Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:56 am
Hi Peter,
I seem to be doing something really complicated here that is not covered in your 35 years of experience. So let me try to explain.
Okay, so I recorded some footage of an interview. I used a camera hooked up to a lav mic. The audio/video in sync. I have a shotgun mic also trained on my subject, hooked up to another recording device. I imported the footage on to a hard drive. I fired up DaVinci Resolve and imported the footage onto the timeline. You got your video, you got your audio track. You put the playhead on the footage, hit play and the interviewee speaks, audio/video in sync. So far so good.
Now I have this audio recording of the interview as well. I want to add that to the audio I already have. Deep concept, I know. Sometimes there is interference with the lav mic, sometimes there is rustling, so it generally helps to have another audio source, y'know? Not really? Okay, I get that. Just try to trust me then. It's useful to have another audio source. All I wanted to do was sync (match) that shotgun mic footage with the lav mic footage. Line them up. The theory is that once I do that, I can go to the mixer and boost one signal or the other, depending on the quality of playback, toggle between sources, capeesh? Not really? Go watch 'The Conversation' starring Gene Hackman. It's a great film and you may (start to) get what I am talking about.
Anyway, so I managed to sync the two audio sources. I used the editor and FairLight, a panel in Resolve. I got the two sources synced. I had a lot of footage, so it took a while. Then back to the editor mode and well, you see, the video moved from the lav and shotgun mic footage. Add to that, a third of the video footage dissappeared. Some (not all) of the footage even had a red box indicating how much the footage was off. This is not supposed to happen. You can make this happen if you want, but the program cannot autonomously do this for you. It really is a no-no.
Now you were saying, 'good luck trying other software'. You see, there is no luck. I have tried to do this technique on other programs and succeeded, many times. Heck, I have done this in DAW's and that worked too. So, you ask, 'What are you doing using Resolve?'. Good question. I used Resolve on some small projects with single sourced audio and things turned out okay. There were glitches, mind you, but the results were close enough. I figured the software would get better and the kinks would be worked out. Plus, I love the color grading options. Especially 'power windows', I mean, that is pretty darn cool.
My problem is I tried to use Resolve on bigger projects, beyond color grading and that is where the problems are. But you know what? Other programs have color grading applications, some of them are actually catching up to Resolve...so...
Still don't get what I am saying. No worries. The Conversation is still an awesome film. I had a lousy experience and lost time, but I know where to go now. Maybe Resolve will become more reliable. I know this, look at the forum, I am not alone and saying that Resolve, as an editor, is still darn buggy.