Hello,

the problem is not related to the video editor. Any NLE editor like PD will suffer the same problem.

What you should try is changing the settings in the video camera. Go into setup and if you can, set the shutter speed of the videocamera to its absolute slowest speed and then try again.

The professionals use a sync between the projector and the camera to gate every frame of the projected image to the camera, but thats probably not available on most home projectors. If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

Thanks for the reply... i greatly appreciate it. I looked at the digital camera - video shutter speeds are not adjustable. The projector I am using is a 30+ year old projector. It doesn't even technically HAVE a variable speed control... I adjust the speed by taking off the back and tweaking the capacitors to adjust the speed.

So - am I understanding you correctly that none of these types of software programs will do this? (i.e. Allow me to split apart the audio and video tracks and shift the playback speeds independently...)

Ooops - forgot to include my other issue... Not sure if it is the same issue or a different issue.

I also transferred a bunch of VHS films to digital with a transfer box. (VHS player plugs into a box and then the box plugs into the computer). I tried converting some of my "old favorite" VHS movies and home movies to digital and have noticed issues with the video and audio.... The sync gets off and the "mouth movement" doesn't really match the sound any more. With animated films, the sound sync problems isn't as obvious but there are issues with the display of the animation... it is... chopped up into lines... From google - I am thinking that is something involving interlacing vs progressive scan but I don't know enough to know how/what needs to be done to fix it.... Will this software allow me to "realign" the audio sync and/or fix the interlacing issue? Or am I wanting to do something that is not really possible?

If anyone has a recommendation on a website with good basic information that I can use to learn the proper terms/etc for this - I would love to know about it.

OK, here's what's really going on.

The cine projector is running at a nominal 30 frames per second (fps) but its speed varies plus and minus fractionally all the time. so at any instant it might ne 29 fps or 31 fps. you cant predict. Also it may get faster as the reel empties.
Now, frankly, your domestic video camera also hunts around its nominal speed but only by a tiny fraction. The technical term is wow and flutter.

What you are seeing on the video you shot is the dark inter-frame time creeping into view because there is no sync between the two devices. You are seeing the annoying flicker.

What can you do ?

If you have plenty of spare time you could laboriously plod along the entire length of the video recording looking for dark or blurry frames every fifteen or so frames and replace those video frames with a copy of the fourteenth frame. You would already have split off the audio track and left it untouched and locked so it cant be moved or edited.

Now, assuming you went through the entire video track pasting over every bad frame with the previous frame, and now run the movie, you would have removed most of the flicker, though some frames would still be blurry because the camera shot the image while two adjoining cine frames were moving across the lamp. Some projectors do this though most hold the gate dark while the frames settle and then the gate opens to allow light to shine through the film.

Anyway if you are prepared to plod through all the frames on the video, this is a reasonable though tedious solution.
Personally I tried this a year ago and while the dark-time frames were obvious and removed, there were still many frames which were catching the time when the gate was just closing or just opening. If you replace all offending frames you end up with jerky movement of the film subjects while running or playing.

I spoke with a cine buff today about maybe obtaining a sync pulse and the question was then what to do with it, because your camera has no feature to use it.

You must keep the audio track untouched and keep the overall length of the video the same, replacing bad frames, not just deleting them or the video will grow shorter each time and the sound will grow out of lip-sync with the sound.
But its worth testing 30 seconds worth of cine to see how it works out. If you think its worth the time then good.
Commercial cine to video companies use a special camera with an optical sync input which is monitoring the dark-time and you may decide its better to pay their price to convert the cine.
If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

re - VHS

same kind of issue, lack of sync.

Now you do have a different kind of solution to all of the above, Get artistic.

Lets assume you have old cine and VHS of a wedding with great-uncle Charlie and the grand-children.

Scavenge the best bits of VHS and or cine, maybe clips of ten seconds or so. Get some still pictures from the family scrapbook and add them to a medley of images. Keep the sound from the chosen clips and others as voice-overs for the still pictures. You have now created a completely different animal, a collage of memories. It may only last a minute or two but it will contain sights and sounds from the past, perhaps interspersed with a wedding march stolen from the internet.

Now you can post the video to a web location like Facebook and share it. If the movie lasts just 60 or 120 seconds but has movie images of Granny and Granpa, your family will think you are a master - which you will be !

If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

Quote: Ooops - forgot to include my other issue... Not sure if it is the same issue or a different issue.

I also transferred a bunch of VHS films to digital with a transfer box. (VHS player plugs into a box and then the box plugs into the computer). I tried converting some of my "old favorite" VHS movies and home movies to digital and have noticed issues with the video and audio.... The sync gets off and the "mouth movement" doesn't really match the sound any more. With animated films, the sound sync problems isn't as obvious but there are issues with the display of the animation... it is... chopped up into lines... From google - I am thinking that is something involving interlacing vs progressive scan but I don't know enough to know how/what needs to be done to fix it.... Will this software allow me to "realign" the audio sync and/or fix the interlacing issue? Or am I wanting to do something that is not really possible?

If anyone has a recommendation on a website with good basic information that I can use to learn the proper terms/etc for this - I would love to know about it.

I've done exactly what you are doing, and I had similar problems and more (dropped frames, and so forth). Fortunately the company that made the transfer box gave me excellent support, and they concluded that the box was defective. They sent me a replacement and I had no further problems.

I haven't tried animations, these were the typical wedding videos. I was working off a second-generation tape (the videographer kept the original), and the quality was a bit disappointing; but I didn't have the original to compare it to, and I was still learning PD so I didn't know how to tweak it.

I'm not sure that helps. Jerry Schwartz

Videocentricity ..................

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