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How To Fix Out Of Sync Audio in DaVinci Resolve 17

Have you just finished a long and arduous day of recording, only to find out all of your audio is out of sync with the video? This is a common issue that many creators encounter regularly. Unfortunately, some of them may end up scrapping that footage because they aren’t aware that they can fix out of sync audio. All it takes is a video editor and a little bit of finesse.

In this article, I’ll be showing you how you can re-sync your audio to your video, as well as show you how to sync up your audio to multiple cameras for high-quality camera transitions.

Manual Audio Sync Method & Best Practices

Best PracticeDescription
Make a loud noise at the start and end of each recording that all cameras can hearSyncing your audio can be challenging if you don’t introduce a predictable element into your recordings. A loud noise, such as clapping, or snapping your fingers creates a large peak in your audio and makes lining up your audio much easier. Think of that classic movie clapper – that’s used to help editors line up audio and know what they are editing.
Keep the Audio from your camerasWhile the audio from your camera might not get used in the final cut of your video, it plays an important role when it comes to syncing your audio. After all, if it isn’t recording audio, you have no waveforms to sync up to at all.

One of the best ways to get your audio synced up properly is to introduce a loud, predictable sound into the waveform before you begin every recording. This is especially important for those of you who use multiple cameras. Some people clap their hands, others snap their fingers. Michael DelGaudio (Booth junkie) uses a dog clicker. which is actually really clever, and gives two distinct, and consistent peaks. These spikes in the recording audio allow you to easily see, and sync a waveform. Just line up the peaks of that spike, et voila! Your audio is synced.

Auto Sync Audio Method: Fix Out of Sync Audio Quickly

Now, the above method works just fine when you only have two different audio segments you’re trying to sync up. However, it starts to show its inefficiency quickly beyond two waveforms to sync up. Manually syncing audio is cumbersome and prone to user error, and that, my friends, is where auto-sync comes in. With that said, it is important to keep introducing those peaks into your recordings, as they will help the auto-sync tool’s ability to do its job.

Today, the modern tools available to us (Namely DaVinci Resolve 17, and all of the other big-name editors like Premiere) have an auto-sync feature.

To auto sync audio across multiple cameras, you simply need to:

  1. Enter Edit mode
DaVinci Resolve 17 Edit Mode
  1. Select the Video and Audio clips you are trying to sync up
    • Ctrl left-click to select multiple clips at a time
Fix out of sync audio - Select the audio you want to sync in DaVinci Resolve 17
  1. Right click one of your selected clips
  2. Hover over “Auto Align Clips”, and select “Based on Waveform”
Auto Align clips based on Waveform DaVinci Resolve 17
If you don’t see this option, make sure you are only selecting one clip per track. (A1, A2, etc.)
  1. Playback to ensure the result is acceptable

This is the easiest, and quickest method to sync your audio tracks from multiple cameras. It is basically doing the same exact thing that you’d manually be doing However, like any automatic tool, there are times when this simply does not perform as expected. For those times, you’ll need to resort to the manual frame-by-frame alignment method.

The Final Method in DaVinci Resolve 17 – Media Pool Sync

There technically is another method available to you, however, I’ll just link you to this article that details it very effectively. No sense reinventing the wheel here to fix out of sync audio when we don’t need to.

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