8/s8 sound syncing edit tips?

[Jamie Marks]

Hello there, first post on this site, nice to meet you all.

I'm coming to you all today with a more software editing focused question around syncing up audio taken from 8/s8 magnetic stripes to converted footage. To explain further, I work at a private digitization house, where we run our footage through a Retroscan, which comes out at 18fps as standard. Our current solution for recording sound (but we are exploring others at the minute) is to run the reel through a Goko Recording Editor [RM8008] and then attempt to sync these two files up in Post. The issue arises in that the audio timing seems to drift over time, which I have come to understand is a common issue when working with this type of sound. We have tried to alleviate this by running the audio at 108% speed in post (which helps to line it up) and by cutting and moving frames at every cut/splice that appears on the footage, which actually does tend to work fairly well, but the issue becomes more apparent on half hour reels with dozens and dozens of said cuts or conversely, extended cuts where drift has time to become noticeable.

While we do have a workaround admittedly, though it takes a lot of manual time, I suppose my question is whether anyone has any suggestions for the editing that might help? Perhaps a golden percentage speed we just haven't landed on or an automatic tool within the system we haven't spotted? For reference the company mostly makes use of DaVinci Resolve, but also has access to a copy or two of Premiere, but any other suggestions for software's useful for retiming the audio would be appreciated.

Any other suggestions for how best to record sound would be appreciated, we are looking at a couple options for simultaneous recording to see if that's the ticket for syncing things up, but the sound is a weak spot for us so anything will be helpful.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Ah, been there, done that.😉 My tips would be...

1. Assure that your Goko runs at relatively stable speed. In long run (400ft reel) it will eventually drift out of course. But if runs at certain fixed speed, that would greatly help during the editing process.
2. Provide visual aid when capturing audio. That means pointing a camcorder to Goko's screen (and directly hook up the audio output to camcorder's mic input) while running films. The image would be dim/fuzzy/flicker but that doesn't matter as long as you get decent audio. The rest is the matter of syncing this captured video track to the prevoiusly scanned clip, and that's it.

[Gregory Oliver]

Check with Roger at Moviestuff.tv. there is a device he makes that captures the audio directly from the projected movie to digital (allowing for speed drift) which you can then stitch together with the video capture. I've got one which I seldom use but it seems to do the job.

[Ty Reynolds]

If you are doing this on a professional basis, invest in Moviestuff's Retrosync module. The audio lines up perfectly every time, regardless of reel size. No time wasted on tweaks every few minutes.

[Jamie Marks]

Thanks for the tips, ill be sure to look further into them. I think our GOKO's screen doesn't work but that might help a lot if I can see about fixing that aspect. I'll have to see if I can get hands on those modules that have been mentioned as that sounds like they'll be lifesavers if they work out.