I've shot film for many years MOS, only syncing sound manually a few times. I have a new music video project where I'm shooting in a music studio while the performer is recording. He's an acoustic guitar player/singer and will have a band tracking at in the same session but probably not all playing at the same time.
I'm using a well-maintained & very quiet S16 SR2 with Cinema Electronics crystal sync. May use my 35mm Arri 2c with Steve's Cine crystal for a few close shots when they're not recording. Currently thinking of going B&W with Double-X or 500T and desaturating. Liking the idea of Double-X's grain at the moment.
Neither camera has any timecode abilities so what best practices are there for syncing sound in post? I will be running a Zoom H4n with 2 tracks of mics and two tracks of feed from the mixing board (probably syncing the final studio mix in the edit). In the past I've just used the first downstrokes on a guitar to get in the ball park then just manually slide the sound around until it syncs up. I won't need extended syncs...I'll be cutting between several takes (as each musician adds their tracks) so I can probably sync in 30 second to 1 minute segments for editing.
I'll be using an iPad timecode slate and possibly see about recording that timecode to one of the Zoom tracks.
My question is...is this practical? or should I just rent an SR3 and run timecode on the camera? (I know that's a whole world of hurt)
I will have to run some tests to feel comfortable either way but sound sync is a new world for me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
p.s. I should add that I've had moderate success with recording audio on a digital camera sitting on a tripod recording the entire session and just setting off a still camera flash, syncing the video with the film in post and bamm!... synced sound. Just have to make sure the digital camera audio section isn't doing anything strange with audio compression or auto levels.