A way to sync Logic with a video editing app?

[FLH3]

Is it a way to sync Logic and a video editor together in order to work on the music AND the video at the same time?

Sometimes I do music video to illustrate my compositions but it would be great to work on that at the same time. Chop a video sequence, add a new track, put a video filter, edit a fade out, etc...

As I'm no a video guy I usualy use iMovie the cheap way with my feet but some images can lead you to music and the contrary and I dream to lauch both apps, push play in one of them and the other runs in sync at the same frame.

I tried to launch Logic and iMovie or DaVinci, mangled in the various prefs and setups but I haven't find anything. Either it's not possible or, more likely, I don't know how to achieve that.

(obviously I know I can read video in Logic, but it's just a reader, not a video editing tool)

 

 

 

 

[fisherking]

really, how do you maintain sync with the work itself, if you need to edit in 2 places?

i used to (a long time ago) sync reason & logic... editing was a painful experience (i was doing music in reason, vocals in logic). ugh.

imho, just seems worth getting the music right, then bringing that into imovie (or whatever). and if you're inspired to change the music, go back to logic, make those changes, and bring the new mix back into imovie.

at least, until apple gives us the 'final logic cut pro' app.

maybe someone smarter here will have a more-useful idea...

[des99]

For me, trying to edit video, and trying to compose music are two entirely separate processes. Yes, there is interaction between them as various iterations require changes, but trying to do them both at the same time for me would be like trying to vacuum the house and defrost the fridge at the same time... not that productive.

Non-linear video editors don't generally respond to timecode and can't sync with other apps, in the main.

[FLH3]

Well, I almost agree with you but sometimes I get ideas from images and I get ideas from music.

I would like to have the chance to work on them together, just to see if it's possible, just to have, maybe, one more idea.

After 2 or 3 trials I'll perhaps forget this idea.

You work now in a certain way, I work now in certain way, maybe tomorow you and I will work differently,  but this is not the point.

Anyway my question is not if it's usefull for you, my question is is it possible and if yes , how.

(And, oh, well, during the fridge was defrosting, which took usualy some time, I was abble to vacuum. But now modern fridges don't realy frost. )

Edited July 14, 2022 by FLH3

[fuzzfilth]

The thing is - in a video editor, you're constantly shifting things around, you cut something here and paste it there, slip edit the other transition by 15 frames while keeping its end, shorten the intro by 1sec and 7 frames. By then your external audio is hopelessly out of sync.

Or you are editing a music video, but then, the music is finished, the scenes are shot and you're assembling videos so anyone watching it does not doze off, unless that is precisely the purpose of the video. 

Syncing up both video and music editor makes it technically more complicated, doubles the load on the computer and the person, and wastes any audio capabilities of the video editor. Don't forget that DaVinci has a full fledged Fairlight MFXIII multitrack audio editor and mixer on board, which at times is smarter and better laid out than Logic, so why would they want you to use external audio instead of the one that's built in ?

As to the "how", get a video editor that sends MIDI Machine Control and you're in business. I don't know any.

Edited July 14, 2022 by fuzzfilth

[FLH3]

22 minutes ago, fuzzfilth said:

 in a video editor, you're constantly shifting things around, you cut something here and paste it there, slip edit the other transition by 15 frames while keeping its end, shorten the intro by 1sec and 7 frames.

Actualy we did exactly the same things with audio or midi.  Shifting, cut, paste, move, etc... The only difference is we've not to deal with 1/25th of a second but with 10 or 15mSec.

15 frames it's a lot of time in the audio domain.

 

But you're right, I searched some MMC things in da vinci or iMovie and I didn't find any.

Regarding fairlight on da vinci, yes it's an audio editing thing but it's not a composing tool, with real MIDI, real FX and so on.

Regarding doubling the load on the computer I can obviously understand, but what about 2 synced computers?

(some of us have more than one).

 

Well, the question is still open

 

Some SMPTE solutions maybe?

 

Edited July 14, 2022 by FLH3

[Mania]

Yeah, I’m not aware if this is possible reliably these days, maybe in the future. In the meantime:

Decide what is more important: The music or the video? 
If you do a music video as Fuzzfilth said you have to finish the music piece and you edit the video on top of it (In Davinci for example)so it syncs up nicely. Or if you edit a real estate 30 second video then you string your video shots together in a nice way then bring the result into logic and compose music(in Logic) underneath.  

[des99]

38 minutes ago, FLH3 said:

You work now in a certain way, I work now in certain way, maybe tomorow you and I will work differently,  but this is not the point.

Anyway my question is not if it's usefull for you, my question is is it possible and if yes , how.

I started my response with "For me..." to discuss why I don't think this is that useful, as a general discussion point - after all, this is a discussion forum where people converse about workflow, problems and such. I wasn't suggesting you shouldn't do it, if you want to try and find out for yourself what works for you.

I then gave you some more factual technical things about running a non-linear video editor and a DAW isn't really that feasible, as there is no sync facility. It's probably not impossible, and I'm a FCP guy (with Resolve, After Effects and other tools alongside it) but I can't think of a way to remotely sync FCP (or whatever) to a MIDI timecode, or even non-synced MMC etc.

The tools don't generally work like this, presumably because very few people have indicated they want to work like this, for reasons already outlined. And I can't think of a simple way to achieve this, offhand. accordingly.

That's all I can offer...

Edited July 14, 2022 by des99

[Mania]

Personally my mind would blow up if I would interrupt myself all the time with new ideas with audio or video and it throws off my previous work. It’s like somebody standing over my shoulder and telling me the work I did is no good you have to change the music then when you change the music somebody’s telling you change the video now and it goes on and on. 
Any chance your sign is Gemeni? 😀

[FLH3]

12 minutes ago, Mania said:

 

If you do a music video as Fuzzfilth said you have to finish the music piece and you edit the video on top of it (In Davinci for example)so it syncs up nicely.

It's what I usualy do, badly I confess, but what about cross-fertilizing these 2 creative process?

But I've a lot of good bad ideas ;).

(Mainly because  I don't have such a lot of ideas and I don't want to miss one!)

And @Mania: Worse. Libra. With bald irish pointer in the full moon as rising

Edited July 14, 2022 by FLH3

[des99]

8 minutes ago, FLH3 said:

It's what I usualy do, badly I confess, but what about cross-fertilizing these 2 creative process?

Then keep Logic open, and FCP open, and when you make changes, continually bounce out a video, or audio, and replace that in the other app to keep things in sync - that's probably the only approach, without some proper way of syncing the two together.

You could probably automate this with something like Keyboard Maestro, so you hit a key shortcut, and it goes to FCP, renders out a new video, goes to Logic, bins the existing imported video and imports the new version, which would at least make it simpler to keep going back and forth (as I don't think Logic would recognise an imported movie file has changed on disk and update it accordingly - though it's worth testing that to see how it behaves.)

Edited July 14, 2022 by des99

[Mania]

4 minutes ago, des99 said:

Then keep Logic open, and FCP open, and when you make changes, continually bounce out a video, or audio, and replace that in the other app to keep things in sync - that's probably the only approach, without some proper way of syncing the two together.

I think this is your best shot at this these days!

[FLH3]

@des99:

Why render, just being able to work with "objects" or "regions" in low def for the video would be enough (for me at least)

After, when you think your work is done you render all of that in a proper definition.

[des99]

7 minutes ago, FLH3 said:

Why render, just being able to work with "objects" or "regions" in low def for the video would be enough (for me at least)

Because to work on the music in Logic alongside the video, you need a video imported, so you need to render your timeline into a video to import into Logic (in whatever quality you want).

And going the other way, you need to bounce out a stereo mix of your music, to import into FCP/your non-linear editor, so you can work in your video editor along with the music.

Given that you can't run the two apps in sync, so you're always working in one, or the other app.

[FLH3]

Actualy I've found this here:

But I do hate subscribtion systems

[des99]

41 minutes ago, FLH3 said:

Actualy I've found this here:

Could you describe what you mean in terms of using this, as I'm not sure how this app gets around your issue...

[FLH3]

I understand in their description that this can make Logic (or some other DAWs)  and video editor running together via MTC and a"virtual smpte stream".

I don't know more about it but it looks like what I'm looking for. I don't know if this works well but it shows it's possible.

But I'm maybe wrong. And as I don't like subscribtion systems at all  I will not buy it anyway

[des99]

45 minutes ago, FLH3 said:

I understand in their description that this can make Logic (or some other DAWs)  and video editor running together via MTC and a"virtual smpte stream".

Hmm, that's not what I thought it does *at all* from (admittedly skim-) reading the website blurb.

From what I can see, it offers a way to playback multiple movie files from within this app, syncing to a DAW (it's a "State-of-the-art synchronized video player"). Logic can already play one movie integrated into the project, and I can't see the need to play multiple movies, and this is in no way syncing Logic up to a separate video editor application where your current edit is.

So you'd still need to render out the current edit of the movie to a movie file, and play it back in that app alongside Logic (which is pointless, you might as well just load it into Logic).

So, unless I'm missing something about how it works, you gain nothing by using that app, and it doesn't seem to solve your problem...

[fuzzfilth]

No, Video Sync (VS) does not sync audio and video editors. It is a syncable video payer. You can make it play several video files at different time code positions.

Say you have a commercial in 5, 10 and 12 sec length. So you start with the 12 sec and 10 and 5 are just clever cutdowns. For this you want all three videos in the time line, which, after 30 years, is still not possible in Logic. You can line up the videos in VS and sync that to Logic.

[FLH3]

OK OK 🤔

Well, and what about doing it the old way, as we synced tape decks and DAWs before:  striping an audio smpte signal in a time line in the video editor, send it to logic via audio (out from an audio interface and back  in the MIDI+SMPTE interface), make logic sync to this smpte signal and voilà?

Let's say you strip 10 minutes of smpte and as Logic is listening this signal with the correct project pref settings it should sync.

This could work?

(I try to think before digging in the back of my apollo and my motu with audio cables in the mouth and a flash light. If it's hopeless...)

[fuzzfilth]

That way you could sync Logic to the video editor, but not the other way round, so if you hit Play in Logic, you'd have no picture.

Also, this only works if the video editor is in Play for 1+ seconds. If you just jump to another location, Logic won't follow.

[FLH3]

I don't mind to press play & stop on one or the other. The main problem will be the cycle play for composing on a phrase, a feature I'm sure we all use a lot, this will not perfectly work obvioulsy.

But it's the begining of a solution. Now, before I begin my exploration I've to find how to send this smpte signal out thru an output of my apollo. I've found nothing in iMovie nor in Davinci prefrences so far. (But I realy don't know a lot about these softwares, I'm a total moron regarding video things)

[fuzzfilth]

You need an audio file of Time Code (did that 10 years ago to sync studios via ISDN) and play that file from an audio track which is routed to a dedicated output.

[FLH3]

Yes, I know, striping some smpte sound code bbrzzzzzzzkrrrrrzzz on an audio track is the easy part, all elderly people know how to do that. 👨‍🦳

The hardest one is to send it thru a dedicated output from a video editor. Means digin' in all those kryptic things in the preferences of apps I don't actauly know well. Or at all. This winter, maybe....

Edited July 16, 2022 by FLH3

[wing]

I'm hopping into this convo as a media composer who was previously a professional video editor for many years. For some clients I still actually do both – commercial edits and music composition + sound design, sort of a one-stop-shop haha.

It happens frequently on these kind of projects where a director knows I'm in "music land" aka Logic, and as they are watching the screen some cut, graphic, or soundbite is bothering them and they ask me if I can quickly change that. I say I can do it but not quickly, I'll have to close Logic and open up Premiere (my current NLE, though I've also used FCP & Avid previously). I try to persuade them that if it's not something that will affect sound or music, like if they just want to change the font color of the subtitles, that it would be best to finish the music while I'm in Logic and we'll fix that when I return to the NLE.

Conversely, I'll sometimes be in Premiere and I get asked on the spot if I can change a musical part. Again not a quick change for me as I'll have to entirely switch programs, and the round-trip of exports can get exhausting if it's for little tweaks. Even adding basic audio sweetening to dialogue is a pain in the ass in Premiere.

That said I've never considered your approach mainly because I have a super powerful computer and even then it chokes up with a single DAW or single NLE open. If I have them open simultaneously everything becomes painfully and uselessly sluggish, and this is with a 12-core mac at 64GB of ram... Granted I'm often using a lot of Kontakt libraries and CPU-demanding FX.

I would be curious if you could have two separate computer rigs synced together over SMPTE of some sort, and I could simply flip a switch for the display and speakers maybe.

However at the same time I recognize that my circumstance is unusual (not many composer/editors out there) and yours is a bit unusual as well. There's probably not a lot of motivation for the companies of any NLEs or DAWs to implement an easy method for this because there wouldn't be a huge demand for it outside of us select few oddballs. Let alone the computing power needed to make it work as mentioned...

Others did suggest Davinci Resolve which has an audio DAW built-in based on Fairlight I believe. Excited to have the best of both worlds, I've tried the free version but I dislike it either as an NLE or a DAW, it's almost worse than having to round-trip as I currently do. Granted I last tried it about 5 years ago, maybe it's come along since then.

All of this said, it sounds like in your case your motivation for doing this is for your own creative projects or ideas; and in my case I only have to switch between the worlds when the project calls for it. I *much* prefer to stay in one lane at a time and I would actually not like it to be too easy to switch especially if a client was sitting in the room with me, that could just get too crazy. The time it takes to round-trip tempers excessive demands on a deadline which is in my benefit haha. Plus I one day hope to go full-time with composing as editing isn't my passion, just something I started doing years ago to pay rent.

However the idea is interesting and I'd be curious to hear if you ever work it out! Sorry for the length, but hope my insight is helpful :)

[des99]

8 minutes ago, wing said:

I *much* prefer to stay in one lane at a time

Same. If I come across picture/edit things that I notice or bug me when doing music, I'll make a note of those things, and attend to them later when I'm working on that part of the process (unless it's vital and has to be done now before I can continue).

I have to focus, and you can't focus on everything at once. Of course, when you're one person, you wear a lot of different hats, and things do inter-relate, requiring you to jump between different tasks and environments. But there's a cost of context-switching, and I like to be in control of that where possible.

Anyway, the OP is just exploring a different workflow to see whether it has value, and I'm always big on people trying to find a better workflow. If the OP can find a method that works for them, so much the better.

Edited July 16, 2022 by des99

[wing]

Yeah I agree, everyone's mind and creative process works differently, so if OP can find a way more power to them and to each their own!

But for me I like to focus, I'd never get much done bouncing around. Comically someone asked earlier in the thread if OP is a Gemini – and I'm actually the Gemini around here haha.

[FLH3]

1 hour ago, wing said:

 

All of this said, it sounds like in your case your motivation for doing this is for your own creative projects or ideas

You perfectly pointed out what is my aim, Wing.

I usualy get "visions" from sounds and get some musical ideas from images. I'm sure it's quite common, actualy. As a media composer you work on images from others and get musical ideas to help/emphasis/improve them. Usual. Normal. I did that too.

My idea is to have some tools to work on both at the same moment.

Maybe it will be too much for my poor little brain but I'ld like to have a try.

Just to know if I'm the Richard Wagner of the 3rd millenium.

Or Not.

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by FLH3

[des99]

4 minutes ago, FLH3 said:

My idea is to have some tools to work on both at the same moment.

You could maybe investigate some more "VJ-like" tools, eg like the excellent Resolume Avenue/Arena, to trigger visuals via MIDI from your DAW. Then you can work on both at once, freely, with video clips and other visualisations triggered by MIDI events in realtime...

[FLH3]

An idea, maybe, but I'm more in composing in a classic linear way than DJing and VJing on the fly.

(Realy old fashioned bourgeois... 😁)

But I don't know these tools at all and I'll investigate. Thank you for the idea.

Edited July 16, 2022 by FLH3