[MacDV] Digital and audio not in sync on capture

[Gregg Gorrie]

on 4/27/05 4:29 AM, Brett Conlon at brett_conlon at sonymusic.com.au wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> The other night I captured a little over 1 hr of footage off my
> brother-in-law's Sony Digital8 DCS-TRVXXX (can't for the life of me
> remember what the model number is and no one is picking up the phone at
> home to ask them) on my 17" PB to a 20GB external bus-powered firewire
> drive. I filled it to about 200MB remaining. I believe the tape is Hi-8 so
> it should be digital footage.
> 
> I began editing the captured footage and noticed about 5-10 mins into it
> that the mouths seemed to be moving a little out of sync from the audio.
> But it was too close to really tell. A little while later I then
> discovered that as you go further and further into the footage the audio
> became more and more out-of-synch - up to 2 or more seconds faster than
> the video right at the end.
> 
> I'm sure if I played the tape at the end it would be in sync (not like the
> capture) - I'm yet to test this.
> 
> Any thoughts before I chuck my edit so far and re-capture again?
> 
> Coj

Brett:

I had the exact same situation a couple of years ago, with my Sony TRV-315.
Highly frustrating. This only happened with material that was originally
shot in 8mm/Hi8mm or with tapes that I recorded using the analog inputs of
the camcorder. Video that was recorded on the camcorder in Digital 8 format
had no sync issues. Eventually (days/weeks?) I found a workaround.

If I captured the material into Final Cut Pro or Premiere, the video and
audio became out-of-sync. However, when I captured the same tapes into
iMovie, there was no sync problem. So I simply captured into iMovie first,
exported to Quicktime DV format, and then imported that movie into FCP for
further editing.

Hope this helps.
-- 
Gregg