieView class) that makes the app freeze up if you scrub to a part of a movie where there's audio and no video.

I agree that iMovie is currently unusably slow, and even if it weren't, it's overkill for this job

[Todd Madson]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
oh you said MB I was imagining hundreds of movies over hundreds of GB... my app should do you just fine as is, especially if it's just one file. Just save your changes at the end (there's no "are you sure" warning) and don't set any "anchors," because after that it will start scaling only parts of the video, when what you want is just to slide the audio back and forth (which is what it will do if you don't set any "anchors"). Also there's one known bug (in Apple's NSMovieView class) that makes the app freeze up if you scrub to a part of a movie where there's audio and no video.

I agree that iMovie is currently unusably slow, and even if it weren't, it's overkill for this job

In this project there are 19 movies between 7 and 100 megs with five of the clips between 80-100 megs. I tried your program and it seems to work as advertised which is nice.

I also tried iMovie which also has the benefit of giving you the ability to slide the audio back and forth to find the best fit but it's also real slow. Fun.

[Griggsy]

Originally posted by Todd Madson:
I also tried iMovie which also has the benefit of giving you the ability to slide the audio back and forth to find the best fit but it's also real slow. Fun.

You can do in Final cut xpress as well, just inlink the audio from the video, had your problem in reverse for something i was working on

[Nap]

Originally posted by Griggsy:
You can do in Final cut xpress as well, just inlink the audio from the video, had your problem in reverse for something i was working on

I have VideoShop 4.5, which came with the Interview USB digitizer. VS is nice for this as it optionally shows either a timeline with frames (adjustable from each frame to one each minute or longer) or shows storyboarded separate scenes. In timeline mode it shows the waveform of the audio track. It is not like working blind as in iMovie where the audio track is a solid color.
Just hold down the option key and tracks can be moved independently forwards or backwards in time. They normally are synch locked.

[Todd Madson]

Originally posted by Griggsy:
You can do in Final cut xpress as well, just inlink the audio from the video, had your problem in reverse for something i was working on

I'll probably end up with the new version of this.

[Todd Madson]

Originally posted by Nap:
I have VideoShop 4.5, which came with the Interview USB digitizer. VS is nice for this as it optionally shows either a timeline with frames (adjustable from each frame to one each minute or longer) or shows storyboarded separate scenes. In timeline mode it shows the waveform of the audio track. It is not like working blind as in iMovie where the audio track is a solid color.
Just hold down the option key and tracks can be moved independently forwards or backwards in time. They normally are synch locked.

I like that idea too. I'll have to do some research to figure out what works best.