Help with Audio & Video syncing

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Joe
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Evening all.

So I currently use an Olympus O-MD E-M1 Mk3 for both stills & video clips of wildlife (mainly birds) - however I have recently got a dedicated field audio recorder; the Zoom F6 along with a Rode NTG 5 shotgun mic, so that I can record higher quality audio. However eventually I want to get to the stage where I’m also using the audio kit to record the sound of whatever I’m filming with camera; where I’ll then sync them together in some post software, so that I have video clips with the high quality audio.

My question is, how best can this be done? I understand there seems to be many ways people do this from Time Syncing, to syncing together the waves of in camera audio and the external recorder audio all the way to traditional clap method (probs not best for wildlife). So yeah just wondered if anyways has done a similar thing with an Oly camera or different and how?

Thanks :)
 
When you get to using an external recorder - still record the sound off your camera. It's easy to sync both audio sources in decent video editing software - then just mute the camera audio.

I do this in premiere Pro.
 
When you get to using an external recorder - still record the sound off your camera. It's easy to sync both audio sources in decent video editing software - then just mute the camera audio.

I do this in premiere Pro.

Thank you for this, it does sound like the most effective way of doing it.

On a follow on note though, would it still be advised do create a larger sound ones both are running so that I have a visual place to start? Or can the camera and recorder start together?
 
It does help sometimes to have a visual spike. Hence the old clapper.

This may help

https://SPAM/@AndrewKanFilm/how-to-easily-sync-audio-and-video-in-premiere-pro-ea75b2ade8e
 
Recording sound on the camera as well as the external sound recorded is definitely the way to go.

If both sound tracks are similar syncing up with software works well. However if the external mic is picking up sound that is not audible on the cameras own mic the software will struggle. This where a clap or similar can help. But this might not be very practical for your situation.

Another option could be to feed the sound from the external recorder to your camera. This would make sure the sound tracks would match. You may need to tweak the sound by a few frames if there is difference in timing compared with the video track.
 
Recording sound on the camera as well as the external sound recorded is definitely the way to go.

If both sound tracks are similar syncing up with software works well. However if the external mic is picking up sound that is not audible on the cameras own mic the software will struggle. This where a clap or similar can help. But this might not be very practical for your situation.

Another option could be to feed the sound from the external recorder to your camera. This would make sure the sound tracks would match. You may need to tweak the sound by a few frames if there is difference in timing compared with the video track.
Thank you for these extra tips, very much appreciated :)
 
When you get to using an external recorder - still record the sound off your camera. It's easy to sync both audio sources in decent video editing software - then just mute the camera audio.

I do this in premiere Pro.

This is the the method most people use.

If you are doing a lot of this you might want to consider swapping your Zoom F6 for Sounddevices Mixpre3 ii, it will probably cost you £200 to swap but the Mixpre has trigger record via the cameras HDMI which means it will start and stop recording the audio when you start and stop recoding on the camera.

The HDMI port also allowing the camera and recorder to share time code making it very easy to automatically sync in post. The Zoom F6 is an excellent recorder but unfortunately it doesn't support Time Code over HDMI which is the reason I sold mine.
 
This is the the method most people use.

If you are doing a lot of this you might want to consider swapping your Zoom F6 for Sounddevices Mixpre3 ii, it will probably cost you £200 to swap but the Mixpre has trigger record via the cameras HDMI which means it will start and stop recording the audio when you start and stop recoding on the camera.

The HDMI port also allowing the camera and recorder to share time code making it very easy to automatically sync in post. The Zoom F6 is an excellent recorder but unfortunately it doesn't support Time Code over HDMI which is the reason I sold mine.

Thank you for the tip - as I have literally only just got the F6 and it’s my first ever time recording proper audio like this, I will learn that side of things first - then once I get round to trying the video with the audio I will give the above method a try and then yeah in the future may look at something with the hdmi option :)

Thank you for you help though :)
 
No need to clap. Just tap both the camera and mic. That will create a big enough spike to line up in software.I tend to do three taps, as it’s easier to line up, 3 than 1
 
No need to clap. Just tap both the camera and mic. That will create a big enough spike to line up in software.I tend to do three taps, as it’s easier to line up, 3 than 1
Thank you for the tip! - Actually this probable would be more efficient particularly when recording wildlife as I could imagine a clap could scare away the wildlife especially birds :)
 
Thank you for the tip! - Actually this probable would be more efficient particularly when recording wildlife as I could imagine a clap could scare away the wildlife especially birds :)

Yep. I did lots of filming/audio recording in the Forest getting bird songs and wildlife noises over lockdown. The last thing you want to do is make too much noise. Light tap on both devices creates a large spike, but doesn’t make any noise externally.
 
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