Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

Hello all,

I recently filmed and recorded the sound of a local gig, using a Sony Handicam and H4 with a Rode NGT2 Mic. When I synched it up, I played it through. After the second song, the sound was out of synch with the video by a milisecond. Then by the third and fourth song, it was slowly getting out synch even more. This is extremely bizzarre, as I pressed record on both the camera and H4 and let them run, so there was no breaks in either the film OR the sound recording. I used a clapper board at the beginning to help with the synch, but somehow, the film and sound tracks gradually went out of synch. Has anyone had this problem before? Or does anyone know a reason why this could have happened? I have used both pieces of equipment before for various things and this has NEVER happened to me before!

Grimmore

Hi,
This is mostly common problem in H4. It happened due to internal clock issue in your unit. You can look there or there, it was discussed many times. However it could be also problem with the camera, miniDV standard does not sync audio to video exactly, there could be 1/4s delay. DVCPRO does not have this issue.

Thank you very much for that! I guess I may have to look into purchasing a new sound recorder for my film projects. Thanks again!

Grimmore

I doubt that will be sufficient... You'll more likely need to ensure that you start and end both video and recorder with a clapper board (or equivalent -- a sound/sight cue) and use it to time-stretch the audio to the video.

See an ancient post of mine on a video forum (which I no longer visit after a 30-day "ban" for being what someone considered less than helpful)

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/showpo ... ostcount=1

Out of four audio recorders, and two video cameras, even the most accurate recorder (the BOSS BR600) was slightly off after roughly a 30minute session. The Zooms were the most out of time, and the most expensive recorder (the Marantz/Superscope -- around $800) was longer than the BR600

Unless you are using camera and recorders that both accept SMPTE time-code from a master generator I suspect you will have to manual tweak audio lengths.

If you are lucky the device clock will be steady enough that a uniform time-scaling will manage the entire duration... If not, you will have a clock that wanders and may have to do scaling on a per song basis... Since you probably can't get away with a sync marker at ever song break, make sure you retain the camera audio for use in time sync adjustments -- only muting it for the final production.