Appletell reviews Pluraleyes for Final Cut Pro

Provides: Audio/video syncing
Format: Download
Developer: Singular Software
Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Final Cut Pro 5.1.4
Review Computer: iMac 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM
Processor Compatibility: Universal Binary (Intel or PPC)
Price: $149.00 (30 day demo available)
Availability: Out now

Pluraleyes is a bit of software that does one thing. One extremely useful thing. It syncs digital video taken from multiple cameras. I wish I’d had this software a month ago, because it would have saved me hours of work and frustration.

It works like this: you take the clips from each of the cameras and put them on separate tracks in FCP (there are also version for Premiere Pro and Vegas Pro) in a sequence named “pluraleyes.” You then run the Pluraleyes application externally. It analyzes the tracks (and I’m assuming it uses the audio here, because it woks without timecodes), then creates two new FCP sequences: a master in which all the clips are aligned, and a multitrack sequence for easier editing.

And it works amazingly well. I set up a couple of short clips using both Singular’s demo software and my own multi-clip piece. Pluraleyes quickly analyzed the data (very quickly: the whole process took around two minutes) and synced them perfectly. Where I ran into a problem was when I asked it to sync two hour-long clips which I knew had audio errors—Pluraleyes couldn’t match them up. But by cutting the long pieces into several smaller ones around the audio errors, Pluraleyes worked perfectly. If Pluraleyes fails to sync your video on the first try, it has several options you can enable (which make the process more intensive and, therefore, take more time). My favorite option is “Try really hard,” which reminds me that I need to call my mom.

If you are shooting multi-camera video in a situation where you can’t link them via computer, and if timecoding is impractical, Pluraleyes is a beautiful, simple, and fast piece of software. Take it from someone who spent far too much time tweaking clips frame by frame so that my recent interview wouldn’t look like the prelude to a Godzilla attack.

Appletell Rating:

Buy Pluraleyes for FCP