Hi all,

I'm preparing a unique project with archival audio sound rolls from the 1980s having recently been digitized.  The project and film scans will be in 23.98 fps.  When importing the WAV files for the digitized sound rolls I am prompted to set the start TC with the "Audio Start-Time Options" dialog box.  I have set 23.98 since that is the project fps and the timecode on the WAV files does not correspond to anything meaningful.  But obviously the sound was recorded in the 24fps film era.

I just wanted to verify with the community that the different Audio Start-Time Options do not alter the character of the sound in any way at all, right?  I have compared a 23.98 start time vs. 24 and the waveforms appear identical except the 24 waveform is slipped/offset by about half a frame compared to the 23.98.  I thought this was unusual and wanted to make sure the sound is not affected by either decision.

Thank you in advance to everyone for any thoughts.

Best,
Bret

The Time Code on WAV files won't affect the audio quality.  No matter what time code you assign to the file to apply a certain number of frames per second, it will still play the sound at 48K per second.

If the film was originally shot 24.000fps, and scanned at 23.976fps, you either need to slow down the audio, or speed up the picture back to 24fps to maintain sync.

That means, EITHER A. keep the sound as is, work in a 24.000fps project, and use Source Settings to change the picture's frame rate to 24.000fps — OR B. duplicate the BWAV's and use a tool like Wave Agent to re-stamp the files as 47952Hz (in stead of 48000Hz).

The TC choice upon import has no influence on the playback rate at all.