Hi everybody,

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to lock an audio clip to a video clip in Sonar X1 Producer. Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, I couldn't find it through searching the forum or general googling. I might just not know the vocabulary for it in Sonar.

To be more specific: when I import a video, an audio track from the video with dialog and sound effects comes in just as I would expect it to - no problem there. But when I adjust the start time of the video so that it lines up with measure markers the way I want it to, the audio for the video doesn't adjust with it. So far my work-around has been to cut off the right amount of material from the audio so that I can just drag it all the way to the left and have it line up again, but I feel like there should be a better way. Is there any way to lock an audio clip to a video so that they shift together?

Thanks!

You cant adjust video in terms of editing in any shape or form in Sonar so i'm a bit confused here.

If you just want to lock the audio to the timeline then simply right click on the audio and lock it.

I think you've done it the only possible way.
I've never tried SONARs video functions, but if the audio behaves in a similar way with/without video, you can not drag the audio to left if the audio clip starts at first measure (the very beginning of timeline).  Just as you described, you need to cut a part from the beginning to give it room to move left. You can't drag the clip to "minus-time".

I'm not sure if slip editing would work in this case.

Slip editing will work.

Hi markyzno,

I'm not editing video at all, sorry for being unclear. I write music to picture, and when I line up the picture where I want it to start I would like the audio from the picture to move with it automatically instead of needing to do so manually and thereby opening up a lot of room for error. (also doing it manually is just annoying.)

Thanks Kalle and Tom for the comments on slip editing. I didn't know that term so I learned something there.

Unfortunately I guess there's no real solution for this in Sonar X1. It doesn't look like this is a thing in X2 either but I'll have to get it on some sort of feature request list. Not a lot of other people use Sonar for scoring, though (because they're all Mac devotees with Logic and DP), so it'll probably be a really low priority. Sad face.

Anyway, thanks for the responses! Always appreciated.

So you're moving the start position of the video so that you're effectively adding black video for a bit till you want the video to actually kick in? Wouldn't you typically edit the video to be the correct length first, or don't you know what the correct length will be as you haven't actually scored the music yet?

I've had a look and it doesn't look like there is any way to do what you want. But syncing up shouldn't be an issue. You use the start time feature here (currently starting at 1:01:000):





Then you know exactly when it starts and you can use snap settings to line your audio up to that perfectly to that marker (or wherever you move it). Now in the case of you cropping the start shorter, you'll just have to do some maths and slip editing to get the line up perfectly. I'd suggest line it up first, then slip edit the audio (unless you are cropping the video in which case I'd suggest cropping the video, but also moving the start time forward equal amounts to the crop, so its relative position doesn't change and then syncing the audio, slip editing it, and now you can shift the video start time and move the audio accordingly without screwing up lining) Unfortunately, it looks like it can only be set to display in measures so you're best to only do your work in measures, or at least for lining things ups.


Thinking about it more now, I fully understand your issue I think and how it could get very frustrating. I'd probably suggest trying to get the video length perfect in a dedicated video editor FIRST, and then move it into SONAR as is so you don't ever need to move stuff around, if that's at all possible.


As for feature request, seems worthwhile, but I don't like your chances. I think it'd take a bit of programming to get something like that in with the current design of SONAR and video is NOT high on the list of priorities...

Thanks mattplaysguitar,

Thanks for your response! I get what you're saying, and I could probably do more video trimming before I put the file into Sonar (I'm usually setting the start time somewhere a few seconds or minutes into the video, rather than adding blank space), but it is true that as I figure out the best tempo for a cue sometimes I have to shift the start time back and forth a bit before making a final decision. For example, if I have a hit point 20 seconds in that needs to be exact but the start time is a little soft, as I experiment with different tempos I move the start around a bit to make sure the hit point is always right on beat 1 of a measure.

It's not a huge deal and I have a workaround, I just thought it would be awesome if someone else knew how to lock things together.