In post-production, getting your audio and visuals perfectly aligned is non-negotiable. Nothing pulls an audience out of a story faster than seeing someone’s lips move out of sync with the words they’re speaking. It’s distracting, it’s unprofessional — and it’s avoidable when you know how to spot and fix the issues early.

Having Executive Produced series like More Than a Celebrity for ReachTV, Sustainable GOAT, and NIL-driven series for Group Black and Peacock like Dual Pursuit: The Scarlet Dream and Oklahoma: The Champion Mindset, I know firsthand how critical clean sync is. Following athletes through live games, interviews, and real-world environments — where footage comes from dozens of different sources — made mastering this part of the workflow absolutely essential.

Let’s walk through how I approach diagnosing and solving sync issues, whether you’re polishing a major series or refining a single powerful story.

Step 1: Identifying Sync Problems Early
Spotting sync issues quickly is half the battle.

When we were documenting live games and behind-the-scenes interviews for Dual Pursuit, there were times when footage shot on mobile devices, broadcast cameras, and cinematic rigs all had to live together in the same episode. That’s a recipe for sync discrepancies if you're not careful.

Common causes of sync issues include:

Frame Rate Differences: If audio and video files were recorded at different frame rates, things won't line up naturally.
Software Glitches: Editing platforms can sometimes introduce sync issues when juggling multiple media types.
Improper Settings: Sometimes even a simple oversight in project setup (wrong timeline FPS, for example) can throw everything off.
To identify if a sync problem exists:

Play back raw clips carefully, especially dialogue-heavy scenes.
Use waveforms and timeline markers to match sound peaks with visual moments like claps, words, or movement.
Test playback on multiple devices — sometimes sync looks good on a laptop but falls apart on a TV or mobile stream.
When you catch sync problems early, you avoid costly rework later in the post-production schedule.

Step 2: Basic Troubleshooting
Once you know there's an issue, start with basic fixes before diving deeper.

When I produced Oklahoma: The Champion Mindset, syncing dozens of hours of footage from different sources — locker room interviews, stadium footage, ESPN highlights — meant basic settings checks were my first defense.

Here’s my core checklist:

Frame Rate Matching: Make sure your audio and video are set to the same frame rate at the project level.
Software and Firmware Updates: Keep everything updated — glitches often disappear with version updates.
Sample Testing: Import smaller chunks first to isolate where the problem starts.
Hardware Checks: Bad cables or faulty storage devices can corrupt timing data without you realizing it.
Environment Reset: Sometimes just restarting your NLE (or the whole system) clears minor sync drift.
If you catch and correct these simple things first, you’ll save hours of deeper troubleshooting later.

Step 3: Advanced Techniques for Persistent Issues
When basic fixes don’t solve the problem, it’s time to go deeper.

On Sustainable GOAT, because we were working with a lot of footage recorded in eco-environments on minimal gear, there were times we had to manually re-sync interviews shot in windy outdoor conditions. Here’s how I typically approach advanced fixes:

Manual Resyncing: Slip or nudge audio tracks by tiny increments to visually and aurally match action.
Time-Stretching Audio: Adjust the length of the audio clip without changing the pitch to match a video clip’s exact timing.
Audio/Visual Analysis Plugins: Some editing suites offer plugins that automatically detect sync drift and suggest fixes.
Multi-cam Syncing Tools: For larger projects with multiple cameras and sound recorders, syncing by timecode or audio waveform analysis is critical.
These techniques require more finesse, but they’re crucial if you want to deliver network-caliber content — which has been the standard across all the projects I’ve led.

Step 4: When to Bring in Professional Help
Sometimes sync issues are too complex or too risky to tackle without backup — and that’s perfectly okay.

During the intense production of Dual Pursuit’s tournament episodes, where schedules were incredibly tight, I knew bringing in dedicated sync specialists and professional audio editors would keep the post schedule intact and the final product flawless.

If you’re:

Facing massive volumes of footage from multiple devices
On a deadline with no room for error
Delivering content for broadcast or streaming platforms
...then hiring specialists to clean, sync, and prep your media is absolutely the right move. It’s about protecting the final quality and the sanity of your editorial team.

Final Thoughts: Mastering the Details That Matter
Syncing isn’t glamorous, but it’s the quiet professional polish that makes great projects feel effortless to the viewer.
Whether it’s capturing the electric energy of a Big Ten basketball championship run or the once-in-a-lifetime resilience of Oklahoma’s legendary softball team, ensuring the sights and sounds move together seamlessly is what brings the story to life.

As someone who's led series that blend scripted interviews, live sports action, and raw documentary footage, I can tell you — investing in solid sync work isn’t optional. It’s the foundation your storytelling rests on.

If you’re facing sync challenges or need strategic support for your post-production process, I’m here to help. I bring deep, real-world experience to every project, ensuring your story stays as powerful in post as it was when the cameras first rolled.

Let’s create something extraordinary — and make sure every frame, and every word, lands exactly the way it should.