Power Director 16 - Strange track behaviour when syncing audio

Norlaine

Newbie Joined: Aug 17, 2019 21:14 Messages: 1 Offline

Solved by

Sep 16, 2019 10:13

Hi,

I am creating music videos from a live concert using 4 camcorders. Yes, I have permission from the artists and the band will be using some of the video in promos. I have the tracks loaded (video and audio) Tracks 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I have one full concert track shot from in front of the stage (other cameras were from side stage on drummer and guitar player and one roving cam). I was going to use the front footage as the base for audio syncing. I wasn't sure if PD 16 could handle syncing more than 2 audio tracks at once. I selected and synced the main track and one of the other tracks and they jumped from where I had placed them (track 3 and track 4) down to track 5 and 6. I have synced a lot of audio (similar application - I make music vids - and have not had this happen before. It is difficult to work with a 2-track gap in my timeline. I usually work with 2 cameras, so this is a bit different set-up.

Anyone know how to keep tracks from moving around? Do I need my main sync track to be track 1? Anyone else have this happen?

Thanks in advance for any wisdom you can offer!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 16. 2019 10:18

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Sep 16, 2019 10:39

You can do all of this in the MultiCam Designer, and the clips will always remain in their original tracks. The MCD is limited to 4 tracks.

If you want to use the main timeline, PD can sync up to 99 tracks and will always move the clips to lower tracks after syncing - but you can freely select them all and move them to whatever tracks you want them on. The only thing that matters is the horizontal placement relative to each other so they will stay in audio sync.

The only reason that track order matters is so you can set content on higher numbered tracks to be visually "on top of/in front of" the lower numbered tracks. Track order has no effect on the audio, and you can turn off the audio of all but the desired track, or mute all the unwanted clips no matter which tracks they're on.

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Midimannz

Newbie Location: New Zealand Joined: Aug 28, 2013 19:18 Messages: 16 Offline

Sep 23, 2019 15:05

I also edit music performances and have asked this same question in the past. When I have seven or eight video tracks it takes up a lot of screen real estate and it’s time consuming to place the sync video clips back on to one video track.

One video track per per audio sync would make good editing sense to me after five years of this time wasted process- or at the very least, give the user the choice in their own set up, that is, turning the option on or off

Remember to ‘lock’ the video track when you’re done syncing too. This prevents PD ‘drifting’ and relocating the video out of sequence again as often happens on large projects. It can move video by up to 20-30 seconds forwards

you might also find it faster to use one or two multi-cam mixes, producing a project from each and then editing on two or three tracks manually. I do this on video where I get up to 10 mixes. I choose my audio source and mix four similar videos at a time on multi cam mix. I mix long distance crowd video first-usually after I have saved a rendered individual clip after moving the video up to 17 seconds to fit the audio soundtrack. Then I multi cam the close up videos. At each complete play through I render and save the mix, then remix another one, then another. The end result gives me three edited video tracks that I can send throughout multi cam mix for the last time.
There is a pull down option in multi cam which lets you choose the audio source, any of the four clips soundtrack, or a seperate audio reference if you have wave or mp3 files

its frustrating but it works.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 23. 2019 15:07