More artists and groups are getting personally involved with video production issues. Here’s a point you need to understand when you’re recording video of a live performance while taking the audio feed from your mixing board. Your audio and video are essentially coming from two different sources.
When capturing audio intended to be synchronized to video from a separate source, it’s important that your device-controllable audio deck be synchronized to your computer via a common video timing signal, such as a blackburst generator (also referred to as house sync). This is true even if you’re capturing your audio via a dedicated audio capture interface. This can be accomplished by connecting a blackburst generator to both the genlock connector (also called external sync) of your audio deck and to the genlock connector of the external video capture interface connected to your computer. If you’re using Final Cut Pro as your capture software, when your audio is coming from a genlocked audio device (such as a MOTU 896HD), you need to select “Sync audio capture to video source if present” in the General tab of the User Preferences window.
There are some ways around the synchronization methods mentioned above. They all require extra steps in the editing and post production phase of the project – many of which have been covered in prior issues of inSync.