Video plays background noise only?

[baileysharp]

When I import my video and play it, the audio plays background noises only (lightning, rain, etc.) and none of the dialogue and other "primary" noises in the video. The same happens when I drop it into a composition. My other videos seem to be just fine, its only this one. What's going on?

[Rick Gerard]

It depends on the video. Some video formats can have may audio tracks, AE can only see the first two.

The first step in diagnosing your problem is to select the clip in the Project Panel, check the info to the right of the thumbnail. this will tell you the length, format and audio properties. The second step is to double click the footage in the Project panel to open up the Footage layer and see if the audio plays correctly. I fit does then select the problem layer in your composition and press the U key twice to reveal all modified properties on that layer and reset anything that has been changed.

If you have no audio when you preview in the Footage Panel then open the clip in a media player and see if the audio is playing back correctly. If it is then you'll have to figure out where the audio tracks are and how to move them around or import them into AE. The technique depends on the format of the video and the embedded audio.

If you can't solve the problem we need footage and workflow details down to the last decimal point.

[baileysharp]

The video plays without audio in the footage panel, but plays just fine when played with a media player, and the video is an mp4 file. I'm not sure where to go from here.

[baileysharp · Accepted solution]

I ran the video through encoder and converted it to H.264 format, and that seemed to do the trick. Thanks for the help anyways

[Rick Gerard]

I would have gone with a production format. You never want to use h.264 for a digital intermediate, but I thought that would solve your problem. Spend a bit of time studying production formats and pick a visually lossless one for your transcoding and digital intermediate use. Compressing MPEG long GOP MP4, even using h.264 or h.265 - probably soon to be the next delivery standard - is a terrible choice for a digital intermediate or an archive file.