In my experience the bits and pieces are all thrown into PE and it works reasonably well. However you still may have to manually adjust the sounds.

The reason is dependent on where your second audio was taken relative to your first. If it is taken from across the room you may be off by about a frame.

It is a big time saver if you have a lot of syncs though. It makes the fine tuning a no brainer.

Thanks for the quick responses. I just nabbed a copy off the bay for $30...

Today I downloaded the Trial version to my Win7 machine. I fired up the program and dragged in a couple of recent avi files, and the program said "error - failed to extract audio." So I did a System Restore back to the point just before I had installed the PluralEyes trial.

I just tried the trial version on my win7 64bit machine for the first time this week, with both Vegas 10c and 12, for a 3-cam video shoot but it wouldn't work. I tried just 2 cams and the sync output alternated clips instead of correctly lining them up. I tried several times to get it to work, but couldn't.

Sounds like a great idea, but for my project it failed to sync any footage correctly. Any tips? It would save me dozens of hours of time if I could get it to work.


thx,

k

You are better of sticking with plural eyes 2 to start with rather than 3. Use 3 when you want to experiment after using 2.

It is, along with ProDad Mercalli, the best investment add on I have. I use 3 cameras at weddings along with 3 microphones and it works an absolute treat and can't say how many hours it has saved me.

The only time I have issues is if I make changes after having syncing then it does not always wish to "play" on some of the tracks so you have to delete all the relevant folders and start again but other than this cannot recommend highly enough. But as said, V2 to start with.

Cheers

Steve

Doesn't 3 replace 2?

When you purcahse 3 get both 2 and 3. Both drop in to your extensions.

I use v2 to sync 4 cameras and a zoom recorder, 4 hour of performances, of local rock bands. It saves me many hours of sync. Can't live without it.

i just bought pluraleyes, found a link for v2 download, hopefully it'll work


thanks,

ken

I bought PluarlEyes 3 during a promotion a few months ago and had problems with version 3, which I reported to their tech support. I then instead used the version 2, which came with the download, and had no problems whatsoever. The main upgrade with version 3 was performance but since the sync happens pretty quickly and is only done once with most projects, the performance difference isn't that big a deal. For my work I have found no reason to go back to the newer version 3.

The OP asked how it works. The short answer is it works entirely based on the audio: it syncs up the peaks. As a result, you can use it to sync up the audio from a soundboard which, of course, has no video associated with it.

As others have pointed out, if you actually want to sync the video so that the clapboard hits at the same moment in time on all your cameras, you may have to advance the distant cameras by a few frames because the sound reaches those cameras several frames after those close to the action.

Does it sync throughout the entire track? If so which track does it show preference to? My biggest problem is the difference between my Tascam audio recorder and the primary camcorder track length. If I let both of them record for one hour without pausing the resulting tracks will be different lengths. Basically I will have to split and resync one of the tracks several times throughout the one hour track l length. Will Plural eyes fix this?

Don't know about the PluralEyes question John, but before you spend ages splitting and resynching all over the place, have you tried using Ctrl/Drag to adjust the Tascam audio to match the camera audio? Vegas can sometimes do it in seconds.

Find a definite early synch point (e.g. a specific music down beat, but any easily identifiable sharp sound from the Camera audio will do), and put a marker there. Now, listen to just the Tascam sound and identify the same point and Split ("S" key) the Event at that frame. Drag the split edge to the Marker you just made.
Now, do a similar job close to the end, identify a point on Camera sound, create Marker and find same spot on Tascam sound and Split there.

Now hold Ctrl down and drag the edge of the split Tascam audio to the Marker.

You may have finished - sometimes variations in audio timing are not consistent over time, in which case more splitting and resynching may be necessary, but do try this first.

Thanks Peter. Ctrl/Drag was going to be my next question.

John, I just re-read my post, and where I said "Drag the split edge to the Marker you just made." - I didn't literally mean drag the edge, but move the whole event so that the edge is on the maker. Important distinction!

If the speed of your various sources do not match closely PluralEyes will not stretch those sources in order to make them match.

Speaking from a theoretical technical standpoint, this could be done for the audio and in fact I put in a feature request to iZotope for them to consider using the new feature in RX3, which is designed to correct wow and flutter, to adjust the speed of multiple sources so that they match. Their technology would give you the ultimate match because it can speed up [I]and[/I] slow down continuously throughout the entire length of the audio file. This is far more advanced than what can be done with the Ctrl-Drag operation in Vegas.

Of course even with the simple Ctrl-Drag operation, you are still left with the issue of the video. Slight speed ups and slow downs can be handled perfectly by the elastique feature in Vegas, but the video is going to suffer. There is no good solution for this other than to try to use well-matched equipment that you have tested, prior to the shoot, to ensure they are all operating at the same speed.

Looks like I'll have to set up an experiment to determine if my sync problem is linear. I'll setup my Canon Vixia R10 and Tascam Dr-2d recording my TV set for one hour. Then I'll sync up both ends on the timeline in Vegas, as you suggested. If the problem is linear, the sync should be close to spot on through out the recording. If it's non linear, I'm screwed.

Well I finished my experiment and found that after 47 minutes of recording the Tascam Dr2d's audio track is 3.5 seconds longer than the canon camcorders. As suggested, I did the ctrl/drag to shrink the Tascams track and that synced then pretty close, but not perfect. It appears the drift is not perfectly linear.

I have a Sony device that has this problem. I divide the project into smaller segments and sync those. I make each segment approx. 15 minutes. I find this works much better than trying to shrink the file.

I am taking a break working on a 2 hour theater video and I have it divided into approx.15 minute segments. There are a total of 8 segments. I edit each segment and then load those projects into the final project as nested projects and then render them all.

Nice thing about this is it is like doing 8 small projects instead of one BIG project. Makes editing easier and more fun.

Now if I can hopefully get this done before the ice storm shuts everything down...

Note: The Sony device has great audio recordings so that is why I put up with it.

[I]I divide the project into smaller segments and sync those.[/I]Yes, I do the same thing all the time. I have a collector who sends movie film to me, but then also has a DVD that was done from an OTA capture of the same material and which has better audio. Old film prints end up with splices in different places, and the speed is always different.

It is easy to cut and "ctrl-drag" each segment to line it up (in my case I line up with the film, using lip-sync techniques, but in your case you'll be lining up with audio on another track). The tricky part is figuring out what to do with the overlaps or gaps. Try to find several places where you have nothing but audience reaction, applause, or room noise and use these to bridge the gaps.

I do look for breaks where the audience is applauding and/or in between scenes. Since I use Plural Eyes to sync each segment project there is no need to "ctrl-drag" the audio to sync it because in approx. 15 minute segments it is not off enough to need it.

I prefer not to use "ctrl-drag" on audio files. It can cause audio artifacts if one is not very careful.

For those whom Vegas is not totally stable for, dividing up a large project will prevent loosing the entire thing if there is a crash. So no all that work lost situations.

My goal is to make it as simple as possible.

Sounds like a great idea breaking things up to mini projects. I'm going to test again tomorrow and see how well things do in smaller sections.

I did a review here on V3 some time ago might be of use

http://www.sonyvegas.co.uk/plural-eyes-3-review/

do a search on the site and the updated review is there as well as some other comments