The project I’m working on is recording picture and sound onto separate devices. Actually, reference audio in the form of a mix-down is going to camera’s channel 1, and the actor’s mics are recorded to a four-track wave file.

Because the camera audio won’t be used in the final mix we’ve had to sync our own dailies in Final Cut Pro 6. How exactly does a person take two different media files, audio and video, and combine them in sync as a usable clip? After much searching and asking around this is what we came up with.

Final Cut Pro has a feature called Merge Clips which combines multiple clips into one based on In, Out, or Timecode. Because our timecode is not synced to camera we used In/Out Point. Mark each clip, select them in the Browser, then use the Merge Clips command in the Modify menu.

The result is a new master clip (but not media file) which includes all audio tracks of the other clips in sync with the video. If the clip lengths are different Final Cut Pro will insert black slug as needed.

More details can be found in the Final Cut Pro manual under the term “merge clips.” You won’t find anything under “audio sync” or “dailies.”

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