Audio and Video Sync Workflow for Music Recordings

Over my work with different video teams, I’ve come to establish a workflow that has worked when audio and video is recorded together and the artist is requesting multiple takes to be edited together.

1. Sync the video takes to the audio takes used. For every audio take used in the edit plan document, sync the corresponding camera footage with audio takes that have been sent to the artist. In a lot of video programs this can be done automatically using the audio of the cameras as reference.
2. Use the engineer’s audio edit to make a video edit. Once the audio takes are syned with their corresponding video takes in the video program, create a timeline for the video edit. Insert the audio edit sent from the sound engineer and use the Edit Plan Document’s timings to match the video takes to the audio edit.
3. Mute all other audio¹ and make sure the edited audio sent from the sound engineer is the only one playing back and the fader on its audio track channel is set to unity (0dbfs). It is important to keep this audio track as stereo and not double mono as that would change the whole balance of the recording. Please refrain from using a limiter or any other processing on this audio. It should have been mixed, mastered and optimized by the sound engineer. If a change is needed, inform the sound engineer.
4. Check the sync throughout. Review the edited sections to make sure the video and finished audio edit audio remain aligned.

Hopefully this has been helpful. I would love to hear your comments or feedback.

In the future, I will be exploring the possibility to automate this process using shared timecodes between Pro Tools and the video cameras at the session and using EDL/XML interchange technology to save time. In my experience this has not yet worked but it has potential. If you have a workflow that works in this way, I would love to hear about it.

1. I’ve had unfortunately videos where an onboard microphone camera had been left unmuted and created phase and audio noise problems in the finished audio.