Capture Issues - Sound Delay
 

I've been having issues with sound delays when capturing footage through Premiere Pro 2.0, and have been getting the same delays with HDVSplit. However, checking the files manually through WMP and VLC show that there are, in fact, no actual sound delays. So, my question is: What's going on when Premiere loads/conforms the files, and how can I correct this in the future?

edit: Should I be striping my tapes? I never had to do that with my regular DV camera (which, coincidentally, never had any sound delay issues throughout 60 or so tapes), but maybe that will help?

No. It has nothing to do with your issue and will do more harm than good.

Hrm. Does Sony Vegas handle HDV capture (specifically, scene detect and none of this sound delay nonsense) better than PP 2.0? I'd figure it would, since it's Sony's NLE, but I figured I should ask. It's time for an upgrade, anyway; PP 2.0 has all sorts of weird issues with Vista.

Not a Vegas user so I can't help there. If you're used to the Premiere interface you might look at Premiere CS4. Vegas is real different and if you're not used to how it "thinks" it's a long learning curve. I tried it (after being a Premiere user for a while) and just couldn't "get" it. But it is reputed to be a great NLE.

I'm looking into one of the non-Pro version of Vegas, so PP4 (and Vegas Pro) is off-limits due to the high price. Apparently there's a 60-day trial, though, so I'll try that out.

The trial version of Premiere doesn't do HDV, so that won't help you much. Vegas does. And I think it might be 30 days, but I won't swear to it.

It is. It's definitely odd compared to Premiere Pro, but it handles capturing really well. Hrm.

I've done HDV capture with Vegas 8.0. The scene split is not as good as HDVSplit. With Vegas, the splits seem to miss key frame. The frames of the first GOP unuseable.

When you say sound delay, are you refering to play back in PPro or the rendered video? If you're not using an intermediate codex or have a powerful computer, playback of HDV is going to be rough.

I'm referring to playback/editing in PPro; I think that it's some sort of timecode sync issue, because playing the raw captured clips in VLC shows that the audio's actually fine. I would just use an intermediate codec for storage, but until I get a terabyte drive, it's not really a viable option, memory-wise.

I think what I'm going to try doing, though, is capture in HDVSplit (since they're already split), convert the clips I want to uncompressed 1440x1080 anamorphic AVIs in Handbrake or a similar program, throw those into PPro, do any necessary clipping/cropping/color correction/sound correction, and then export back into a separate .m2t in my Saved Clips folders before getting rid of the original clips and the intermediate AVIs. Hopefully, that'll fix it.

Wow, that's sure a lot of extra work and you'll definitely lose a lot of quality with all that re-encoding. And if the clips play fine in VLC then I think that's evidence that it isn't a timecode sync issue.

And you should never get rid of your original source files, as they'd be the highest-quality available. Any later generations would certainly be no better and might be worse, thus lowering the quality of your final project.

You're using an old version of Premiere, yes? Sounds to me like you may have a hardware issue. What are your PC specs? Premiere is a known resource hog and the problem points to lack of HW resources if the clips are fine in VLC but not Premiere.

I can udnerstand that, but I figure it's worth a try.

See, I don't think that that's it, for a few reasons.

(1) Capturing 2 minutes of footage in PPro, without splits, gave me issues where the sound was delayed by 13s and doubled over in parts. Recapturing clips individually fixed this, as long as I stopped the capture prior to a point at which the camera was turned off or footage was reviewed. At points where footage was reviewed, the sound was doubled over and misaligned. Exporting the clip from PPro with the sounds synced manually to the footage produced files that played normally in VLC, and in a separate review project in PPro. The original captured file played totally fine in VLC, though.

(2) Capturing the same 2 minutes of footage in HDVSplit, with splits, delayed the sound less, and didn't do the weird double-over effect when imported into PPro. I still had to manually align the clip to the sound, though. The original captured file also played totally fine in VLC, as did the realigned file exported from PPro.

(3) Capturing the same 2 minutes with the demo of Vegas Platinum, with splits, there was no sound delay in Vegas or VLC. However, importing the same file into Premiere, it was again off. If it wasn't for the fact that Vegas is so different from Premiere, I'd just spend the $120 and pick it up. Who knows, though - I've got a free 30-day trial so maybe I'll get used to it by then.

I'm running a 32-bit Vista laptop with a 2ghz dual-core processor and 3gb of physical RAM. I'm using PPro 2.0, so, yes, it is an older version.

Video Hard Drive
 

Are you capturing to a 2nd hard drive dedicated to only video? I've had this problem before trying to run the OS and capturing on the same drive......just a thought.

exactly what variety of hdv are you capturing, and what from?

as garry pointed out, you aren't capturing to your system drive are you?

PPro captures in .mpeg, for whatever reason, but when I cut down the clips or capture in HDVSplit or Vegas they get exported as .m2t.

I'm capturing to my OS harddrive, until I can get an external TB drive.

It captures in mpeg and exports to m2t because that's what HDV is -- an mpeg2 transport stream (hence file extensions m2t, mts or m2ts).

Adobe recommends against using external drives unless they are ESata. USB and FW aren't really fast enough to do HDV. Some people report success but it's not recommended.

Sounds to me like a whole slew of problems are conspiring against you. You are trying to edit HDV on a laptop, and possibly an older and underpowered one at that, using an old version of PPro and capturing to your OS drive that may or may not be big enough or fast enough. As mentioned above, any one of these things can cause problems, and together they spell disaster.

You need to upgrade both your HW and SW. I think you will find no joy with your current combination unless you move to a much less demanding NLE. You didn't have this problem with DV because DV AVI is a whole different animal and is much less demanding on your system.

Whichever NLE you choose, make sure you go to their website and go "one better" than their hardware recommendations.

This really belongs in the editing forums because it's not camera-related.