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Audio Drift with Capture Now
by
Larry Jordan
[This article was first published in the April, 2009, issue of
Larry's Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe.]
Frankie Gonzalez writes:
I was following along with your capture lesson and you said never
use capture now, your audio will drift.
I just purchased a new mic and I was testing it out with my camera.
While capturing the footage using your method the exact opposite happened.
The audio drifted while using clip. What can I do to fix the problem?
Also I’m getting lots of dropped frames running the footage
what can I do.
I have a macbook pro 2.4 GHZ Intel Core Duo and 4 gigs of ram. And
external hard drive. I should be cruising along.
Larry replies: Thanks for writing!
Make SURE your scratch disks in FCP are set to your external drive.
Dropped frames are caused by a hard disk that's too slow for what you
are recording to it. Often, this indicates your scratch disks (Final
Cut Pro > System Settings) are pointing to your boot drive. That
won't work.
Make SURE your camera is recording audio at 48 kHz, also called 16-bit.
Sync drift is often caused by the camera recording at the wrong sample
rate.
Make sure your external hard drive is NOT attached via USB - that,
also, is too slow on the Mac.
Here are some articles that may help further:
UPDATE - May, 2009
Lillian Wang writes:
Read your recent newsletter with interest, in particular about audio
drift using capture now. I know it's a really bad habit to do so,
but I have to admit that I often use the "capture now" button
to capture from mini-DV tape, out of convenience.
What I've discovered is, if you hit play on the deck or camera,
and then click the "capture now" button, stuff stays in sync.
But if you click on "capture now" first and then hit play
on the deck or camera - stuff captures fine, but audio drifts will
happen. At least, that's been my experience!
Larry replies: Thanks, Lillian, for writing. I'll add this to my collection
of tips.
Larry Jordan is a post-production consultant and an Apple-Certified Trainer in Digital Media with over 25 years experience as producer, director and editor with network, local and corporate credits. Based in Los Angeles, he's a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America.
The information in this article is believed to be accurate at the time of publication. However, the author assumes no liability in case things go wrong. Please use your best judgment in applying these suggestions.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. This newsletter has not been reviewed or sanctioned by Apple or any other third party. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned here for editorial purposes only.
Links to my website home page or this article are welcome and don't require prior permission.
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