sound goes out of sync
 

I purchased the Sony NX5U for three primary reasons, being able to record for longer periods without changing tape, to get away from tape, and for a streamline work flow. I shoot in ( SD) 4X3 and record to the 128 gig Sony drive. The work flow is great it takes only minutes to download hours of video to my computer and I am able to immediately start editing. Ever thing looks great but I discovered a problem with the sound getting out of sinc. To make things worse the sound is not out of sync when playing the video back in the editor, only when I make the DVD and play it back it shows up. Seems to get worse the longer the program. I edit with Avid Liquid pro and yes that software is discontinued and no longer supported. Can anyone help with a fix for this or a suggestion. Thanks

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

It has been quite a while since I last worked with Liquid, but there may be several things to check. You are using Liquid Pro ver. 7.2?

Here are some questions to try to figure out where the problem is occurring.

Are you feeding AVCHD from your NX5 or are you working with the MPEG/SD format? (I do not remember Liquid being able to read AVCHD files.)

When you play back your DVD, are you playing a physical DVD on a stand-alone player or are you running a test on your computer?

What is your workflow from Liquid to your DVD. Are you doing a DVD directly from within Liquid (my recollection is that Liquid Pro 7.2 had that capability but it was buggy). Are you exporting an AVI file and then encoding to to DVD-MPEG2 in another application? Have you tried exporting a rendered timeline to an avi file and then running that exported file in , say, Windows Media Player, to see if you have sound synchronization issues?

Are you making your DVD with a muxed file (*. mp2?) or you exporting mpegs as separate video (*.m2v) and audio (*.wav) files for your DVD? If you are exporting as separate audio and video files, have you verified that each pair of audio and video files are the same length. (I vaguely recall having had a problem when exporting m2v/wav from Liquid 7.2 that some of the pairs would have different lengths with the video being a couple of seconds shorter or longer than the corresponding audio files.

Alos, have you checked your Liquid timeline to be sure that your video segments are the same length as the corresponding audio? I recall a problem with an innitial segement having audio a few rames shorter than the corresponding video. When I built a timeline for the DVD authoriting program, all the audio wound up being that many frames off.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Audio sync is usually a result of the audio clock being different than the timeline properties ( ie 441.1k input and 48k properties) or the audio being variable bit rate ( like mp3) and the software expecting CBR. I do not know Liquid but will it edit Dolby AC3 which may be your problem as the SD output from the NX5U is Dolby. If you have access to Vegas, Sound Forge TMPGenc etc you may want to recode the Dolby AC3 audio to a wav file.

Ron Evans

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Thanks for your suggestions Jay and Ron. I use Liquid Pro 7.2 and from the NX5U camera the file is MPEG/SD.
I create my DVD's from the Liquid time line and have for three years and up to now using Sony VX2100. Had no issues until using my NX5U. I make stand alone DVD's to play in any player. I set up all my projects in the Liquid time line as MPEG-2 MP@HL (M2V) Auto 4:2:0 IPB. The audio format 16bit PCM.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Your audio properties format has to be Dolby AC3 or you will have to do a conversion of the NX5U audio to PCM audio. I do not know Liquid so cannot tell you how it will deal with an AC3 audio file but I suspect this is your problem.

The VX2100 that you were using recorded PCM audio so you had no problems but the NX5U records DVD ready MPEG2 with Dolby AC3 audio. You will either need an editor that works with Dolby AC3 or convert the file to PCM ( which will of course need an editor to do the conversion).

I also have an NX5U and can say you will get much, much better quality by recording in high definition and then transcoding to SD. Recoding an already compressed format like MPEG seems not to give as good a result as AVCHD downscaled to SD if you use TMPGenc T5 for instance. If you shoot 16x9 HD you will have a HD master for the future when people will demand 16x9. Croppingto 4x3 is fairly easy in most NLE`s. I shoot in HD and deliver SD DVD. I use Edius and Vegas as editors. Everything I do now is 16x9 I had gone to 16x9 when I got my FX1 several years ago.

Ron Evans

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

I agree with everything that Ron said except that my recollection is that Liquid 7.2 will not ingest the 28 Mbps AVCHD that is the HD format used by the NX5. Maybe Cineform would help but my recollection is that Pinnacle/Liquid has incompatabilities with Cineform avi files. (I might be thinking of the "Studio" products, however.)

I recall that forum member Philip Howells still has Liquid 7.2. I suggest you try a PM to him and see if he can help.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

The NX5U is only 24Mbps max and that is for AVCHD. Anthony is using 4x3 SD MPEG2 which is 9Mbps MPEG2 with Dolby AC3 audio. The NX5U has several recording options either HD, SD or HD AND SD if one has both the FMU128 and SD cards. The newer 60P camcorders like my CX700 are 28Mbps for 60P recording but are still 24Mbps max for 1080i. I have no knowledge of Liquid and the real issue is if it will correctly manage Dolby AC3 audio which is what has been put on the timeline. Lots of NLE`s of a few year back would not handle Dolby AC3 audio and certainly not mp3 audio ( still true for a lot of NLE`s)

The timeline Anthony set was for 16bit PCM an incompatibility with the audio from the NX5U. It may have dealt with it reasonably on the timeline ( playback) but when rendered for DVD production did not do this correctly and hence the DVD playback problems.

Simplest solution is to convert this Dolby AC3 to LPCM but this of course has to be done in a program that will demux the audio from the MPEG2 file from the NX5U and extract the file correctly. I do not know what other programs Anthony has but TMPGenc T4 or T5 will do this or of course any of the modern NLE`s like Vegas which could just as well do the edit.

Ron Evans

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

I do love the Liquid editing but I may need to move to Vegas. Will the latest Vegas editing software run on Windows XP?
Thanks for all of the support.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Ooops. Sorry about the "28" typo. I really did mean to type 24 mbps. I was only mentioning AVCHD per Ron's comments about editing in HD being the preferable workflow.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Yes if you have Win XP SP3. See this link for system requirements for Vegas 10.:

Vegas Pro 10 Overview

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

My guess is that your computer can't decode mpeg2 fast enough in the timeline so its falling out of sync with the audio. Try converting it to DV format before importing into your video editing software.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Anthony if you don't have anything other than Liquid try a lot of the trials before deciding. Vegas, Edius and I think Adobe have trials as well as TMPGenc. They will not all edit HDV or AVCHD in the trial.

Ron Evans

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Anthony, I am doing the same thing you are doing except I output to avi. I use premiere elements for DVD creations with no problems. I would export to avi then edit then burn to see if that fixes it. When I finally move on to MC5 I will truely miss Liquid.

Dan

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

Thanks Dan, I will try that.

Re: sound goes out of sync
 

For Dan and Pete. The NX5U records to flash memory either a SDHC/Memorystick or a FMU128G flash memory unit. There is no tape. The files are transferred from the flash memory directly to the PC. Files can be either AVCHD in various bit rates or SD which is DVD ready MPEG2 with Dolby AC3 audio. To get an avi file it must be rendered from a NLE that is able to decode MPEG2 WITH Dolby AC3 audio. I think the problem is that Liquid is not managing this task correctly. I do not know this to be true because I do not know Liquid. I do know that lots of earlier NLE's could not edit AC3 correctly much like some of the present NLE's will not deal with mp3 correctly. If I am correct any output from Liquid will have this problem.

Any of the lower cost NLE's like Adobe Premiere Elements, Vegas Studio etc will deal with AC3 because they are set up for the current consumer cameras that mostly shoot with AC3 audio.

Ron Evans