syncronizing movies to music...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Roel
  • Start date Start date
Roel

Roel

That SMART guy.
or the other way around. :D

I'm having this girl downloading the protools free-thingy, cause I really don't have any software for it. And since we're using that in school to record with, and syncronize it, I thought, well....

So, can I use protools free to record midi-tracks using a midi-sport? And how do I import my quicktime movie in there?

All very interesting questions. I just want to get that directorgirl. Help me out here will ya.
 
Can protools free do video at all? If it can it shouldn't be a problem. If it can't, you need either external equipment to sync a video to it, or you need something else than protools alltogether.
 
Dunno about video, but unless PT free is better than the high price kind, it can't do ANY MIDI -
 
knightfly said:
Dunno about video, but unless PT free is better than the high price kind, it can't do ANY MIDI -
Click to expand...

...it does, only 48 tracks MIDI and 8 audio. Check their site for sure.
www.digidesign.com
I don't use it, doesn't work in WinXP. Hey Roel, FYI, it was reviewed completely fine in Electronic Musician January 2001. (Score with Quicktime 4). Which involved Pro Tools alot. But I think it's Mac version...

;)
 
I've seen it working on the mac at school. Now, my homestudio is way better equipped than what they have over there (that's easy, they only have a mac with digi001, a synth, a midi-interface and a ROLAND MIC!), I just don't have a PC synced up with my stuff. So I just borrowed my dad's pc, and I'll be trying to get the movie running in there too. As they did on the mac. Wish me luck.

I know it does midi, just don't know if it will support my midi-interface. If it doesn't... well... Than that just sucks. :rolleyes:
I'll have a look at electronic musician if I can find it somewhere tomorrow. Thanks!

Oh, and happy newyear to all. Hope your party was better than mine! (which sucked just a bit. But it was still ok, I was with 3 girls, that makes up alot. :D )
 
Ok, here's the deal. I got the protools working on my PC. The quicktime movie-support is inly on the MAC version however. So no synchronizing at home. Too bad.

It does recognize my midi interface however...

We also recorded some stuff at school. The other group doing the same soundtrack (it's a loop with different music each time) have their recordings finished. We only have our piano parts. So, I'll burn a CD, record the violins and saxes at home next week, import it on the protools at school, sync it up etc... Busy week coming up....

So, is their any other cheap/free program on pc that allows to sync music to movies? Expensive ones? I just know that this will not be my last project with movies...
Actually, the director of this small movie asked me to help her with her thesis-project, which will probably be a documentairy about our national television, or a docusoap on the same subject. She needs someone to do the music/sound... I just hope I'm not to busy during the summer holidays to come to the jamfest. (I can't refuse this job. This girl is H O T! :D )
 
I've done music for film for indie film makers a few times and here's what I do:
I ask for the final cut or near final cut on VHS.
I have the film maker put the video on one channel of the vhs and stripe a STMPE time code on the other.
I import both the video and the time code, from the VHS using a DC10 Miro Video capture card, and Pinnacle software.
Then bring both the time code and the video into NUENDO.
Works like a charm and you can sync the music "frame acurate" to the video.

Not sure if that helps you out much though.
 
what is a good app for dubbing audio onto movie files (avi, mpeg etc.)?
 
Michael Jones said:
I've done music for film for indie film makers a few times and here's what I do:
I ask for the final cut or near final cut on VHS.
I have the film maker put the video on one channel of the vhs and stripe a STMPE time code on the other.
I import both the video and the time code, from the VHS using a DC10 Miro Video capture card, and Pinnacle software.
Then bring both the time code and the video into NUENDO.
Works like a charm and you can sync the music "frame acurate" to the video.

Not sure if that helps you out much though.
Click to expand...

Are you converting the SMPTE to MTC when you bring it into the computer?

That's pretty much how I used to do it but I never digitized the video because it was such a drain on the DAW. How much does that affect your computers performance with todays machines?
 
Nuendo will accept the STMPE time code. If there's a conversion taking place, I'm not aware of it.

Digitizing video continues to be a drain on system resources. I run a separate computer just for that purpose. It's a 2.1 GHZ Intel processor with a 100GB 10,000 rpm SCSI HD, and 1 gig of ram. This is a dedicated video capture computer separate from my dedicated audio computer, but the two machines are linked to exchange files.

Even with all that processing and HD power, I still get drop-outs in the video once in a while. Usually drop-outs happen when the producer uses a cheap VHS tape, or *gasp* one thats been recorded over before. Sometimes its actually easier to just capture the "scenes" I'll be writing music for, and place those scenes at their appropriate time. This allows for smaller files which are easier to work with, but requires more post - post production.

I have been told that I could set up 2 HD's in a raid type system, and double the bandwidth of the HD's, but, I haven't done that yet.
 
I had written for a few (VERY) indie films/projects before and for the first time recently used the computer to sync. Everything else I had done had been analog without exact in/out points or syncing to action.

I used a firewire in from a DV into the computer. I was also editing parts of the film so I did that first in a vid program. I kept it as a DV (Hi Quality). Once the scene was set I would:
1)Create a compressed AVI file for importing into Sonar. The DV specs for audio are like 32k so I couldn't import DV directly. Nothing but horrible noise.
2) Lock to SMPTE and had a track for the video audio
3)Wrote/Recorded and mixed the music
4)Exported the audio
5) Back in the video program added new audio track to DV scene.

I don't know if I should have exported both the audio and video from sonar and then converted back to DV. I don't know if this would work w/o degrading the picture quality. Not sure how this would work.

The only problem I had was that the cheap vid sw seemed like it would occasionally slip the end points by a frame, making the audio off at times by about .05 seconds. So on camera talking would at times be out of sync. DROVE ME CRAZY! Wouldn't have been an issue if I could have kept the vid and aud combined.

As far as computer performance. I was surprised how well it worked with my piii 700 384 ram 2 HD setup. Sonar in particular worked very well, assuming of courese b/c it was working with compressed video.

The DV editing worked pretty well too, though the small window with the video made it difficult to accurately view/test very detailed things like the lip syncing. Making the window larger really impacted peformance and I couldn't keep using it that way.
 
It sounds like the same problems still exist. I always used to just have the VHS with SMPTE ready to check the score every now and then and set up sync points but for the most part I worked without the picture. For sound effects that can be a little tedious but for music there usually isn't that much that has to be frame accurate except for starts, stops and transitions. I guess it just depends on the project.

I did my first 'sync' scores with a keyboard, stopwatch and a notepad ;)
 
So from what I read here, you can import digital movies into nuendo and sonar? That's about all I need to know.

The way we work(ed) now is importing a quicktime movie in protools, which allows you to drag your music in relation to the frames of your movie. So, you have one track with the video, displaying screenshots to which you can sync up. Our finished product will be written to CD, and then synced up with the final result again by some of the technicians at the movie-school. (It stays in sync since it's a digital format...)

The real syncing with the highquality movie is done by them; so I really just need a compressed video to check if the music is in the right place and works the way we want it.

And a digital video application is also rather handy to calculate the length of the pieces you need. I kinda like this kindof ocmposing. Can someone give me names of some books on soundtrack-composing? From an artistic as well as a technical as a music-theoretical point of view? Thanks!
 
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