When it comes to sync, Avid still pushes the old good sound timecode methods. Which doesn't mean it's bad or good. It works well when it works, and it fails great when it fails. If a crew can handle the technicalities involved ( and higher costs) , extra equipment, and more expensive one, then it's all fine. But nowadays, lots of people are using DSLRs , and non-timecode external recorders ( such as low range Zoom, Tascam etc. ). Which bring us to the main point.. How can I handle synchronization in these cases? And these are much more common scenarios than using time-coded audio. Sometimes, the footage comes from totally different cameras, such as phones. When all this footage ends up in post, the nightmare begins. First, organizing all of it, trying to make sense of separate sound recordings, logging all of them. Searching for bits and pieces. Making errors. Losing time, losing money. And most importantly, you got one sad unhappy client waiting for your magic editing skills. And waiting.

Well, there is a way. Actually , Plural Eyes is on the market for quite some time. But even that, just doesn't feel right. Throwing clips on timeline.. getting back another timeline.. You may get synced footage, but you get one messy workspace.



Entangle for Avid from Edit8, which is still in beta, may target few of these issues, has great flow with Avid ( at least the one I was testing on) , and is fully AAF oriented. SO you can do this anytime in the process.

The workflow is really simple, once you install the app, you need to run it once. Then you can fire up Avid Media Composer and a new context menu will be available on right click send to menu.(Synchronize in Entangle).
The footage you can use is limited to linked to AMA files, and for video preview, they need to be playable in Quicktime X. So if you got some files already in a bin, you can go there, select them -> right click -> synchronize in Entangle.
Then you go back to Entangle and wait for files to appear.
When they appear, you can select few or all, and click Prepare, which will create audio fingerprints. This process is really quick and it takes roughly 1 sec or less per each minute of footage.
When they are all showing as Ready, you can select few or all and synchronize them. The results are almost instant. If you like the sync, you can just click the AAF button and export an AAF sequence for Avid or you can do it many times with different shots as needed.

With one limitation, currently it only works with linked to AMA files, and only on Mac. (download free beta https://edit8.com )