Audio drifting with Canon XL1
 

Hi everyone,
this is the first video I'm editing on Mac since I just switched from PC and so far Final Cut Pro 5 has been awesome.
Now for the problem: I've captured about an hour of footage with a Canon XL1 and the audio and video slowly drift out of sync. It's not too bad at first, but after about 15 minutes it gets really bad.
Thanks

okay, I've done a search on this forum and it seems like I'm not the only one with this problem, yet no one else has come up with a solution that works. I can't seem to locate the option to sync the clips when capturing (I believe they called it "SAM")? Where in FCP is that?
Thanks

1- Have you tried reading the manual? It should be in there.

2- The "sync adjust movies" over __ (5?) minutes options is in one of the preferences in the top left area. Not sitting in front of a Mac so I can't say.

3- There's other ways to get audio out of sync.
timecode breaks
capture now

I actually did use the capture now option, so would marking the out point at the end of the tape and in at the beginning help?
Thanks for the help

Andrew,

This is a known issue with the original Canon XL-1. The problem is that the audio is slightly off the 48khz sample frequency and capturing long clips will cause the sync issue. Best way to do this is to limit the time of your individual clips to a few minutes each. This seems to be what has worked for others.

I know you said you had a lot of footage to capture but it's best to break it into smaller chunks by using the log and capture method.

-gb-

nothing new to add here... this made my life hell when editing xl1 footage with a panny and a vx in a 3-camera shoot.

i've since moved on to 3 matching vx2100s.

Odd, I shot the first half of my doc with and Xl1, the second half with an Xl2. Captured whole tapes at once in both instances, never had a problem with synch. Is this strictly a FCP problem? As I edit on Avid.

1- Turn SAM on, but don't use capture now to capture.

It may help to do an end search to find the last timecode, and then manually type in "5." for the in point (5 seconds; you may be able to reduce that if your device control settings have a lower preroll). It's hard for FCP to log&capture off the first few seconds, you you may need to grab that in another pass with capture now.

I recommend you record room tone in the first 15-30 seconds, which is a good practice anyways.