[Help] Fixing drift when syncing audio

[NeonBible]

I am thinking to give this a go again.

I played both videos together side by side and the audio sounds the same pitch, so there isn't any PAL speedup there.

What I did see is quite big frame skips at times on the VCD (I'm talking mid-scene here!) which explains why the sync goes off quite wildly.

Given that I am trying to sync the VCD audio with the DVD (which doesn't have the skipped frames), how exactly do I go about patching it?

Do I need more than Audacity to do this?

Are there any good guides/tutorials out there for this kind of thing? Because honestly I don't have a clue where to start.

Also forgot to mention I trying to sync one dub language to another, so patching audio from the DVD is not going to work!

[deleted user]

Easiest way, sync the video first, either with AVISynth (if you like scripting) or by putting it on a timeline in Premiere or a different tool and syncing it.

Then you can transfer those cuts to the audio. Or you do the syncing with the audio directly and export the synced file, but you'll have to reencode then.

Depending on the video cutting method, make sure to use a frame-accurate container. AVISYnth likes mkv most in my experience, Premiere mp4.

As for patching the audio with other tracks, I don't think you'll get around that unfortunately. Unless you find a different track of the same language, or maybe some old VHS or Laserdisc or whatnot.

[NeonBible]

Is it possible to time stretch the audio when I’m syncing the video with missing frames?

Going to read up on AVISynth. Feels like a rabbit hole!

[deleted user]

In Premiere you can definitely stretch audio, yes, but it will change pitch unless you hit the "keep pitch" checkbox, or whatever it's named.

[Stamper]

Let's say I made cuts to a video to reduce a long edit, superior master, to the theatrical version.

Is it possible to copy paste the cuts to any audio track of the same video I just cut?

Like I take the english, or french, or italian dub, and I just copy paste the cuts to they are in sync?

As I only made my cuts with one audio track.

[deleted user]

Assuming Premiere:

This is possible in a variety of ways. The best way is if you nested the original audio before cutting it, into its own sequence, then you can just replace it in that sequence and the cuts will carry over.

If not, you could sync your dubbed audio to the audio you did the cut for, and then right-click the audio clip in the project and go "replace footage" or something similar sounding, then select your new file.

I think there's also a function called "Replace with Sequence", which would nest that footage element into a sequence and then you could do approach 1, but it doesn't always seem to be available and I don't understand the pattern behind it.

[Stamper]

I think I see how I could do it: Duplicate the edit, then I import the same video, but with the audio I want, in it's place (relink).

But I'm not sure fcpx for example won't say 'different source, does not match"

[deleted user]

Can't speak for any other software, but at least Premiere will just replace the footage with no questions asked. If FCPX won't, you could try exporting an FCP XML and importing that into Premiere and then doing it in there. Hell, in fact, maybe the FCPX file format is XML-based in itself, like Adobe's, and you can just edit it and change the source file location.