Quite a vast subject !

My goal here is not to explain the many techniques of all the job positions (production recordist / sound editor / sound mixer) involved in film production. The beauty of these crafts is that you learn everyday : each film has its load of suprises you have to manage, without anyone knowing, except you, that there was a problem..

I'll therefore limit the subject to the

synchronization of sound and picture for a motion picture,

And without going into too much detail. Some things remain quite complicated (how to work at 24 fps on a video editor, knowing that 24 fps video doesn't exist, even though the 24 P format has recently been adopted......, for example) and would require several long chapters...

Even now that we've narrowed it down, several options still remain, depending on the way the shooting was done, on the equipment used in the editing process, and how the film will be projected once edited and mixed.

If you count right, that's still 12 possibilities !!!

Rather than explaining each combination, I will only develop three of them, the other ones being only slight variations that won't need any detailing.

I highly recommend, in order to fully understand the terms encountered, that you start by reading what happens on a shooting. Only after that can you go on with our three main combinations, with all the necessary vocabulary in mind :

Combo n° 1 : Traditional clapper-board shooting / editing on a traditional film editor

Combo n° 2 : Traditional clapper-board shooting / editing on a direct to disk system

Combo n° 3 : Time-code clapper-board shooting / editing on a direct to disk system

And what next... in a few years from now ???

On to the 'All Digital' era