i bet you already know you can sync up
multiple audio and video clips with just
a simple hand clap a slate
or even the fancy new waveform matching
feature that pretty much all the editing
programs have these days
but the problem with those methods is
that they require something visual or
audible to be present at the same time
to line them up in post-production
over the years i've wasted way too many
hours from poorly shot multi-cam and
dual system sound shoots that didn't
have those synchronization cues for
instance here's a clip that couldn't
sync based on waveforms because the
scratch audio was so poor
and now here's how instantly i can sync
an entire bin of clips with just one
mouse clip using this simple jam sync
time code tip using tentacle syncs on
set and then editing in davinci resolve
real quick before we jump into taking a
look at how simple it is to sync up your
clips with timecode let me briefly
explain what it is and when i like to
use it if you want to skip ahead to the
how-to sections i mark the chapters for
those in the description and in the
comments for you to get to exactly what
you're looking for in fact there's a
section in there about using multicam
with multi-channel audio that you're not
going to want to miss
so what is jam sync time code well
besides jam syncing being possibly one
of the most fun words to say on set it's
actually really simple it's when you
have one master source clock with a very
accurate time in frames that sends the
same precise time to all the devices
that you jam sync it to we call those
other devices slaves so you've got one
master and right here you'd have a
couple slaves you might have more but in
other words it's just a fancy clock the
tentacle sync e time code generators
which is what i'm going to demo here in
this video it's the first budget minded
way to do this super pro workflow on any
consumer camera that has a 3.5
millimeter microphone input when to use
time code anytime you're running
multiple cameras or a separate audio
recorder is a good time to think about
using time code the more indian run and
gun the project is the more important
and useful it is even though that sounds
counterintuitive this includes the
simple interview setup a run and gun
full day shoot like any kind of event
with several camera operators that are
roaming in a large venue documentary
field work where you never know when you
need to push the record button or
anytime you have lots of stopping and
starting with multiple cameras this is
going to save you so much time when you
go into the edit which then of course
could save you money and the beauty of
this workflow is you can stop and start
your new cinema cameras your fancy new
sony fx3 or canon c70 as much as you
want because you no longer need to worry
about doing that annoying hand clap
at the start of each take nothing wrecks
the mood like a good old hand clap to
start an emotional interview with
someone that's not used to being filmed
you can also save on media storage
because of the freedom to cut a camera
and reset a shot and not worry about
that it needs to be precisely synced up
again in post
hey real quick i just want to welcome
you if you're new here to this channel
i'm chadwick this is creative video tips
it's all about helping you craft stories
to make a difference and stand out so if
you enter that please subscribe right
down below right now that way you don't
miss out on the tip next week i've got
lots of great tutorials to help you get
up to speed with davinci resolve and
filmmaking in general and with that out
of the way let's take a look at how to
set up the technical syncs and how you
can use it in davinci resolve
now a common complaint i hear a lot with
people that don't want to use jam scene
timecode is that they think it's too
burdensome it's too hard to set up it
takes too long but with the technical
sync ease these things are so
lightweight and easy to set up because
they have an iphone app and if you can
use any sort of iphone app you're going
to be able to figure this out really
quickly so let me just show you how to
set it up you're going to need one of
these for each of your devices by the
way let's set this down we'll open up
our iphone app
and it recognizes all our devices that
we had previously used right there and
to turn them on there's a little slider
on there you just hold that for about a
second and it's gonna start flashing red
okay red is basically saying hey i need
to be synchronized so we'll do that to
each of the devices hold it for about a
second
so this is something you would do at the
beginning of each shoot it's basically
about as hard as turning on a microphone
to be honest
okay now they're all on there it says
they need to be synchronized they're red
we'll hit the sync button
and you can choose your frame rate
it's got all the standard simply
timecode frame rates we're choosing
23.98 that's what i like to shoot at and
you can change your time so that it
matches
um you know whatever you'd like it to be
so if you wanted to match a time of day
right now it's it's 9 41 here you could
double tap here
and make this
9
what is it 41
and hit start and
it starts syncing to all of them
and it gives us time of day time code
everything is green everything's
synchronized ready to go just like that
now all you really need to do is plug
them in so you've got these three and a
half millimeter microphone uh cables
they plug into the top right there with
all three of them
pretty simple right
and then you would take these guys and
plug them into the microphone inputs on
your camera
so here i've got a sony fx3
got a little red
microphone input right there
plug that in and now it's going to be
receiving ltc linear time code to the
left channel
and then on the right channel it
actually has a microphone on the
tentacle sync itself a lot of people
don't know this that's going to give you
another little bit of scratch audio on
the right side of your audio so that's
all there is to set up to them there's
one little bonus thing with the black
magic cameras they actually have a
dedicated
time code input which means it'll take
the ltc time code if you plug this into
your microphone input here it'll convert
the ltc time code to metadata timecode
in the camera for you now that doesn't
matter for our situation here because
we're going to actually be using davinci
resolve
and davinci resolve has this little
super power that converts linear time
code
to metadata time code for you with just
right clicking and that's what i'm going
to show you next over in davinci resolve
here in davinci resolve 17.3 i've got
clips from a sony fx3 an a7 s3 and a
sound devices mixpre 3 which is what
recorded all the great audio and the
first step to really organizing your
footage when it's in here to do a
multicam
even with the jam sync time code that we
have on these is to assign camera
numbers to them this is so that all your
clips from the same camera end up on the
same track some of these don't have
enough metadata and that's what we're
going to be providing for them right now
so i switched to list view if they were
in thumbnail view this is how you get
the list view right this button right
here and then if you click your clip
name up here it kind of organizes them a
little bit for you so you can ship to
select all of the fx3 clips we're gonna
do that and then we're gonna go over to
our metadata field if all of them aren't
showing if it's just showing clip
details you can choose shot and scene
go down and find the clip number
and we're gonna call that one and hit
save
so those are all assigned the same
camera number and then we'll do the same
with these a7s three clips right here
shift select them check box camera
number two hit save
and now you can see the actually the
sound devices clips they're smart enough
they actually write the metadata in the
file so those are good to go and then
the other thing i want to point out
before we get any further is under
workspace
there's actually a time code window and
since this whole video is on time code i
figured it'd be nice if we had some time
code visible for all eclipse as we're
working on them and also before we go
any further i want to point out what
audio time code sounds like you've
waited long enough to hear this let's
hit play
so you can see that left channel right
there that sound right there that is the
audio time code that is linear time code
playing back and that is persistent on
all these files we get that same sort of
thing on all of them
so but here's the thing you look at the
time code fields right here this start
time code is 2 hours 40 seconds
this one here is 19 hours and then the
audio down here is at 10 hours none of
those match at all right and you're like
well didn't we record audio time code
we we did but what resolve is reading
initially is the metadata time code so
we need to update
the with the linear time code the audio
time code to the metadata time code this
is how you do it it's so easy all we're
going to do is select all of these video
clips
and this is one of the things that
actually just got updated and fixed a
little bit in this current version of
resolve then you're just going to right
click
and then you go to update time code from
audio track that's the secret to all
this as soon as i do this you're going
to see those time code numbers change
okay i said update timecode from audio
track i clicked it and just like that
you'll see all the time codes have just
changed and now we actually have time
codes that are you know they're in the
same ballpark there
now to create a traditional multicam
select all the clips with command a
right click say
create new multicam using selected clips
and then under here under angle sync
this is something you might not have
used before but make sure that is on
time code
and then we're going to choose detect
clips from same camera
and then we'll say metadata is using the
camera number that's what we had set up
with setting the two cameras to one and
two just click create and you'll see how
fast this happens
boom just like that it's like
instantaneously it's unbelievable right
we can open this in timeline by right
clicking on it saying open in timeline
and just like that you can see all of
the clips
basically in order of how they were shot
just like that i mean check that out
that's amazing right
now that all the waveforms have filled
out you might have noticed on our good
audio track this mix pre 3 it looks like
it's combined all of our audio tracks
into an adaptive track so we've got five
audio tracks if we look back here at the
original
let's look at this mix brief iii we
actually have you know stereo mix we've
got lobs on each we've got a boom that's
separate we want to be able to
manipulate all these in the multi-cam
and this is the big gotcha that a lot of
people don't understand about multicam
individual resolve and how you work with
it so let's go back to the edit page
and create a timeline from this multicam
sequence and i'll show you how to work
with it properly
go to media pool and let's create a
sequence from the multicam so the
multicam is kind of like a nest we're
going to right click on it and say
create new timeline using selected clips
we'll call this uh
multicam edit
and it's based on the selected media
we'll hit create
and now let's mash it all down into
one that's like a stereo track so that
doesn't seem very helpful at all not
does it well
we're gonna get there just hang on okay
i'm gonna close the media pool to give
us a little more space and let's get rid
of the time code window that's just
getting annoying to me right now
the waveforms haven't drawn yet because
you know i don't have the fastest
computer in the world and to see
multicam when you have the dual viewer
dual monitor setup here if you don't by
the way it's this button right here
the left side is going to give you
access to same multicam click multi-cam
and you can see both your angles at the
same time
now we want the audio angle only which
is why i have music this little music
things means it's only going to change
the audio i'm going to hit option and
click on that to make sure that we're
getting the angle 3 audio which is the
the good
audio sound from the mix pre 3 okay
now here's the other thing
now that we have this set um on this
audio track i know i'm not going to use
the audio from the video cameras
themselves so i'm going to do
basically i'm going to pull this audio
out of the multicam okay for this all to
work great we're going to right click on
it and we're going to flatten multicam
clip but just on the audio okay
flatten that and now we basically we we
don't have the option to change the
audio anymore but that's okay
we do still see an issue here and the
issue is that
i've got all this mixed down into a
stereo adaptive track
well let's change this by right clicking
on it we'll say change track type to
adaptive five because we have actually
have five tracks in there
and we can see that we still have access
to all those by selecting it and right
clicking and saying display individual
audio channels
so they're all still there
now the downside to this they're all
still there and that's all beautiful i
can't edit these independently it's all
at the same time right like
it's all or none right and you could say
yeah you could go over to the fairlight
page and and see all of them in here and
work with them
but because they all live on one track
you actually really can't edit them
independently very easily and i want to
work in the edit page so the way you can
do that
is another little trick here you right
click on it you say convert to link
group so that's in this track header
area convert to linked group okay now
that i've done that it's broken them out
into mono tracks on all of them
but
here's another thing we got one more
step to do if you look over on the mixer
it still just has control over a1
because they're all linked together so
to unlink them we're going to select
them all with our mouse we're going to
go up to fairlight
link group
and under link group we're going to
unlink them so there's this little box
right here
if you just sorry you select that and
you say unlink
now they're unlinked
and just like that now you'll see in the
track mixer we have isolated all five of
those tracks again
they're all synchronized ready to be
worked with and manipulated individually
so that's one thing i know that has
gotten a lot of people that are new to
using multicam and image resolve that's
not just a jam sync time code kind of
deal
so i'm hoping that helps a lot of people
out the other thing you'll notice now
these are not
linked in the sense of the audio and
video clips linked together which you
probably want to do so they don't lose
sync without you realizing it the way
you can do that just select all
and then right click and say link clips
so now if you take one of these clips
here and move it out you get that out of
sync frame indicator warning you that
hey you've actually nudged that as out
of place i'm just going to undo
and you can really you can go to town
editing with your multicam sequence
right now and you can still change this
over here to multicam because your video
tracks um basically are still multicam
it's just your is not in the multi-cam
editable state anymore you would just
change this to video right here
and then you maybe change this to one by
two for your view so that you're not you
know cluttered by so much stuff
and then you can just go through here
and say if you want angle two you can
hit two on the keyboard and it cuts
angle two
and if you wanna cut back to angle one
two
one and this video is not about how to
cut multicam but i just wanna show you
how fast it was to get that set up
and that you can still have control of
all your multi-channel audio using this
workflow
another really common technique for dual
system sound and jam sync workflows is
to sync the dailies so taking this good
sound with this uh these video clips
here that don't have good sound and
putting the good sound on them in other
words and the way you do that once
you've updated the time code from the
audio time code remember that was just a
right click
with update timecode from audio track
once you've done that so that the time
code is read from the ltc you can just
put them all in the same folder
you can right click on the folder itself
and say auto sync audio
based on time code and as soon as i
click this you're going to see the audio
channels change from 2 to 5 over there
in that column for audio channels
and just like that you can see they've
all changed and instances where it had
overlapping time code and all of those
which had you know that track one that
had that annoying sounding ltc time code
it's actually pulling in all the five
channels from the sound devices mix pre
3 audio instead
so now that the dailies are sunk let's
jump to the cut page with shift three
and this is going to be another way of
setting up your roughed out sequence so
let's go to source tape this is going to
let us see all the footage in the bin in
the orient with shot
and to quickly get stuff down on the
timeline you can mark in i for n and o
for out and then hit the append button
and that gets stuffed down on a timeline
right away really quickly okay
maybe we go to another section mark in i
mark it o
and append
now what's kind of special here about
the cut page is this feature that's
called the sync bin so if you go up here
this is sync bin and what sync bin is is
basically looking at everything that's
in your bin right up there and if it has
matching time code between the two
it's going to give them give you an
option to use what's called source
overwrite to cut to the other angle at
any point throughout the
the process so what if at this moment
it's it's right now it's on that
close-up of the dude in that sweet hat
what if i wanted to go to the wide shot
all i would need to do is hit one right
here and then hit source overwrite okay
which is this button right here
and then it automatically cuts that in
sync
on top right it goes from the one angle
to the next
and so you could do a multi-cam that way
as well so basically the idea would be
you're just cutting in the content that
you need rather than looking at all of
it and trimming it down you're starting
from nothing and adding just what you
want so that's cut page if you want to
learn more about the cut page and you
know the speed editor i've got a lot of
stuff on this channel to check out to
learn about it i hope you found this
tutorial helpful and if you did please
give it a like and if you want to learn
more about editing and davinci resolve
click the playlist that i've got on
screen right now and because there's so
much more to learn i'll see you in my
next video