Catching Wild Cams Into The Sound Sync Via Multi Ch. Recorde

[S8 Booster]

been working/shooting parts of a CD release concert on Super 8 using wild cams; Canon 1014 XLS an 310 XL and a Beaulieu 5008 MS on V3 500T, Fuji F500T and Tri-x stocks with a master backup ("backing track") on HD video.

now, how to sync all 3 "wild" cams? not easy this time - its gonna be some jig saw puzzle but all right i think i at least recorded S8 cam running noise on the HD master so that will be all help i get this time for sure. some cams were shooting simultaneously - from there bits and pieces.

NEXT time however i hava a plan: use a multi channel digital recorder which can be set up like this for this job:

Channel 1: Sound master
Channel 2: 1014XLS Frame pulse output with or without a tone generator, possibly sound pattern 1
Channel 3: 5008MS frame pulse output with or without a tone generator, possibly sound pattern 2
Channel 4: 310XL - a midget microphone taped on the camera body to record the camera mechanical running noise - will do for recognition.

now, all of these sound tracks some way coupled with the master video shot and the sequential bits and pieces from the film cameras would simplify the syncing job in editing - for me anyway.
on a multi track NLE editor it will work ok me think.

in some parts i shot with 2 cams simultaneously - sometimes also overlapping like the 310 with Tri-x and the 5008 with V3 500T. just for the reference.

hard work in the horizon...

oh happy day - i lika da film.....


shoot ..... film....

[carllooper]

There is a slight problem with the plan. The idea of sync pulses from a camera is to accommodate cameras that don't quite run at a fixed rate. In this scenario the sync pulse stream provides a reference for adjusting the rate of the sound to fit the film, not the film to fit the sound. But if you have a number of cameras, each running at a slightly varying rates (producing slightly different sync pulses) you can only conform the sound to one of them.

That said, recording the sync pulses is still a good idea, however you'll need to exploit that information in a different way. Your task becomes how to conform the film to the sound rather than the sound to the film. On each sound track you'll have a record of the varying rate of each camera with respect to your master sound track.

So if your master is being done digitally (as I imagine is the case) you can vary the rate of the film playback as the inverse function of the sync pulse rate. I'm not sure what software does this (reads audio and time stretches picture as a function of such) but if it doesn't exist it should exist as it would be the ideal approach. Perhaps its a good software dev project: to read a sync pulse (on an audio track) and assuming a sync point (clapper board or equivalent) the film can be time stretched/squeezed as a function of the sync pulse relative to the sync point.

The only other way is to exploit the insight that wild sync can remain good for short periods of time. If the cutting style is fast you can just jog the shots into adequate sync for each shot. However you'd still need some custom software if you want to exploit the sync pulse in any way - something that provides a pulse counter. In that way you can jog the film to the appropriate frame count as a function of the sync pulse count.

In either scenario, probably the single most important thing is the sync point. And if nothing else a sync pulse stream provides that sync point: the start of the sync pulse stream, on any track, identifies the sync point. The actual rate of the pulses can just be ignored where shots are relatively short.

Carl

[S8 Booster]

yeah, this is very much the way i see it too but it offers a better staring platform than totally wild bits and pieces, besides, it is very simple to rig.

shoot....

[carllooper]

Yes, that's right. If nothing else you will have the start points (and end points) for each and every shot.
And re-reading your post I can see this as your central intention - it becomes the reason behind why you might (if nothing else) record the sound of the camera.

C