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travis.tran
travis.tran
Participant
November 12, 2018
Question

Help please: imported video out of sync

  • November 12, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 14806 views

I'm having a problem in both After Effects and Premiere. I'm working with a 45+ minute long MP4 video. The video itself plays just fine on Windows Media Player.

But when I import it into After Effects or Premiere for editing, the video and audio start perfectly together, but they get out of sync at the end. I'm not trying to sync the video file with a separate audio file. It's the MP4 file alone that becomes like this when imported into the timeline of either program. And it doesn't automatically fix itself when I render and export it either.

I don't know if it's the video or the audio that changes its ending time, but it seems that the simple shortcut of moving one of them over on the timeline to match the other is not going to work.

The program I need to fix this on the most is After Effects. Can somebody please help me?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Bulgakov
Bulgakov
Inspiring
May 12, 2019

Hi,

I realize this is an older post, but I had the same problem and your post came up in my search. I subsequently found the solution on the Creative Cow forum, so I thought I would share my findings.

Most likely your footage was recorded in variable framerate. In my case, I was helping someone who was using footage from a laptop camera and this was the default.

You can determine if you footage is variable framerate by right-clicking on the clip in your project panel and clicking Properties.  It will show the framerate as a number, but near the bottom will be written variable framerate detected.

Adobe claims they support it in the latest versions of CC but I found that it does not always work.  (you can scroll down and see their explanations).

https://www.premierebro.com/blog/premiere-pro-1201-update-variable-frame-rate-and-new-features

In my case, I used Handbrake to convert the footage to a fixed 30 fps and then reimported it. It worked fine after that.  If you are not familiar with Handbrake, it is an open source video transcoder. It works quite well.  https://handbrake.fr/

    K
    KarlKaz
    Participant
    January 15, 2020

    This fixed it for me! Thank you. I had no idea there was a variable framerate, and I've been having this problem for ages.

      R
      Community Expert
      Rick GerardCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      November 12, 2018

      First, an MP4 is the wrong format for production. Second, forty-five minutes is an insane length for an After Effects comp. A comp should only be as long as the visual effect or motion graphic lasts. 90% of all professionally prepared AE comps are under 10 seconds and one shot.

      If you really need 45 minutes of a single video effect then let us know. The sync problem is probably a cache or decoding issue. There is no reason that you can't cut up the project into sections. The entire clip is never going to playback in real time in AE.

      If we knew what you were trying to do maybe we could help.

      travis.tran
      travis.tranAuthor
      Participant
      November 12, 2018

      Thanks for the reply. I had to use MP4 because that's the only format that I can download the video into. I'd like to convert it to MOV if that helps, but like I said, it's out of sync after just importing into the program.

      And the video I'm trying to edit is a podcast. I'm adding a green screen effect to the video using After Effects, as well as some color touch up. Unfortunately, it's all one shot, and it cannot be recorded in separate shots, because the recording is done at the same time as the radio broadcast.

      Can you still help?

      travis.tran
      travis.tranAuthor
      Participant
      November 12, 2018

      Thank you for the specs.

      One more question to the out-of-sync: is the audio track ACTUALLY LONGER than the video track, or do they both start and end at the very same frame?


      They both start and end on the same frames.

      Here's what it looks like in Premiere. On the timeline, both the video and the audio are perfectly parallel to each other, size, placement and all. They start on the same frame, and end on the same frame. It's one single video file.

      But when I play the project in the preview window, the video ends and goes black before it even stops playing. I think the audio is just fine and still about the same length, but it gradually falls behind the video.

      So while it looks fine on the timeline, it actually does play like the way you described, with the video track being shorter.

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