Autosync waveform peaks like "Pluraleyes"

illution · 09-18-2020, 05:24 PM

Most video edit software has a feature that autosyncs camera audio to 2nd system audio by looking for the big peaks (like the sound of a clapper-board) and positioning those transients in sync in the timeline.

I know that this is usually a video-edit-software feature, but it's also a very audio-centric task. Would be good to use in post for any scenes re-assembled by the editor, and they need post-sound to sync everything.

Having this feature would be another one-up on ProTools for sure!

karbomusic · 09-18-2020, 07:14 PM

There's a reason Pluraleyes is expensive, IMHO of course. Pretty sure its just aligning the waveforms, that's it's main purpose, loosely similar to what a phase align plugin might do but zoomed out more.

Thinking about it that way, I'm not sure why someone couldn't script something that might work for this... or even one the existing scripts that already tries to align waveforms on two different tracks.

illution · 09-18-2020, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karbomusic

There's a reason Pluraleyes is expensive, IMHO of course. Pretty sure its just aligning the waveforms, that's it's main purpose, loosely similar to what a phase align plugin might do but zoomed out more.

Thinking about it that way, I'm not sure why someone couldn't script something that might work for this... or even one the existing scripts that already tries to align waveforms on two different tracks.

It's a very common feature in most video editing programs. Even the free "Davinci Resolve" Has this feature natively. Would be a perfect candidate as a feature request seeing as this is an audio related feature that almost all editors use.

karbomusic · 09-19-2020, 04:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by illution

It's a very common feature in most video editing programs. Even the free "Davinci Resolve" Has this feature natively. Would be a perfect candidate as a feature request seeing as this is an audio related feature that almost all editors use.

Maybe you didn't read my full my post, maybe there is hope and already possible, you need to ask/test what I mentioned first, othwerwise...

I own Davinci Studio pro version, I personally don't think it does such a hot job of it so I still sync manually, but OK.

illution · 09-20-2020, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karbomusic

Maybe you didn't read my full my post, maybe there is hope and already possible, you need to ask/test what I mentioned first, othwerwise...

I own Davinci Studio pro version, I personally don't think it does such a hot job of it so I still sync manually, but OK.

Unless reaper has a built in phase align plugin, I still think it's a great idea for a feature request! Not sure how you would figure this is already possible natively in reaper unless I'm not understanding you. As people are now adopting reaper for post-audio, this would be a great feature.

Sure you could write a script to use it with a 3rd party phase plugin, but then it wouldn't be a feature request would it?

karbomusic · 09-20-2020, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by illution

Unless reaper has a built in phase align plugin, I still think it's a great idea for a feature request! Not sure how you would figure this is already possible natively in reaper unless I'm not understanding you. As people are now adopting reaper for post-audio, this would be a great feature.

Sure you could write a script to use it with a 3rd party phase plugin, but then it wouldn't be a feature request would it?

This is way harder than it should be

I never said no to the feature request...

I'm saying there are already one or more existing scripts that do waveform alignment of tracks such as a vocal align and/or phase align. That's kind of exactly the same thing - it might not work at all but If you can't be bothered to seek beyond this thread, then just wait for the FR. No biggie, just trying to help.

illution · 09-20-2020, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karbomusic

This is way harder than it should be

I never said no to the feature request...

I'm saying there are already one or more existing scripts that do waveform alignment of tracks such as a vocal align and/or phase align. That's kind of exactly the same thing - it might not work at all but If you can't be bothered to seek beyond this thread, then just wait for the FR. No biggie, just trying to help.

I haven't been able to find any scripts like that for reaper? Could you tell me where to find them?

karbomusic · 09-20-2020, 06:16 PM

They are probably in ReaPack, which is an extension that is a library of hundreds and hundreds of user scripts. I was thinking possibly one of these - might be a longshot, seemed worth a try to see:

That and as an FR it sort of sounds like something Justin might be into a challenge for but while we wait... one of the great scripters here might see this thread and be able to whip up something up grand in the mean time.

Regardless of the FR, you really want SWS and Reapack because they add so much great functionality, couldn't live without it myself.

I was going to try to test this for you last night but I don't have any recent original video + reaper audio handy to test with.

illution · 09-20-2020, 06:25 PM

Thanks for helpful insight. I think I'm still fighting the learning curve in Repaer, but I will try this out and see how far I get.

If you wanted to test it out that would be hugely helpful as I try to play catchup. Thank you! You could really even try this with a single mono waveform, and duplicate it to see if they sync up. Ideally it would be great to have a polywav. Is there a way I could send you one?

karbomusic · 09-20-2020, 06:55 PM

Wellll.... I tried all of those and they all sucked - apologies for going on about it, I thought it had promise.

illution · 09-20-2020, 07:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karbomusic

Wellll.... I tried all of those and they all sucked - apologies for going on about it, I thought it had promise.

Thanks for trying. I also tried the "align takes" plugin and it just started messing with sample stretching. I had no idea what to do. glad it's not just me haha.

I appreciate the effort! Would be great to have some way to do this automatically!

atmosfar · 09-21-2020, 02:28 PM

Agree that this would be a very useful feature. One thing that Davinci Resolve struggles with is audio drift between different sources, say a camera and a mixer, or a voip recording and a local recording. It looks like Pluraleyes can handle that. Wonder what the algorithm behind it is like, I know the basic time alignment tools are probably using cross-correlation.