How to Sync Video to External Audio

Hey there, my name is Adrienne, I make video editing tutorials, and today I’m going to show you all the different ways you can sync audio from an external mic to your video.

I’m recording into an external usb mic and the audio sounds great.

My camera audio is not ideal - you can hear me but you may struggle to understand everything I’m saying.

I’m going to show you how to sync your audio tracks together and then delete the on camera mic so you’re left with your video and the nice audio track for your video.

There are 3 ways to sync your audio:

1. Merging

Select audio & video clip in the project panel

Right click, merge clips, make sure audio is selected

Premiere will process the clips and make a new merged clip in the project panel

Double click and play back in the source monitor

2. Synchronize 

Drag clips onto your timeline

Mine are already pretty closely aligned

Select the 2 clips, right click, select synchronize

3. Manual

You can do this if you use a clapper or if your subject claps their hands at the start of recording.

You are going to be looking at the waveforms in the timeline in order to sync the 2 clips

If you don’t see the waveforms, go to the wrench and make sure waveforms is selected

Make the tracks big and zoom in

You can see this is the clap at the start of the tracks

I need to match up the shapes of the waveforms

If you need to move the audio clip over 1 frame at a time, select the clip, press alt or option, and then comma to move left and period to move right

Lastly let’s delete the on camera mic so all you have left on your timeline is the good audio track.

Right click on the video/on-camera audio, go down to unlink and click

Select the audio track and delete

That’s it from me. I’ll say I always use the synchronize method. What do you do? Leave a comment below to share.