Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Hi I'm hoping you guys can help me on a problem I'm having with P.P. CS5 regarding importing HDV files losing audio/video sync. When I record a wedding or even a soccer game the video is about one second ahead of the audio after it is imported into P.P. CS5 for editing. Goal is scored and the clapping comes about a second to late. Very frustrating as you can imagine. It does not matter if I import the files from the Sony HDR FX 1000 using an HDV tape or from my back up FSH 200 hard drive, the video and audio is out of sync. It is not the camera or the hard drive because when I play back directly from them the video and audio are synced. I've used all the family of products from Adobe 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and have never seen this before. I really cannot put up with this and may have to drop Adobe and go with a different editing program. I wonder if you have any ideas? Any fixes from Adobe? Maybe I could go back to CS4 but I have a new 64 bit computer system and would like a 64 bit editing program. Thanks.

Larry Kropp
L&M Video

Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Are you editing off an external drive? If not, how many internal drives do you have and how are they set up? What are your other PC specs? 64 bit is great but what chip, how much RAM, etc?

This is a different problem than the original thread so you probably should have started a new one.

I think we need to confirm whether this is a Premiere problem or a playback problem. Can you confirm that the actual clip has an error in it? That is, can you find a single frame event, like a single hand clap (or a clapboard if you had one or were in Hollywood) where you could put the clip in the Program monitor and put the CTI on the frame of the even and switch to audio-only waveform view and see if the audio spike is in the right place? If it is, you're looking at a playback issue, and I'd then look to your hard drive/directory setup for trouble shooting. If it isn't, then I'd look for some sort of capture issue which would be causing your audio to go out of sync.

If you don't have such an event, I'd shoot a test clip with a hammer and a two-by-four.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Upgraded this post into a thread of its own and removed a cross-post in another thread. (Please post a topic in only one location).

Larry, can you list your system specs? Sometimes slower systems, or a slow sub-system within the computer, can cause the audio to lag.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Capture your footage with scene detection on, this will get rid of the OOS-problem.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

System specs. Windows 7 Professional, 12gb ram. Two 600gb 10,000rpm internal hard drives.
Intel Core i7-980X Hega-core 3.33 Ghz. Nvidia Quadro 4000 Graphics card. Does this help? Video does play very smoothly on play back. I will also try and load the video on an external hard drive and see how that syncs up.

Adam I will try the single frame event experiment that you're suggesting and see what I get.

Ann, sorry but what does OOS mean? Scene detection is for loading from the camera and HD tape. Would it have to be on if I imported clips from the portable hard drive? I could try that.

Thanks everyone. I have some testing to do.

Larry

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

OOS = Out of Sync.

I wasn't recommending you try an external drive, I was only asking if you were using one because if you were, that might be the cause of the problem. When you say the clips play back fine, do you mean outside of Premiere or within it? Within Premiere. what happens when you reduce playback resolution to 1/2 or 1/4?

Physically your system sounds more than fine. So until we can determine whether this is a Premiere problem (unlikely but possible) or a playback problem (more likely) or an actual clip problem (possible), let's go over some basics, which you probably have covered already, as you've been using prior versions for a long time. So sorry if you've covered all this already:

You've got two fast Hard Drives, so OS and Premiere should be on one, and your project and all assets (video files) should be on the other. You should be running no other software while you are running Premiere, you should not be on the Internet, you should not have anti-virus software running, and you should have disk indexing and file compression turned off in Windows. Premiere gets its feelings hurt if it isn't the focus of all of your PC's attention.

Another question: you are doing the initial HDV capture within Premiere?

Can you try and confirm all this and let us know how it goes?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Hi Adam. I shoot the soccer and football games in HDV. Some really beautiful stuff. I am now spoiled and don't even like shooting in SD anymore. When I use an HDV tape I set the capture setting in Premiere to HDV and then import the tape files. However, when I capture HD on my portable have drive it is in a .M2T file wrapper. I'd like to use the Quick Time HD option but Premiere cannot import those files. Anyway, the way I get those clips on Premiere is as follows. I upload the clips to the 10,000 rpm hard drive on my computer. Once that is done I open Preimere and import the HD clips to the the proejct panel. I use the Focus Enhancements hard drive so I reduce wear on my camera tape heads. I have played back video after uploading it from the portable hard drive on Windows Media Player and it looks fine and all is in sync. So I still think there is a problem when I import the files to Premiere.

My two hard drives are set up as you noted and I'm never on the internet when I capturing. However, one thing I like to try is to turn off the disk indexing and file compression in windows but I don't know how to do that. Can you tell me and I will try it. I will turn off the anit virus software also. I will also try reducing the playback resolution to 1/2 from full. Finally can't some software be running in the background without me actually having it open? Thanks.

Larry

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Go to your disk drives and right-click and select properties. There will be two check boxes that relate to indexing and file compression. Make sure they are unchecked.

I'm a little confused about your capturing process. Either it is more complicated than it needs to be or I am misunderstanding you, probably the latter. I think you should be doing all your capturing directly from your cam in Premiere without any external other devices or drives at all, just to simplify things. I'm confused about capturing then importing. When you capture, the m2t files should show up directly in your project, no? When I was still using tape I captured directly from tape into project.

Wait, Focus Enhancements? Are you using a Firestore to record to disk instead of or simultaneous to tape? Does the OOS problem occur on scenes captured from tape withing Premiere or from the exact same scenes imported from the Firestore? Or both?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Checked windows and the compress option was not checked but indexing was. When I unchecked it and it gave me two options. 1. Apply changes on Drive C only or 2. Changes on Drive C and all sub folders and files. Do you know which I should choose?

I mainly use the firestore since using tape wears a lot on my camera video heads. I use both tape and the the hard drive when I do a wedding and need a back up just in case the tape breaks. I've done that for serveral years.

I capture in two ways. When I capture from the camera and tape I open Adobe and capture directly from the capture option in the softeware. When I need the files from the firestore I have to upload them so they are on my computer drive permanetly so Adobe can access them when I open up the project. I also cannot leave them on the firestore since I need it for my next recording seesion. Firestore uses a San Disk card to record on at 30MBs. Hope this helps. Thanks

Larry

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

And you're sure this problem is with both files captured directly from tape or those imported from the Firestore?

I'm going to hazard a wild guess here and guess that your answer is that the problem is with the Firestore files and not with those captured from tape. IF this is true then there may be a problem with the way the Firestore writes m2t files and the way Premiere reads them compared to the same data written to tape. We know, for example, that timecode data is written differently and that it took awhile for Premiere to figure that out and that it still doesn't quite read tape and card data the same way. If this is true you may have indeed discovered an incompatibility.

If this is true, then you have four options:

a) Report it to Adobe and wait for them to come up with an update
B) Report it to Firestore an wait for them to come up with an update
C) Dump the Firestore and switch to the Sony MRC1k, which we know works fine
D) Switch to another NLE

Of these, I think C) is the fastest, easiest and probably least expensive if you can sell the Firestore.

Again, this is all wild conjecture.

But if the problem also occurs with files captured directly from tape, but you say they play correctly outside of Premiere, then the files themselves are fine and something is happening during playback within Premiere.

As to the other points, now possibly moot:

On your drives, choose option 2. Do this for all your drives. Even if it has nothing to do with your current issue you should do this anyway for best performance.

The tape deck in your cam is meant for this purpose. Using tape in it does not wear it out.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Just a brief follow-up on Adam's and Ann's comments and questions.

First thing is that your problem sounds like one that turned up with PPro's capture utility back in CS3 and which still seems to show up with CS5 for some people on some systems and does not seem to be limited to tape captures. A solution that has worked for some people is using Cineform. Download a trial version of Neo and install it. Call up the "HD Link" application. Under Prefs, check the box for "Split File on Scene Changes." Run a conversion and see if it makes any difference.

Second thing: can you play the m2t files in Windows Media Player and, if so, are they in sync there?

Third thing, I'm not familiar with the Firestore devices, but I wonder if it has recorded metadata files along with the m2t file? (That is how Sony's MRC1k works; maybe the Firestore is different.). Are you coping the entire file directory or just the m2t files? If the latter, you may be missing metadata files.

Fourth, a shot in the dark, but some audio subsystems have latency settings and sometimes those can interact in odd ways with PPro. Look at the audio and audio hardware settings under PPro's preferences tab and tell us what your choices are and what the options are. Might be something there.

Fifth, have you cleaned the media cache? Does cleaning it and deleting render files (under sequence) have any effect?

Sixth, are you using CS5.03 or an older version?. Some of the earlier versions had audio sync issues. (If you have CS 5.5, never mind.)

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

I would suggest deleting your media cache folder, and allow Premiere to re-encode and reindex the files, without doing anything in the program at that time.

I had a similar issue and it turned out that the problem was corrupt media cache. For some reason Premiere is pretty sensitive during decoding of hdv files.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Bart has given good advice about not doing anything else with PPro while it is indexing mts and mt2 files and conforming the audio (audio peak file creation).

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

I completely forgot about that and it is a great point.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

I'm having the same problem with OOS clips in Premier 5.5 also... The audio is lagging behind by about 6 frames, when we use clips from tape or from a Focus hard drive. We're using Canon XL-H1 cameras. Larry, did you find the solution to your problem? We were having the same problem in Premier 4.0 and 5.0 as well.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Hi Marty. I did try and return your call but got no answer. I left a message. No I have not solved the problem completey. What has worked for me is re-importing the very same video from my hard drive back into P. Pro. CS5.5. Some videos work and are in sync the 1st time I import them while others I've had to re-import as many as 3 times. I don't why it works and syncs sometimes on the 1st try and others it take more imports. Hope this helps. Let us know please. Thanks.

Larry

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

I work with Adobe CS5.0.3 and I had the exact same problem of audio going out of sync with the video. For me it helped to

1) clean the media cache and
2) then reload the footage in a new Premiere project.

When I imported the footage in the same project, the problem still occured.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

OK I'll add my beef to this one

I've been using Premiere Pro 1.5 for years (with a Matrox RTX card) and never had a synch issue editing footage from 2 or 3 cameras

I've now upgraded to CS5.5 and my system (i7/24GB RAM/CUDA Card/Dedicated 7200 hard drives for my media) and capturing HDV gives me no end of synch issues - it seems to randomly go out of synch while capturing - really is proving to be be time consuming to constantly re-synch

Pete

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

So I've captured a 30 minute HDV segment of wedding speeches (from mini-DV tape) in premiere and it drifts out of synch by the end - I've captured the same segment using HDV and it's spot on!!!!

So this free application does better than Premiere CCS5.5 that cost me $800!!!

The only thing I'm unsure about is that instead of .mpeg format it's a .m2t wrapper and windows sees it as AVCHD Video - has the video been converted or is it still MPEG2?

Cast any light anyone?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

No its still mpeg2. Windows does not see it correctly.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

I had two machines, one did this and one didn't - and the solution was a new audio driver - for some reason the out of sync problem wasn't the conventional slippage. What got me onto the solution was a physical hand clap in one of the sequences - zooming right in showed the hands touching at exactly the same place as the visible spike in the audio track, yet I was hearing delay. So it dawned on me that the problem could be driver related. The sound card in the PC was a 4 channel prodigy 192 card previously used in an updated sound studio machine, and the latency on this card was the reason for the problem. Updating the driver brought picture and sound back into line. Could this also be your problem, I wonder?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Well so much for HDV split - as soon as my nicely synched clips are imported into Premiere - it puts them out of synch - why is this a problem for so many people yet Adobe are not providing a fix?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

I've responded in the other thread you started.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Sorry, I forgot to link to the other thread.

Here's what I asked in the other thread.

First question: have you let PPro finish conforming all of the the audio before you start trying to play back the imported HDVSplit file? If not, try doing that and check if that helps with the problem.

Second question: have you called or e-mailed Adobe help? (My experience is that they are usually responsive but slow; maybe you've tried this and not been helped?)

Third, have you checked the system audio drivers as Paul suggested in the other thread. Concurrently, have you checked the audio hardware settings under Preferences in PPro? Do you have choices there? What happens if you change the hardware choices.

Fourth, have you cleaned the media cache?

Fifth, have you gone into the project settings and set your scratch disks for some place other than C:\Users\etc. Specifically, are your scratch disks on one of your 7200 RPM media drives rather than the C: drive?

Finally, do you have some sharp point in the sound track that you can compare to the video as Paul suggested? This would tell you pretty quickly is the audio is being processed incorrectly (your audio peaks are off from where they should be) or if it is a playback issue.

None of this should be taken as any kind of criticism. The point of all this is to try to narrow down where the problem is occurring on your system.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

OK I can see where it's going wrong but not why - I have a couple of drop outs on some tapes and this is where it's loosing synch for Premiere

When I play the clip in media player however, synch remains intact before and after the dropout when played, - so why can't premiere keep it in synch?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Yep, I have the same problems. Using VLC Media player everything is in sync. PPro =Out of Sync
I went and bought a sound card instead of using onboard audio and that did nothing. Tried to clear the Media cache (at least I think I did it?)

Really hoping for an answer on this? Hoping CS6 works better in this area?

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Hi All - As Adobe haven't released an update that fixes this does anyone know if it is still an issue in CS6?

If it's fixed in 6 I'll upgrade as it's costing me a ton of time having to re-synch!

Pete

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Audio sync is a problem with corrupted mpeg2 transport stream files. Most m2ts files captured from HDV tape through firewire are corrupt in some way. The free program ProjectX can fix the errors to maintain audio sync.

.: Project-X DVB demux Tool :. Main Page

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Hi Eric - you may well be right there but I have a trial version of Pinnacle Studio that costs about $50 that captures the same video without any errors - I also can capture the same footage using Windows Movie Maker - again without errors

My system was purpose built to more than meet Adobe's spec.

Reading this thread it's def a Premiere Issue

Pete

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

The first audio packet of a raw m2ts stream off an HDV camera is generally missing or corrupt. This results in a random initial sync error of up to 1 second. If there is a tape dropout, audio video sync will shift again. ProjectX scans through an m2ts file and corrects the damaged audio packets. The result is a repaired file which will not lose audio sync, even when the audio and video are processed as separate streams. As you've noticed, among the major video editors, Premier is the only one affected by this.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Cheers Eric - I'll give Project-X a go!

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Eric's post is very interesting, I never knew that. I'm thinking perhaps this is a good reason for the convention of recording 15 sec of bars and tone at the start of every new tape...have always done this and I've never experienced the audio problem you describe. YMMV.

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Well Project-X worked fine but... In order to bring it back in synch it loses frames for every time it has to re-synch - I have 3 cameras on the go for wedding ceremonies and speeches - plus multiple audio recorders - so I still have to synch up for every time the footage has been corrected

I always use new or nearly new tapes - there's nothing wrong with my heads - it seems totally random - I tend to capture 30 - 60 minutes of video and sometimes it's fine, sometimes it loses synch multiple times

It's a nightmare as it's costing me so much time - why the cheap or free apps can do it when my very expensive 'professional' program cannot is beyond me - with so many people complaining about it why can't Adobe fix it?

So much for listening to customers (yes I have logged it with Adobe)

Pete

Re: Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5
 

Are you talking about one camera losing sync with the other camera, or with the audio losing sync with the video. If the latter, try capturing with HDVSplit, run the files through Project-X and then import the resulting files into Premiere.