For quite some time now, I'd had to manually adjust my audio track with my video track. (I use a lav mike and edit my audio tracks seperately before adding them to the PD15 library). usually, I have only needed to advance the audio 2 or 3 frames ahead of the video to match the two up.

However, this morning I started editing a scene and I had to LAG the audio a full 40 frames behind the video!

Forty frames! Jeez Louise! A full one and a third seconds behind the video! That's just obscene!



So let me backtrack a bit and clue you in on my procedure: When recording a scene, I get everything all set up. I hit the 'Record' button on the camera, then 'Record' on the audio recorder, then clap three times right in front of the camera. This gives me three visible spikes in both devices audio tracks.

In post, I drop both into the timeline and look for those three spikes. If I line them up visually in the timeline, the audio track is always lagging behind the video track's audio (which I mute for production). I found that advancing the audio track just 2 or 3 frames ahead of the lines them up perfectly.

However, today was just maddening. I had to slide the audio track a full 40 frames after the video for the two to 'line up' over the speakers.

What gives?