How to sync audio manually

Silverstack allows you to manually sync audio clips to video clips. This process is divided into two basic steps:

Matching the according audio clip to a video clip
Syncing the audio and video clip at the right position

The basic idea of the sync at the right position is based on setting slate markers in the video and audio clips. By setting slate markers, the user defines a sync position in both audio and video to be used to link the audio and video clips.Silverstack automatically aligns the video and associated audio clip at the defined positions. The article explains in detail how to set the slate markers to attain a sync at the intended position as well as how to move the sync position if needed.

The counterpart of the manual sync is the automatic sync by timecode that is available in Silverstack Lab. This article requires knowledge about the audio panel and offloading.

1. Ingest audio and video clips#

Please refer to the articles about the workflow configuration window and configuring a workflow to learn the essentials on offloading audio and video data. It is important to register the audio files separately from the video files into separate bins. Assuming you have registered or offloaded at least one video and audio card, find the video clip you want to manually sync audio with. Please note that you can set audio and video slate markers independently from each other and in any order.

Note: When ingesting mixed bins containing audio and video clips, you first need to separate both types into separate audio and video bins before running the manual audio sync. To do this, you can create new audio bins in Silverstack’s library outline and move the audio clips into these bins.

2. Open the audio panel and find the slate position#

Click on the QC button on the top right side of Silverstack’s toolbar to open the audio panel, including the QC sidebar.

Adding a video slate marker

Adding a video slate marker

In the selected clip, you need to find the position at which the slate goes down. If no slate is present, you can choose any other significant position to sync to. In this example, the slate will be set in the next steps together with the audio slate.It is also possible to already set the video slate at this point. Read more about relocating slate markers in the according section below.

3. Add an audio clip#

Setting the audio slate marker

Setting the audio slate marker

Click the + (add audio) button in the audio panel to open a popover allowing you to select an audio clip that should be added to the video clip. Select the intended audio clip from the audio clip dropdown menu (in this case, “Scene 25-2-T001”). Move the playhead of the audio clips to the position you want to set the audio slate to. Now, you have two options:

Click the Video + Audio button to set the audio and video slate at the positions of the according playheads in the audio and playback view.
Click the Audio button to set a slate only at the position of the audio playhead.

Note: A video clip that has an external audio clip assigned to it, will in any case contain a slate marker. If the slate marker is not specified it will be set to the current playhead position of the video clip and will accordingly be used as the sync position.

4. Add and sync clips#

Finally, click Add and Sync Clip . The specified audio clip is added to the video clip, and all tracks are available in the audio panel. The video and audio clip sync at their slate positions.

4.1 Multiple audio slate markers#

When adding one audio clip to more than one video clip, it is possible to set an individual audio slate position for each video. This allows you to sync each video to different positions on the same audio clip, e.g. if there are individual claps for each camera or if two takes are recorded on the same audio clip. If you open the add audio popover for one audio clip that is already synced to another video clip, the first (already set) audio slate marker is automatically restored in this view for your convenience.

4.2 Relocating audio slate markers#

Relocate audio slate marker

Relocate audio slate marker

You can relocate the audio slate marker for an external audio clip by opening the audio tracks playback panel. To do so, click the ▶ button. Move the detail indicator (red box) to a new position and click the Audio button to set the audio slate to the position indicated by the playhead in the detail view at the bottom right of the popover.

4.3 Relocating Video Slate Markers#

You can relocate the video slate marker within the general info’s QC section in the right sidebar. Move the playhead of the video clip to a new position and click the Set Video Slate button (shortcut Control-Command-Enter).

Note: The video slate marker is a special kind of cue point. You can remove the video slate marker like removing a cue point. In case of existing external audio, you will not be able to remove it since a video clip with external audio always has a slate marker.Learn more about cue points from the article Metadata Handling: View, Organize, Add and Filter Clips.

4.4 Removing external audio clips#

External audio clips can be removed by clicking on the ⚙ button in the header bar of the external audio clip and selecting “Remove.”