Software/hardware for syncing audio to film for soundtracks/commercials et cetera...

pisces7378

New member
I was just wondering if anyone here is into syncing audio to film? I want to expand my audio system to syncing audio with digital film. I want to do independant film soundtracks, commercials, as well as producing short films for coorperate videos. (We have all had to sit through some coorperate video where some company big-wig sitts there explain the goals of the company for the coming year over some stock midi crap from the early 80's rejects.
I have absolutely NO IDEA about this stuff, and I plan to go to a school to do a little course for 6-9 months to get a bit of experience with professionals. But in the mean time I was just wonderng if anyone on here was into this stuff so we could discuss what software people are using to make all that stuff happen. I use Logic Audio Platinum 5 to track my audio. I have heard that Pro Tools has a large possibility to expand to easily syncing up video to the audio. But I am not very interested in switching to Pro-Tools.

Here is what I ASSUME I will be needing to do...
I will need to take VHS video tape, turn it into digital film on the hard drive of my PC, then syncronize it to some standard protocol for syncing audio to the film, and then mix it all together similarly to a finaly mix of audio, except over top of a film.
Then get it all back somehow to a VHS tape with the added music/audio on top of the film. I have no idea how a Hollywood FILM gets teh sound imbedded onto those huge film rolls. Does anyone know of any serious books that deal with this on a home studio budget? I am looking for information that gives SERIOUS information but doesn't start off with... "Ok take your $60,000 miying desk, and hook it up to your $15,000 Digital Film monitoring system."
More like... "Take whatever mixer you have (Mackie 16 channel, and hook it up to your family camcorder, and record it on your hard drive. Then use this $300 program to do it all." Maybe this isn't a reality but I am deffinitly more singing this tune rather than the $75,000 version.
Anyway, thanks for your answers and advice.

Mike
 
You can digitize the video but it will tie up a lot of resources. The cheap and dirty but still acceptable method is to get a tape that has a SMPTE stripe on one of the audio channels. You then get a SMTE to MIDI converter and connect it to your midi port. Your sequencer software will now sync with the movie.

The only down side is that you control everything with the vcr and you cant do frame by frame. For FX it would be limiting but that is fine for music.

There are some newer methods but that is how I used to do it.
 
Back
Top