Audio out of sync AFTER importing

Hey all,

Also having issues with audio sync, and the Handbrake solution doesn't seem to be working for me. The files in question are DVD rips from my own library. I'm converting them to MKV using MakeMKV, then converting to MP4 using Handbrake with constant framerate turned on. I've tried creating a new project and reinstalling PP, still no luck. I've also tried changing the file extension to .mov, like the one video suggested and that didn't work either. Any other suggestions?

a very disappointing "discovery."

i am releasing a video today and recorded a selfie vid w my webcam & quicktime to put in at the end.

imported the vid into pp and POOF, not only is the audio out of sync, it is totally overdriven.

i have an event to be at this eve. i need to upload and go.

i am repeatedly surprised by the gaping, long-term functionality failures in adobe software.

please hire me to help.

Yup a single click on Handbrake's video settings and your're good to go.

I found a work-around that worked for me.

I uploaed the original video to YouTube and then downloaded it from there.

The sync-issues were fixed in the downloaded version!

Hope that helps someone (I spend a whole day trying other fixes and couldn't get the audio and video to sync.)

Handbrake with Constant Frame Rate worked great! Thanks!!

Hey guys same problem... I received this hard drive with some videos from my work. There are three .mov and one .m4v, and the m4v is just really hard to work with. The sounds= is totally off. No problem at all with the .mov files.

This problem is, in fact related to OIS frame dropping.  I clipped up a video that used it, and ran it through VLC while displaying the frame rate.  It varied by up to 4 frames with a little camera shake, and varied by more than 10 frames in some cases where there was a lot of motion.

I tried the video in Premiere, and there was a problem with audio sync... ...Premiere expects a consistent frame rate, as professionals will leave the stabilization off, shooting from monopod or tripod.  Premiere is targeted to that market.  Final cut is geared toward a variable shooters market, along with several other titles.  They target those who don't care about input, only output.  Premiere targets much more stable and smooth operation with less gear, for the active video pro who focuses on steady cameras and proper management, but allows for the alternative shooter by being so tight with After Effects, and AME.

I used both to create constant frame rate shorts, then used AME for a long recode to prores.  I first compared the frame blending quality, then the non-blended video, then used twixtor in AE to adjust and compared the quality and render time.  Results:

AE and AME produced (by my visual measure) the exact same output with the same 4 minute 29.97p clip that was intermittently VFR, and I tested the clip in VLC to watch the frame rates before and after.  In the after, there was a difference in the motion, but that difference was only noticeable in areas where the panning or camera shake was truly atrocious, and the frame drop page was up around 10 per second.  At 6 or less, it was really hard to detect, and at 3 or less, it wasn't noticeable.

Answer to this problem:

IF you turn on OIS or your camera shoots with VFR in order to smooth camera shake, just output a less compressed video with frame blending on in AME and work from that.  You'll get better overall quality, and you'll also be able to reproduce that quality using the original file, perhaps even better quality as time goes on, which means you can delete the uncompressed when you're done, if you wish, and just relink any new file to your source clip later.

Feature request:

Perhaps an option in the sequence settings that allows you to force the blending and will mark those areas with a new color, so that you can properly handle any motion problems in your workflow.  This can be done with an effects render that allows you to then work with the video properly.  Since the Frame Rate can be scanned from most file headers (for the base rate) and is included in the bitstream where it alters, you could find where it alters easily enough, and use that to mark it with an edit mark (with the blade--similar to the multi cam script).  This will allow the editor person to use AE or another method to sub clip and adjust that one section as necessary, to smooth over any defects to their taste for an almost completely CC or CS workflow.  It seems feasible.  IF you won't apply it to CS6, fine.  Maybe contract a plugin development for it and I'd definitely be on board.  This would allow Premiere to keep it's main target (quality editing without a lot of guessing or hit-miss operations), and still add the ability to utilize various source formats.

New test for you...

Since premiere likes to use standard frame rate calculation and tends to malfunction when frame drop OIS is used, you can Blend where frames are needed.

Some might like to use Twixtor, or another ReTiming plug to create the blended frames in after-effects.  While this can usually provide excellent results, it could be overpower for this operation.

Since all we're dealing with are a few dropped frames (in most cases, 1-4), you can allow AE to blend the frames on it's own.  I found this to produce decent results with a small clip, but with my low processing power station, it would take immensely long renders for any real work.

There is a similar mechanism in AME to do this.  Encode with Frame Blending on and select your frame rate, do not allow automatic.  This will calculate and blend the frames necessary, with a similar engine, with "Acceptable" results.  If you find areas where the results are not so acceptable, use your original file (the mts or other file) as source in a new sequence, cut the area, send to after-effects, render it out how you please, to the same format as your working area, and then replace that unacceptable area with your comp or with the newly rendered clipping.  At this point, your audio should still be in sync.

I'm running my own long-run test of this now, but I did the same small clip as before.  It produced approximately same result (visually) but the file size was a bit smaller, I suspect due to the lesser quality images produced for the frames, or perhaps due to the fact that AE outputs full images first, and has a higher end algorithm for calculating any compression.  Even though I'm using an "uncompressed" or intermediate file output, there is still some compression of the frames, and AME uses less gfx to run it's UI, along with better balance across my system (shaving the encoding time), while using a less system intensive algorithm to encode.  The results so far have been extremely comparable by my view, but I'm sure more trained eyes could have another opinion.

Please try this along with me with your trained eyes...  I would appreciate your point of view as I'm learning all I can wherever I can.  I'd like to get better at working with video and at aiding in troubleshooting.

UPDATE:

When you bring in your video to premiere and you don't know what camera or the settings from that camera, you should recode the video with strict adherence to frame rate.  You should start with the original file, and recode that to a strict frame rate (no auto match settings; set the frame rate you want).

I used AE and it worked for a small piece of the video.  The CATCH:  I had to start by importing the MTS file into AE, which was a little buggy until I copied the STREAM folder, then dumped the XMP files, then imported the mts.  I then made a comp from the mts, and adjusted the settings to match the standard framerate (I set the frame rate to 29.97, not source match--though the camera was set for 29.97fps).  It worked for a 5min section from the middle, in an area where the sync was way off.  The new prores certainly does keep a smaller video file than the older one, as I've seen with AE and with Compressor.  I can farm a lot easier with compressor, so I opened iMovie, imported the mts, and had it send to compressor.  There I farmed across two machines, and it's still running out the files.  I set up a main file and a proxy file output from the same source, with strict settings (no automatic sets).  This *should* either retime the video or reframe some areas that need it.  Whichever method is used, It should give me something to use with premiere.

I'm going to jump in here...  I've experienced 2 of these phenomena primarily, and it has nothing to do with adobe screwing up.

Do any of you use OIS?  Image stabilization I mean?  I know what you are thinking... ..."Why would this idiot ask that?"

OIS will temporarily ALTER your framerate.  This yields VFR video even if you set your camera for CFR.  Some will actually speed up the frame rate, and just drop frames to compensate, but others will simply drop motioned frames and place a reference that's supposed to clue in an encoder to build a new one.  I've had some panasonic OIS really screw up the frame rate when importing.  IF you fall into this mess, and you want to get out of it, start with transcoded video\audio that's uncompressed.  I know most people say just stick to mp4 or the MTS\AVCHD from the camera, but this can yield a VFR frame rate with OIS and it can be disastrous.  Premiere doesn't play back your source through an engine, it builds a preview for you to play back when you render.  It's heavily dependent on source frames (its an analog style editing mechanism; it doesn't guess frames for you, it's not an encoder).  WMM and others are totally Digital, and outputting from them only outputs a new file with the OIS handled (guessed frames are built and stored in the stream).  Recode the video.  It's the only real fix; and you should do it with uncompressed video if you want to retain quality.

The other instance is an old ID-10-T problem I've run across in many different workflows...  I'll get to the counteract in just a moment...

I have encoded my video in the past using compressed source (directly from the camera), which was slow and clunky when adding effects, so I decided to move to intermediate codecs or uncompressed codecs.  I found that doing so allows for better video speed, and fully renders out the OIS guess frames, removing the other issue.  One problem tackled.

Now I've got a new one... ...One video codes just fine and plays perfectly outside premiere...  But inside... ...Jumpy and the audio is out of sync.  Hmmmmmm...  Turns out that ProRes, AVI and other uncompressed codecs will use hardcoded values for audio (in other words, they will hardcode the sample rates into the file and lock it to that speed).  When importing to Premiere, everything is fine, until you place it in a sequence.  Try playing the source video in the source monitor (not in a sequence, remove it completely from all sequences).  If it plays back okay, then your problem is that your sequences DO NOT MATCH YOUR HARDCODED AUDIO in your main source file.  I was dropping 96k down to 48k.  No wonder...  I'm playing half the audio speed.  "But mister, all the audio shows up in the sequence..."  Doesn't matter.  It will play your 96k audio at 48k, exactly half it's speed or it will drop audio frames at a rate that doesn't match the video properly.

Two main workarounds exist... ...1. You can try using the Milliseconds setting, which should conform the audio to time rather than sample, and time should code to Time just fine, but I haven't tried it (it's a theoretical).

The fix I use has 2 variants:  Make the carpet match the drapes... ...eh, make the source audio match the sequence, or make the sequence match the source.  Can you see how this has two variants?  The easiest is to make the sequence match the audio, as you could simply create a new sequence, and drag-drop your edits from one sequence to the other, fixing your problem if you already have edits.  The other option is to render out an audio file from your source or use your uncompressed file to render out an audio file that matches your sequence, then place it in the second audio layer, turning off the first.  Try playing it.  IF it still has sync problems, you may have other OIS issues, where some frames were not properly guessed when you encoded.  See the following:

If you have AV files with sync problems that show only in premiere, you can force the files to guess.  I've found the After Effects rendering engine to provide the best output in this instance.  It will follow strict instruction sets, and will guess the frames if you set a constant frame rate.  If you are already uncompressed this will go even faster.  I've had better success going from 30p to 60i, as this guessed the fields and made more guesses of less data per guess.  Some don't like interlaced video, so go ahead and render your progressives.  Make sure you set the frame rate and all the rest for your COMP.  This will conform the comp to the video.  You should even be able to use your direct source (from the camera).  Adobe will read and decompress it through after effects much better than media encoder, even though media encoder is a full encoder engine.  Why?  AME processes the frames with less strict algorithms (motion video algorithms), where AE uses image rendering of the frames when uncompressing (each frame is an image, so it processes the image, which will force a guess of missing or damaged frames).

I know I may not have a perfect answer for you here, but I hope I've given you some idea of where the problem lies.  I've faced this twice.  Originally I thought it was my hardware slowdown, but I rendered out part of the sequence to an output file, and it was still awful.  I worked backward through each stage to find the issue.  If playback outside the editor, or even in the basic source monitor is fine, but skewed in the sequence, the problem is your sequence settings aren't matching up properly.  By checking that against your source, you can then narrow it down.  If your source plays back everywhere just fine and gives you only one frame rate setting (i.e. 29.97), that doesn't tell you anything about whether or not the frames are fully articulated or guessed.  It only tells you how fast it plays the frames.  IF it notes a CFR or VFR, then you're usually clued in.  Now you have to go back to your source hardware: the camera.  IF the video was given to you by a client, you may not know where the files came from or how they were shot.  Pass it through AE and set the frame rate constant.  This will fix any guesses at the frame level.  If you have the camera, check the ois capabilities.  All OIS in digital is a "guessing" form of interpolation, even non active.  If you set it to active, it should fix on it's own by passing through AE.  IF you set it to non Active, you will get VFR in some areas of your video, and you may have to change your frame rate to fix the problem; so again use AE to cut it down.  For this last instance, remember that quality will be degraded, but with plugins and some tweaking, you can get a decent output that doesn't hurt your pride, or your workmanship.

Just remember: ITS NOT PREMIERE'S FAULT.  It's an editor that focuses on whole frames, conforms all to a constant rate so your timecode is always standard (i.e. you don't have to guess how fast things are moving, and you don't have to suddenly change time codes in the middle of the edit).

One other workaround that *might* work is using FRAMES instead of a drop frame timecode in a sequence.  This will allow the sequence to speed up or down with a VFR video.  Again, your sequence isn't matching your video if you have a VFR but are editing in CFR.  It's not the fault of the program.  You might also try right click source and "Create Sequence from clip", but I'm not sure that will solve anything either.  If you set the timecode to frames, you will only play those frames at a specified frame rate.  The only way to fix that would be to chop up the video into clips of 1s, and conform the frames to each clip.

Again, premiere editing is based on FRAMES, not SECONDS.  If you could set both audio and video to milliseconds you might be able to keep sync with VFR, but premiere is a STANDARD based program.  It was made to be able to go down to the frame level at all times.  Other editors vary their markets, and provide results that are varied as well.  Premiere has a specific target output.  Go with high quality, standard input and you'll get higher quality, standardized output.  For consumer grade work, standards are important as they remove some of the decisions that take time away from editing.  Start by encoding your video to a set standard, and pass it through a rendering engine that has strict adherence.  When that's done, edit away, frame by frame, with all the power and control you can get, without the needs of higher end processing power.

Premiere was made to work in a VARIETY of environments!  My intel core 2 duo 2.16ghz 4gbram 256mbvidram can run it just fine.  It has trouble with final cut, AVID, and even freeware unix tools.  They have to process a lot more in real time to get VFR frames to work properly.