Sync to Song Position: Cut Away and Cut Back in Sync

You're running a music video behind the band. Two minutes in, you cut to a camera on the drummer. Ten seconds later you cut back, and the video is ten seconds behind where it should be. The guitar solo on screen isn't the guitar solo in the room.

That's what Sync to Song Position fixes, and it's new in Visibox 5.

What it does

A clip set to Sync to Song Position locks its playback to the song timeline instead of its own. It doesn't matter whether that clip is the one on screen. If the song is at 1:30, the video is at 1:30. Switch away to a camera, an HDMI input, another clip, whatever you like, and when you switch back the video picks up exactly where it would have been if it had never stopped playing.

Seeking works the same way. Drag the song to a new spot and the video lands there with it.

Turning it on

Right-click a video clip and choose When Resuming > Sync to Song Position.

That menu is also where the other two resume behaviors live. Restart From Beginning starts the clip over every time you trigger it. Resume From Last Point picks up where the clip left off, which sounds right until you remember the song kept moving while the clip was parked.

Synced clips get a clock icon on their thumbnail so you can spot them in the grid at a glance. The When Retriggered and Loop options switch off for those clips, since the song is driving position now.

Hear it for yourself

There's a demo of this built into the example project (Help > Download/Open Example Project). Scroll to the bottom and you'll find a song called SYNC MODE. It has a beeping tone in the audio, one octave low in the song and one octave up in the video clips, so you're not just watching for the sync, you're hearing it. Cut between the clips and the camera while it plays and the two octaves stay locked together.

The video above walks through that demo, then flips the same clip to the other resume modes so you can hear the difference.

One honest caveat

Sync works by nudging the video onto the song timeline, and it isn't sample accurate. It's plenty tight for video, including footage of someone lip syncing. Listen closely during the demo and you can actually hear the video adjusting to get back on time. So don't build something that depends on sample-accurate audio coming out of a video clip.

Full details are in the manual under Sync to Song Position. Visibox comes with a free 14-day Pro trial.