Addition to post on synch'ing audio with video in FCP

***Addition (Feb 29th 2008) - the last paragraph discussing lining up the separately recorded audio with the picture from the camera, via timecode is not the best method. A much neater method is to use the MAKE MULTICLIP option within FCP and when asked how to align to audio with the video, simply choose MATCH BY TIMECODE. Once this is carried out, FCP will create a multi-clip with the separate audio perfectly aligned to the picture, regardless of whether it was started before or after the camera (the audio attached to the video file from the camera can then easily be removed from the multiclip). This method is also really neat when aligning footage from a multi-camera shoot to audio recorded on a separate device. If a clapperboard was used to align the cameras and audio recorder, IN points could be marked on each of the video files (i.e. at the frame where the clapper closes) and then the matching IN point could be marked on the audio file. By SHIFT+clicking on the same audio file with each of the camera angles one at a time and then creating a MULTI-CLIP and selecting ALIGN BY IN POINT, each of the camera angles will now have identical audio attached to them.

Alternative ADR software - "VoiceQ"

An alternative piece of ADR plugin software for ProTools is VoiceQ and a demo has recently been looked at, briefly. The software appears to be good, although integration with ProTools has not been tried as yet; only as standalone. What is nice about the software is that the actor's lines can be made to scroll across the video and also different colours and placements can be used for each actor.

"ADR Studio"

Recently I have been testing and teaching "ADR Studio" by Gallery. ADR Studio (as used by the likes of Skywalker Sound for the recent Star Wars movies), is a piece of software which manages and virtually automates the spotting of both Foley and ADR sounds within ProTools (and others). The software communicates with ProTools via a virtual MIDI interface, controlling its features via HUI (Human User Interface developed by Emagic / Mackie) and MTC (MIDI TIME CODE). It's a bit fiddly to setup, but once configured it works extremely well.

As well as automatically generating the standard 3 blips spaced 667ms (or 16 film frames) before the cue point, it also has a powerful matrix which lets the user decide what happens to each track during the PREVIEW, RECORD and REVIEW stages. For example, during the PREVIEW stage, the actor might wish to hear the reference audio both before, during and after the cue point. However, during the actual RECORD and REVIEW stages, they might wish to only hear the reference audio during the pre and post roll sections and then hear only their "live" input during the actual record stage; this is easily configured within the ADR Studio matrix.

Spotting of sounds / dialogue is also extremely easy as the line/s are simply highlighted and then upon hitting the SPOT dialogue box, a window appears where things such as the actor / character's name and line to be replaced can easily be entered. Then, an ADR cue sheet can be generated and printed out ready to give to the actor / Foley artist etc. A simple double click on the required cue automatically sets ProTools up at the required position within the timeline ready for previewing / recording or reviewing the cue.

An excellent piece of software - I plan to get hold of a copy for my own studio as this is an area I'd definitely like to move into / explore.