Issue Rendering News Video Project

Hi everyone,

I work as an After Effects specialist editor for an agency, and we collaborate with various companies and websites to deliver high-quality projects. Recently, we were tasked with creating a news-style promotional video for a site called https://influencersgonewild.news/. The project involved integrating dynamic text animations, stock footage, and a custom animated lower third template.

Everything seemed fine during editing, but here's the weird issue:

Whenever I render the final video (whether in H.264, ProRes, or even uncompressed formats), the audio lags by exactly 1.2 seconds in the output file. The timeline and playback within After Effects are perfectly in sync, and there are no pre-render warnings or issues with the audio layer settings.

Steps I’ve tried so far:

Checked the audio sampling rate (44.1 kHz vs. 48 kHz).
Cleared the cache and restarted both the project and After Effects.
Updated to the latest version of After Effects (2024).
Rendered through both the Render Queue and Media Encoder.

Still, the problem persists!

Has anyone encountered a similar issue? Could this be related to dynamic link layers or some compatibility problem with the site's specific requirements? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!