Video/Audio Sync?

[Woodj32177]

So, just for my curiousity,
How do you reference the video to the timcode?
I understand how you get the video into the catalyst, but where does the video get timecode? is it a part of how you encode it?
Joshua Wood

[SourceChild]

So, just for my curiousity,
How do you reference the video to the timcode?
I understand how you get the video into the catalyst, but where does the video get timecode? is it a part of how you encode it?
Joshua Wood

Every video clip has timecode associated with it. The same goes for every audio file.

You can reference from another machine playing an audio or video that outputs MTC (usually SMPTE). In Catalyst, you just plug in the SMPTE into the microphone input on your Mac or MTC into the MIDI port on your CIB (if you have one) or another MIDI interface. Then set it up in the Catalyst control.

[gazzer82]

Aha, i hadn't noticed the sync to mtc playmode before you mentioned it. So odd that you can spend so long looking at an interface and never actually clock what's there.

Just need to persuade the venue to purchase the show control sfx license now so that i can actually get MTC from them to reference too.

Though in fairness i have done a lot of testing over the last few days and i haven't yet managed to get the audio/video to slip out of sync. So potentially this may not be required.

Thanks for the help!!

Cheers

Gareth

[Peter]

Just need to persuade the venue to purchase the show control sfx license now so that i can actually get MTC from them to reference too.

We use Qlab instead of sfx but we started with sfx which by the way is for sale (educational version). If your interested please let us know?

QLab and motu are rocksolid on mac.

[SourceChild]

Uh...

Just a suggestion guys but sometimes I will setup an extra Catalyst Machine as an Audio server and sync to it.

[samsc]

Uh...

Just a suggestion guys but sometimes I will setup an extra Catalyst Machine as an Audio server and sync to it.

this is done in a lot of shows-

as professional audio gear does what it says on the tin-

using a mac to playback audio from the sound output - is buyer beware.

[SourceChild]

using a mac to playback audio from the sound output - is buyer beware.

I am curious at your feedback. I've got three different venues that have been playing Audio off their Catalyst machines for years. Easily over 5000 separate instances of playback with audio and I've never heard of problems. (Granted I had a few bugs with V3.3 and older on the old G5 machines.)

Now I have done things in different cases. Sometimes it was literally the 1/8" mini phone jack connected to a stereo DI. Other times an external USB or Firewire Audio device. Most times using SDI audio.

Where have you seen problems occur most.

[samsc]

Though in fairness i have done a lot of testing over the last few days and i haven't yet managed to get the audio/video to slip out of sync. So potentially this may not be required.
Gareth

thats because - it doesnt 'slip' if the audio and video are in the same movie.
quicktime keeps them together-

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if the audio and video are on separate layers - then thats different...and depends completely on whether your hardware can playback those layers without dropping frames-
typically with sata discs arent good enough- to keep long term stability-
if you get a machine with an SSD then you reduce the chance of dropping frames by many times-
If you are doing audio and video - i would very very strongly recommend the use of SSD's - to minimise any dropped frames caused by rotational latencies.

---

in the most recent versions of catalyst- there is a smpte reader for the audio input - so midi timecode isnt required.

[samsc]

Aha, i hadn't noticed the sync to mtc playmode before you mentioned it. So odd that you can spend so long looking at an interface and never actually clock what's there.

Just need to persuade the venue to purchase the show control sfx license now so that i can actually get MTC from them to reference too.
Gareth

you dont need MTC - you can input timecode directly into the audio port and sync a layer to the incoming timecode directly-
You can also set time offsets for the inframe for catalyst layers.

just been used on sinatra tour.