Screwed up audio - the Premiere problems continue...
 

Hi everyone, for some reason a portion of my captured video files ends up with screwed up audio in Premiere Pro CS3. The video playback is fine, but the audio seems choppy (and chopped up) and is also 1/3 slower than it should be. This problem only exists in PrPro and not when just playing it in a regular media player (apart from VLC, where the entire thing is screwed up, both audio and video). My temporary solution is to put it in Windows Movie Maker, cut to the part where the audio starts screwing up, then export and use that in PrPro instead. What is happening and how is it fixed? Thanks!

Is your timeline rendered out?

From my own personal experience, you may be having a "battle of the audio codecs". There's a long story behind this but suffice it to say that the Premier audio codec (.wav, I assume is what you're using) may be tripping over other audio codecs on your system.

Try this. Render the audio out of your timeline as a standalone file. Use the same settings as your project. Take that rendered audio and sync it up with the video on another audio track. Then turn off the original audio. See if that solves the problem.

This seems to be an under-reported issue in the world of Premier. Nackered audio codecs can cause a variety of issues. The fix, according to Adobe tech support, is to uninstall PP and uninstall any audio software you don't absolutely need. Then reinstall PP. That should give you clean codecs and a much happier NLE.

This reminds me once again (even though it might not directly relate to Colin`s problem): NEVER EVER install any of those "codec packs", onto production machines anyway. They wreak havoc on systems, causing incompatibilities all over. FFdshow, Mplayer, VLC or GOMplayer can play almost everything without installing anything into system areas of an OS (with exception of ffdshow, which is a single DirectShow codec). Chances are you don`t need codecs like OGM, 3iVX, MKV or FLAC on production machine, even RealMedia is dying out.

Hi Colin,

You don't indicate what kind of file you're working with and what kind of project; that matters.

Most likely, you have mismatched the project and media. Taking the audio and rendering it to a CODEC that Premiere likes such as PCM WAV audio is a good idea; make sure that it matches the properties of the project, for example, 48KHz stereo. I certainly wouldn't recommend reinstalling Premiere - that's a last thing to do when all else fails and you're totally desperate and the program has been failing at many other things as well. I think you're far from that. ;-)

My best.

Mike

Hi guys, at the time (already finished the project using the temp workaround i described in the OP) the source clip was an AVI file. I will have a look at this thread again if I have the same problem later. Thanks everyone!

AVI is just a wrapper and can contain dozens of different video files. What is the ONLY thing that matters is what is inside of that wrapper. Is that DV AVI, type 1 or 2, DivX, Xvid, Lagarith, MPEG2? It only matters what CODEC is used inside the AVI wrapper.

If I say I have a car, it does not say what kind of car, while knowing that is the most interesting. Saying it was an AVI file is about similar to saying it was a car.

I think it is DV AVI