Well here's a pickle I got myself into today. I've bought an external recorder to capture sound for my video work, a Zoom H4N. It seems to be the consensus best device out there for this sort of thing, but it's a complicated thing to figure out (first time I used it to record a consultation, I totally blew it). But that's not today's problem. Today's problem was harder to fix.
It turns out that the 5D records video in a non-standard frame rate. Standard is this odd US thing of our broadcast frame rate being 29.97 fps. The Canon is allegedly a 30fps camera, but there's considerable dispute about that.
I don't quite understand why, but it explains a problem with using external audio. At last week's dance I recorded the band with the Zoom, and synced it together in Final Cut with Pluraleyes. Over the course of several minutes the external audio drifted out of sync with the sound recorded with the camera. It was driving me nuts, and I couldn't understand why.
One fix is to select the audio track and change the speed (Cmd-J)to 99.9%. The other is to make a Final Cut sequence setting specifically for the 5D, and use only that. You set the frame rate at 30fps, and, supposedly, time and space and sound obey the same laws again.
I tested it with an online metronome, loaded both data streams into Final Cut, and sure enough, it works. Details on how to configure Final Cut here.
Doug, this may become a non issue as soon as Canon releases the firmware update for the 5D mkII in early 2010, which adds selectable frame rates, 24p, 25p in addition to 30p. I assume they will address the 29.97fps issue in the firmware update also. Let's hope they do.
Posted by: JeffH | November 19, 2009 at 07:25 PM