Confident and weak matches
Synchronize Audio grades every match it finds. A confident match is applied straight away, a weak one is asked about first, and anything less moves nothing.
- Menu
- Clip ▸ Synchronize Audio
- Agent tools
sync_audio
Each possible offset, meaning how far a clip could move to line up, gets a confidence: a score for how far it stands out from every other offset Frame Job tried. A high score means one offset is clearly right. Frame Job keeps up to four candidates, each about a second or more from the others.
Either grade must also pass the waveform check. A match that fails it isn’t used, however high its confidence, which keeps two takes of the same words apart.
Confident matches
Section titled “Confident matches”A match is confident when its best candidate has a confidence of at least 10, and is at least 1.5 above the next candidate. A confident match is applied straight away.
The Weak match sheet
Section titled “The Weak match sheet”A match is weak when no candidate is confident, but the best one within about 3 seconds of where the clip already sits has a confidence of at least 4. A weak match might be unrelated sound, so it’s never applied without asking. A Weak match sheet appears:
Weak match: move “record.aifc” 0.80 s earlier (trimming 0.80 s off its head)?
A clip that doesn’t need to move, only to have its drift corrected, is asked about this way:
Weak match: play “record.aifc” at ×1.0004, correcting its drift?
When several clips are weak, one sheet lists them all, separated by semicolons.
Under the question, the sheet gives the anchor’s name, each match’s confidence and the rule it fell short of.
| Choose | What happens |
|---|---|
| Apply (the default) | Makes all the changes as one undo step, including those for any clips that matched confidently. |
| Cancel or Esc | Leaves everything as it is, including clips that matched confidently. |
If you aren’t sure, choose Apply and play the result. ⌘Z takes all of it back in one step.
If the project changed while the sheet was up, or an agent moved in or out of a nest, Apply moves nothing. Frame Job beeps and the inspector says to choose Synchronize Audio again.
A weak match that wouldn’t change anything isn’t asked about.
A weak match in the trimmed parts ends the search, and the whole files are searched only when the trimmed parts give neither a confident nor a weak match. So if you cancel a weak match, change the trims before trying again.
When nothing matches
Section titled “When nothing matches”If no candidate is confident or weak, nothing moves. The strip at the foot of the inspector names the offsets Frame Job did find and their confidences, for example:
Refused: no matching sound found between clip 1 and clip 2: in the played windows, moving clip 2 by +0.77 s (confidence 4.31) or −12.40 s (3.90). A match applies on its own at…
“The played windows” are the parts each clip is trimmed to, and “the whole files” are listed too when those were searched. A plus sign means later and a minus sign means earlier. Hover over the strip to read the whole message.
To try again:
-
Pick the offset that looks right. You might know roughly where the clip belongs, or one figure may be well ahead of the others.
-
Move the clip by about that much, so it sits within 3 seconds of the match.
-
Choose Clip ▸ Synchronize Audio again. A candidate near the clip with a confidence of at least 4 now comes up as a weak match, as long as it passes the waveform check.
If the message ends “too little room to compare their sound”, Frame Job found no candidates at all. Check that both clips have enough sound to compare, and try longer trims.
With an agent
Section titled “With an agent”An agent gets no sheet. A weak match moves nothing and the agent is told the move it would make, so it should ask you. It applies the match by calling sync_audio again with accept_weak: true, and only once you’ve agreed to that move. See Tools: audio.