Audio export/reimport synch problems
 

So here's my current problem...

Im working in final cut 6.0.3, and Im exporting the audio as AIFF to hand off to my sound engineer for audio post work. When I re-imported (and thank god I did) just to test if it was going to synch, I was mortified to find that about halfway through the 5 minute scene, the audio was off synch! It seemed to be moving faster than the video.

The timeline has been set at 48khz, and 16 bit. After looking, the half of the audio where we had a sound engineer on set running in to a logic pro suite was recorded at 24 bit. The stuff we recordeddirect into camera was being recorded at 16 bit. So I can see how two different bitrates would change the timing, but I just don't understand why Final cut wouldn't re-render the audio as 16, as per the limitations set by the timeline itself.

I tried exporting only the 24 bit stuff, and only the 16 bit stuff, and reimporting separate from each other, but still, the audio is coming in faster.

I also exported the whole thing as a quicktime movie, and it came out with perfectly synched audio and video. The reasoning being, well, maybe it needs to be flattened into one audio timeline to effectively "forget" that there were ever 24 and 16 bit differences, and we can all live under the happy umbrella of the 16bit quicktime movie export! I import the new quicktime movie, try to re-export only the audio, and again, on import and re-synch, it's out of synch!

What can I do to get this audio into Protools,and have it synch up when it comes back?

All the best,
Nick Harris
harrisfilms.com