Syncing Audio and Picture in Premiere Pro

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When you have imported all of your footage and audio files into your Premiere project using the Media Browser, you can start syncing your video and audio files. There are a few ways to do this.

For the automated methods, it’s important that your camera files have an audio track. Premiere will use this audio track to synchronize the files from your sound recording device. When you shoot using double-system recording, make sure your camera’s internal mic is capturing audio.

Synchronization Using Multi-camera Sequences

Multi-camera sequences don’t actually need multiple camera feeds to be useful. You can create multi-camera sequences to quickly sync your camera files with your audio files (shot separately on a sound recorder).

  1. Select the video files and corresponding audio files you’d like to sync from the Project panel. It’s helpful to synchronize a small group of clips at a time in case you run into any issues and need to backtrack. For example, if you’ve organized your video and audio into scenes, you might select all video clips from Scene 1 and all audio clips from Scene 1. You can Command + Click to select files out of order from the list in your bin/Project panel.
  1. Right-click or Control + click the selected clips and choose Create Multi-camera Source Sequence from the context menu.
  1. Use the below settings in the dialog box to create your multicam sequences.
    1. You can name your multi-camera source sequence after your video or audio clip in the sequence. From the pop-up menu, select the appropriate option to append “Multicam” or a custom name to the primary video or audio name. If you or a sound mixer named your audio files with scene numbers and/or take numbers, you can select Audio Clip Name + so that your new multi-cam sequences will be named accordingly. For example, if your audio file is named “Scene1A_001,” your multicam sequence with synced video and audio will be named “Scene1A_001.WAVMulticam.”
    2. Select Audio as the Synchronization Point. 
    3. Uncheck “Move source clips to Processed Clips bin” so that the organization of all the files in your project is unaffected. 
  1. Click “Ok.” When finished, you’ll see the new multi-cam sequences appear in the Project panel. (Feel free to move these to a new bin.) You can edit and work with these new multi-cam sequences on your timeline just like you would any other type of clip, only now the video and audio for each clip will be automatically linked. 

When you’re ready to bring your sound into Pro Tools, keep in mind that you will need to “flatten” all multi-camera sequences in your Premiere sequence before creating an AAF file. This is easily done by selecting all clips in your timeline, right clicking and selecting Multi-Camera > Flatten. 

Synchronizing Individual Clips Using the Camera Audio Track

  1. Insert or drag an individual video clip into a sequence. Make sure the camera audio is placed on Audio Track 1 in the sequence. Then, insert or drag the corresponding audio files into the sequence, stacking them roughly below the video clip (placement does not need to be precise). 
  1. Select the video clip and the audio clips. Right click on any of the clips and select Synchronize from the drop down menu that appears. 
  1. In the Synchronize Clips dialog box that opens, select Audio as your Synchronize Point. Choose Track Channel 1. This means that Premiere will use the camera audio as the reference point for synchronization.
  1. When Premiere is finished synchronizing the clips, select all clips, right click and select Unlink in the dropdown menu.
  2. Right click on the selection again and select Link. If necessary, use the Razor Tool to trim the ends of the audio files so that their duration matches the video clip. Now, when you move or trim the video clip, the audio files will move with the video. 

Note that stereo and mono files cannot be linked together. If your camera audio is stereo, and the audio tracks from your recorder are mono, unlink and delete the camera audio before linking the video with the recorder files. 

Do not Merge your clips in Premiere. The process of Merging clips cannot easily be undone and will present problems later when you’re ready to bring your sound into a DAW like Pro Tools. Pro Tools cannot properly import an AAF file created using Merged clips.

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