lol, if you could have seen the "Huh?" on my face reading that.

Must have missed that thread, I'm sure its really frikkin easy and probably should be obvious just haven't played with doing that yet. Well, kinda played but did it the guessing way and wasn't thrilled with the results.

- Ray
Underground Planet

Just guessing...

24 into 60 is 2.5. Have the song sped up 2.5 times for playback on the set and have the singer lipsync to that recording while everyone around moves at normal speed.

I'm pretty sure that Please watch, comment, help me improve is the thread musicvid is referring to.

Mike

Ray, here's a video tut for just what you're trying to do...

Thanks Jay and Mike, watching the vid now, and yea, looks like I misspoke saying I need to slow down the audio though the description of what I want was correct, for that I'll need to speed up the audio. Still trying to wrap my head around it.

- Ray
Underground Planet

I have always really liked the way the effect you described was used in this Fiona Apple video.

Hm, he lost me and since I don't use FC or have an iPod I'll have to guess at what the heck to do in Vegas. Seems like there's gotta be an easier way. Just need to know how much faster the song should be for recording 60p (seems like he saying 250%) and then have an easy way to speed it up to that and render it as a wav.

Confuzeled.

- Ray
Underground Planet

Ray, speed the song up 2.5 times (250%). Adjust the pitch so the singer doesn't sound like the chipmonks.

The visual time code is creating a visual syncing mechanism for both shooting and editing (as used in digital slates).

It's really not as difficult as your making it (I know, I think the same way you do).

Everything he talked about can be done is Vegas very easily.

Exactly John, actually glad you posted that one since I hadnt seen it and actually like Fiona. =)

What set me off on it today was a Beastie Boys thingy I was watchin on Fuse. Like I said I've played with it before a little in the Ember video but it was a bit of a nightmare.

Jay, sorry man I'm not getting it! If I take a slug and render it out just so its attached to a vid file and then bring it back into Vegas, if I change the speed of the vid it doesn't change the speed of the audio unless I use ctrl+click to resize it. If I use a velocity envelope or go into the properties of the video clip and change playback to 2.5 the audio doesn't change speed. I've tinkered with "Lock to stretch" and other options but doesnt seem like they work with those methods of changing playback speed. Sorry if I'm missin the obvious. =/

- Ray
Underground Planet

Ray, look at WHAT is doing, not HOW is he doing it, e.g., look at the end result--a video clip of the song sped up 250% with visual timecode (timecode is sped up, too).

Now, how would you do that in Vegas?

Try Time Stretch in the audio Plug-in Chooser.

So I tried the plug in and set it to 250% but it didn't speed it up, just made it sound wonky. If it worked like I thought it should once ya said it that would be the ideal method.

A workaround might be to render out the vid with the song and a slug, bring it back into Vegas, ungroup them, set playback to 2.5 under properties on the vid and then use ctrl+click and drag the audio to be the same length as the video. Seems to work but still playing around and a long way to go if the plug in can do it by itself.

- Ray
Underground Planet

Ray, let me get this straight, are you trying to do this using a live audio track as opposed to lip-syncing?

With the Fiona Apple song I posted above, she is lip-syncing by listening to the track being played probably 2.5 times faster than real-time, assuming they shot at 60P and slowed it down to 24P. They sped the original studio audio recording up, but likely corrected the pitch back down to normal. Very easy to do. Fortunately, the Fiona Apple song at it's real speed is a slow ballad and was easy to lip-sync even sped up by 2.5 times. If the song you're trying to do is fairly up-tempo to begin with, your singer might not be able to physically move his mouth that fast!

Anyway, in post it would be quite simple to just lay in the original audio track at its original speed and slow the 60P (59.94 fps) video down to 24p (23.976 fps) and everything would sync up just fine. Piece of cake. Attempting to do this using audio from a live performance recorded during the shoot would be an exercise in total frustration.

Oh no man, totally going to do it lip-synching! Sorry if there was confusion.

So unless I'm missing something else using the time stretch plug-in pushing it up to 250% actually slows it down but pulling it down the fastest you can make it is 50%.

- Ray
Underground Planet

Correct, if necessary re-render to achieve 250% required for your purposes.

Ray, the "elastique Timestretch" plug-in in Sound Forge will speed up the audio by 2.5x (it will do up to 10x but I can't think of many applications where that would be useful.) Like I said though, unless the song is really slow to begin with, a singer may have difficulty keeping up with a song sped up by 2.5x. Maybe 2x could be a bit more reasonable. If you have Sound Forge 10, it has the elastique plugin, if not, I could do it for you if you'd like to post the audio track to Dropbox or something.

Awesome John, I don't have Sound Forge but will either get it or keep your offer in mind. Honestly I don't even have a artist/band or song to do this yet but hope to pull together something in the next week or so and really wanna try this. Will keep ya posted!

- Ray
Underground Planet

Ray, I'm not sure you care about if the song sounds like the chipmunks or just sped up because you're using the original song when you bring the footage back into Vegas. I would start a veg, put the song on the timeline with a couple of audio markers (beeps) on either end. Group the three audio events and duplicate them on a second timeline. Then squeeze (ctl drag) the grouped events to the desired length (50% of original = 30fps/60fps). It doesn't have to be perfect. Render the shorter audio track and use that to do your filming. Import the footage into the same veg and then ctl drag stretch the footage to line up it's audio markers with your two original (normal speed) audio markers. Done, right?

So I finally got to play with this and it worked perfect. Not sure if anyone has seen the video I had done a video a few months back regarding the fires that were at the time ravaging Texas but in the piece I had used a song I had stumbled across from the Austin based band Alpha Rev. Long story is in the description of the video but they were totally on board when I contacted them and had even had friends who had lost everything. I edited the piece in four hours and got it online. They were as moved by the piece as I was. Here's that original: Texas Fires/Alpha Rev - Black Sky

Short time later they and their management asked what it would cost to do an "official" music video, essentially film the band and use much of the footage from that one and intermix. I said for this one I didn't feel right about charging but that if they were willing to donate a portion of the proceeds from the song to Red Cross I'd do it for free, they were totally cool with that and we've been getting it set up with the Red Cross. Yesterday with them having a break from touring we finally got to go out and shoot.

Upshot is here is just one of the takes that I thought I would share with everyone here who helped me finally wrap my head around how to do it. As suggested sped it up 250% and rendered it out, threw it on a cd and did playback through a jam box. This was a simple jib shot, me walking backwards working the camera, singer walking towards me, and the band basically in a big circle at four points behind him. Again this is raw footage and just one take from yesterday with only a simple fade in/fade out, the color balance was set like this intentionally to fit the mood and aesthetic of the original. Shot on a Sony PMW-F3.

Alpha Rev Raw Footage
password: onetake

Thanks everyone for all the insight, I've said it before and I'll say it again I've learned more about doing what I do from these forums than any other single source and can't thank you enough.

- Ray
Underground Planet

P.S. If you like the song wait for the official version of the video to come out (editing it now!) and there will be a link to the version that will benefit the Red Cross.

Nice piece, Ray!

Thank ya Sir =)

- Ray
Underground Planet

It must have been hard to maintain lip sync at 2.5X, but your talent did a pretty good job.

Perhaps by adding a video frame and dropping one later you could get that first note right on cue.