Hi Erling,

Further to Jeff's comments, I think that you are moving one of the videos from its original position. You must not do this. If you select the A/B box and then a transition or drag one onto the interface, the right hand video will move to the left overtop of the left video to make the transition, and everything to the right will move to the left, thus throwing everything at the right out of sync with the audio track.

To make a transition without moving the position of the object, drag the bottom right handle of the left image to the right overtop of the right object to make the transition. Adjust the transition length manually. See the first image below. No objects move, only the right side of the video is extended. Of course, this only works if the object has been previously trimmed or cut and there is some length at the right side available.

Alternatively, drag the bottom left handle of the right object to the left. Again, the object must have been previously trimmed and the beginning cannot be the beginning of the original clip.

Do not use the Adjust transition length feature as this will cause the right object to move.

In the images below, I did not show the audio track.

To move the cut point without moving the objects, place the cursor mid-height of the objects at the interface and a double-headed arrow will appear. Drag this to the left of right to change the cut point. Again, the objects must have been previously trimmed, depending on which way you are moving the cut point.

Further to what Jeff said about multi-cam, watch my tutorial on this. It was for VPX but pretty much applies to MEP Plus/Premium. VPX has more flexibility.

Thanks for the answers guys.

@Jeff:  

No, it's not a "fact of digital life".    I can do this manoevre in my old old version of Premiere Pro and stay in sync.    I was hoping that MEP could replace my Premiere Pro; but as this is a major issue for me, it's not possible.  I know the current PP is in a different league that MEP, but I was hoping to be surprised.  :-)

@John C. B:

I have tried the multicam-function as well and it works fine UNTIL I use transistions.    The problem has nothing do to with the way of editing; but only occurs when transsions/Fades are used.     I fully understand your explanation, John - but  Jeez, that's a lot of tweaking to align the track to get in sync.  Of course it can be done, but it's a tedious and -  IMHO - a unnecessary job.

If I have the same video-clip on track 1 and 2 and I make a cut in track 1, then the two tracks are still in sync and have the same length.     When I put a 1-second-long Fade at the cut in track 1 the length of the tracks becomes 1 second SHORTER than the original a  track 2.       Maybe I could use the transistion on the soundtrack to get the tracks in sync; but that would give a break in the rhythm.    Hmmmm ......

It is really a strange way MEP deals with transitions.  Maybe it's intentially but I prefer to consider it as a bug in MEP.  :-)

Sorry, but it IS a "fact of digital life" that multiple digital recordings of the same material, made concurrently, when played back are almost certain to NOT retain absolute sync, unless they were linked to a common sync pulse generator at the time the recordings were made.

If your "old, old version of Premier Pro" enabled you to do exactly what you want, given the relative price point of it compared with MEP, I think you are being somewhat naive to assume that MEP is likely to be similarly capable. 

One final comment: the makers of programs like PluralEyes, which is designed to sync separate audio and video recordings of the same event, would soon find themselves with a product they could not sell if PP carried out this syncing "automatically".  In point of fact, I think you will find that the majority of video editors who need/use PluralEyes actually use it with Premier Pro.

As to your comment on using transitions in multicam mode, I really don't understand why the simple act of changing a cut to a different type of transition involves "such a lot of tweaking".  Some years ago I produced a DVD of a wedding; the sources were two video cameras (with audio), one mp3 recording taken direct from the church's sound mixing desk and one ambient wav recording.  Using multicam mode I chose the points where I wished to cut from camera to camera; the substitution of cross-fades and other transitions for some of the cuts added a little time to the production process but certainly not as much as you seem to suggest.

And yes, I did use PluralEyes to create a new master audio track from the various sources that was fully in sync with the video.

I must be missing something here - I cannot see how you can take 2 identical video with audio tracks and cut or insert anything on one and have the other, or another track that is not cut, stay in sync?

Or do you mean you just want to cut one track so that you can use the top handles to create a fade to black at the cut point. This should not put anything out of sync.

One thing that might help if you need to cut the picture tracks and remove material (which is what you are effectively doing if you add a transition) is to Ctrl click both the cut clip and the master audio track and right click the master track and select "Automatically align other tracks with this" but you would still need to cut all the tracks at this point, as the transition would need to open up again to achieve alignment, or alignment after subsequent cuts.....

Ss

@Ss,

Erling has done this like multi-cam, synchronized the 2 videos using the audio, the selecting the audio from one of the clips as the master. This remains uncut from start to finish. The master video goes on track 1 and the audio from the clips is turned off. The pieces from the other 2 videos go onto track 1 without being moved from their position on the timeline and thus remain in sync. Unless all of these pieces are grouped, making a transition will move the right clip to the left, thus throwing everything out of sync.

@Erling,

The Solution is quite simple and I missed it. Once you have all of your clips done and ready for making transitions, select them all and, if you want, the master audio track, and group them. Now when you make a transition, the left end of the clip will extend to the left without moving the clip or any subsequent clips.

Try it with a small example of 3 clips and 1 audio track. Make sure to use clips that have been trimmed. Trim the right end to have the audio and the video ending at the same point. Group them. Then make some transitions. So long as there is enough material to extend to the left, the clip will not move but will be extended to the left to make the transition. Interestingly, if the head of one of the clips has not been trimmed, that is, it is at the beginning of the clip, the left clip will be extended to the right and nothing moves. I think that this is exactly what you want. One problem, if the neither clip can be extended the right clip will be moved to the left as per the default.

The following is the logic behind the default design. This is not a bug but the most logical design. The standard is that making a transition automatically moves the right clip overtop of the left clip, the length required for the transition selected. Different transitions have different lengths. The normal event has 2 full clips, one abutting the other. To make the transition, the left clip must not move to the right or it would leave a blank space at the left, and then everyone would complain about this design flaw. The right clip cannot be extended to the left because there is nothing to extend. Even if there was a part that had been trimmed from the head of the right clip, maybe it was only a few bad frames that had been deliberately trimmed. You don't want these showing up in your transition. Thus the only standard solution is the default one - the right clip moves over top of the left clip and everything on the track to the right of that clip moves to the left to leave no gaps. If that is not what you want then you have to use a different method.

Yours is a special case. Both clips have been trimmed. MEP does not know what you want to do, move the right clip to the left, extend the left clip over top of the right clip, or extend the right clip to the left over top of the left clip. As well, MEP does not know that you want to keep certain clips aligned with an object on another track that is not grouped to it. Thus you have to do it yourself as I showed you. You may not even like the edge of either clip being the beginning or ending of a transition, so you may want to move the cut point. The program cannot guess at what you want to do.

@John

Thank you for the answer.

I just made a quick test and grouping the clips solved the problem.

And you're right, it will only work if both clips are trimmed.  Otherwise MEP won't have any "extra" footage to overlap.

Great explanation, John !   Thank you so much!

@Ss

Sorry I may have used the wrong terms.   For test-purposes I split 1 video-clip in 2 without removing or inserting anything.    And used a transition between the 2 clips.  Then the video and the unsplitted video-track was no longer in sync.

@Jeff

Noh, I dont think its naive to expect that MEP has the functionality to keep 2 tracks aligned.  :-)

Premiere Pro has the functionality to align 2 ( or more) tracks based on the audio - and so does MEP.   But it's the transitions that is causing the problem, which John now has "solved"  :-)  

So thank you again, guys.   I may consider MEP as a replacement of my 7+ year old Premiere Pro  :-)