Mixing: Audio Desync Problem

It seems that Final Cut doesn't like the 23.98 frame rate and since it's the frame rate of all the film's footage, we had a big problem to synchronize the output video file with the audio file after mixing. And since we spent so much time trying to figure it out, we thought of sharing it with everybody in order to avoid it in the future :) So because the camera's frame rate is not actually 24 like cinema cameras but 23.98 like most digital cameras, this 0.02 difference causes an audio "desync" problem with the video file when they are both imported again to final cut for the final export.

The audio mixer Samir Nabil and I, tried to find a solution for this problem and after many days the only thing that worked was to convert the video file's frame rate to 24p using Cinema Tools. The process is called either pull-up or pull-down but I always forget and get confused which is which :) You should either do it to each video file on your timeline or with the final video and this is what we did and we should have done that before starting audio mixing.

The film's quick time video file had to be exported with the codec Apple Pro Res, then opened with Cinema Tools. In Cinema Tools all we had to do was to conform the frame rate to 24p. During the process we also learned that you have to make sure that the Sequence Settings have to match the footage settings, the Audio/Video Settings including the Capture Preset (even if you are not capturing any footage) or you can edit on Avid if you can afford it :)

Dubbing

Since we have been learning everything about filmmaking in this movie, we thought it's time to learn more about dubbing with Samir Nabil who is the film's sound designer and mixer. Because of all the problems we had during shooting, there are some problems in the film's audio. We did our best to record the best audio we could but of course the first stories we shot like Maha, Moussa and the girl have very bad sound due to our lack of experience and the absence of Sameh Nabil; the sound recorder who joined us later in Dahlia, Rawya and Amr. 

Samir Nabil in his studio "The Badroom"

Ahmed Magdy with Mostafa Darweesh (Amr's father) in a dubbing session

Samir Nabil is enjoying his coffee & cigarettes while dubbing one of the scenes 

P.S. The black & white photos in this post are especially dedicated to Ahmed Magdy Morsy whose favourite colors are only these two.

The Traveling Zoom H4n

Among the things we looked for in the internet was an audio recorder. By the money we saved from buying the Canon 550D camera we wanted to buy other important stuff. One of the main issues of any independent film is the audio quality. After surfing a lot the internet and looking for different products we fell in love with the Zoom H4n handy recorder. It is a 4 channel mixer with sd cards and its price is really great (300$). You can know more about it in the following link:

http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4n

Zoom H4n Handy Recorder

Ahmed Ragab a friend of us offered to buy it for the film so that we can even save the money for other stuff we need. Another friend was going to USA a couple of months ago to attend a few days workshop so we asked him to order it from amazon and bring it with him back to Egypt. We thought it would be easier and cheaper this way but unfortunately the Zoom H4n arrived after he left and up till this moment we are looking for a way to get it back to Egypt.