The Weekly Filmschool #4: Sync Sound
Pretty neat huh? Using an iPod as a flash recorder/microphone. It's a trick of editing I'll show you how to do below.
It may seem pretty hard to believe, but really high-end video and film cameras don't have built-in sound recorders.
So why does a crappy $100 camera have sound and not a $200,000 camera? Well, because that's not what a camera is for. You want the camera (and especially cameraman) to be focused on nothing else but recording the visual scene. Not to mention that any decently sized production can have several different microphones that would make plugging into a camera impractical and awkward. Sound is handled by a separate team with a separate reel-to-reel tape or flash recorder.
The sound is later synced up in editing with the help of a very simple device: a clapperboard. Its image is iconic with Hollywood movies, and has been in use since the 1920's. Its primary use is so that the person in editing has a definite visual indication of when the film and soundtrack should sync together. The editor advances the footage frame by frame until the two pieces of the clapperboard meet, and that's where the beginning of the "clap" sound should start. The board also provides useful information like who's the cameraman, who's the director, scene, take, and even timecode for video productions.
Well, that's all well and good, but how does that relate to somebody who has a dumpy $100 camcorder with built-in sound? Well, sync sound can still be very useful. Almost every self-respecting nerd has an iPod, and wireless microphone systems are expensive, so why spend hundreds of dollars on something like that when you can just use what you have in a clever way?
The first thing you want to do is find in your footage where the sound event takes place. In my case, it was when I clapped my hands.
Once you find the EXACT visual instance, you'll want to put a marker on the clip in the timeline. In Final Cut, it's just the "M" key. In Adobe Premiere, you have to go to Marker -> Set Clip Marker -> Unnumbered.
Next, you want to unlink the video from the sound so you can edit them independently. In FC it's simple CMD+L, in Premiere, it's Right Click -> Unlink.
Now you have to scrub through the sound file that the iPod recorded. You have to find the "clap" sound. Place a marker on the beginning of the clap's waveform.
With snapping on you'll be able to line up the two markers perfectly. You'll probably want to suppress or cut out the main soundtrack as I did.
That's it! You may run into a little trouble with the file format that the iPod produces. On a Mac you can just use quicktime to export it as a WAV file, and I ran into no trouble on the PC, so you should be good.
