What is the latest word on Audio Drift in digitizing video?
 

Hi there,

There used to be the known problem of audio drifting out of sync on long video files. I've been using Sony's DVgate for the last little while, which will split the video into 10 minute segments, so I don't get any drift. But the other day, I digitized 3 miniDV tapes and saved them all as one file per tape.... at about 20 minutes in, the audio started to drift and by the end of each tape the audio was out of sync almost a full second of time.

Is this common? How do people without DVgate digitize their audio and keep the sound in sync? If I digitize in Premiere, as one large file, will the sound be out of sync as well?

I would have thought this would have been corrected by now. That explains why DVgate splits up the video into chunks.

I'm not clear on what your asking.

I know that if you try to record sound and picture separately you'll get a sync problem (unless you have a device syncing the camera and recorder), but I've never encountered what you're talking about. We've always recorded the audio directly to the tape.

We use Sony Vegas and have never, in 5 years, had any sync problems, even with projects that had 60 minutes of uninterupted recording.

Jay

Sorry to go off topic here - but I'm curious what you think of Sony Vegas as far as NLE... Have you ever used anything else that you could compare it to?

We are about (I think) to purchase Sony Vegas+DVD...

BTW - we would experience sound drift with Speed Razor in the past - but it always got corrected by re-booting the PC or re-loading the clip. So we chalked it up to a Speed Razor bug...

Stephan, there are tons of posts about Vegas in this forum, try doing a search.

Jay, well, when I capture a long 60 minute file with DVgate, I get audio drift. If I capture the same 60 min in 10 min parts I don't.

In the past, when I've captured long clips I've had audio drift, on different computers and systems. I am wondering how common does everyone find this to occur. And how to get around it. I won't be using DVgate much longer, I'll be capturing in Premiere and this concerns me.

Good capture programs do not create audio drift. I had that problem with Videowave, but never with Premiere. I have captured entire tapes as one chunk with no drift. Have you tried turning on scene detection? That's a better way to capture anyway. Also, check for dropped frames. Every dropped frame will throw your capture more out of sync. That my be your culprit. You can set Premiere to stop capturing if a frame is dropped.

-Mike