Premiere Elements 15 - Audio disappears when moving clip to timeline

Signaler · Sep 27, 2017

I am using Premiere Elements 15 and am trying to edit some video shot on my Panasonic camcorder. The video is in MTS format and was shot at 1080p 60fps. It plays just fine outside of PE. I moved the clips to my computer, then imported them into PE. Once imported and available in Project Assets, they play fine when viewing in the Project Assets window. However, when I move them down to the timeline, the audio disappears (the audio track is tied to the video track and still appears, but there is no audio).

What is weird is that most of the time, the audio works. In this batch of video, I shot about 6 clips. The first one I brought in worked fine.

I tried deleting my video assets (I also have some text assets), saving my project, exiting, then starting over. Same results. I also tried rendering my video thinking the problem might resolve itself during rendering, but the resulting video also has no audio.

This seems like a bug in PE 15, but maybe I'm missing something. Either way, does anyone have any ideas how to resolve this? Or am I stuck with software that just sucks?

Signaler · Oct 06, 2017

Brad,

I'm on an RV road trip for a couple weeks. Internet connections in campgrounds are not the best. I'll work on trading files. For now, here is the screen shot using the PrE properties function.

Signaler · Oct 05, 2017

Thanks, Veenu! Mostly good news. The steps you provide above now allow the audio to work. That is excellent! I don't think I would have ever figured that out.

It does create a new problem, though. I want to keep some of my videos at 60fps for smooth, slow-motion playback (sports videos to help with coaching). When I go to change my settings, there does not appear to be a preset that allows me to specify 5.1 channel audio AND 60fps (59.94). And according to Adobe's help page, users cannot create new presets. So it seems that I must either choose between 60fps with no audio, or only30fps with audio. Is there a way to get around this?

It seems like APE 15 should be able to handle this somehow. If I don't use the steps above (thus losing my audio), then extract the audio, import it separately, and it back to my timeline, then everything works fine. It just makes for a bunch of extra work to extract the audio from every clip and import them separately. Also, even freeware like Shotcut seems to handle the native 60fps with audio just fine, so it seems that a longstanding package like APE ought to be able to do this.

Any ideas?

Signaler · Oct 06, 2017

Have you tried it in a project set up for 5.1 audio?

Signaler · Oct 06, 2017

Steve, yes, I did try a project preset with 5.1 sound. That DOES work. The problem is that the only preset with 5.1 sound is for 30fps. So I have to either choose between losing my audio or cutting the fps in half (or extracting the audio from the video, then importing the audio and adding that as a new track).

Signaler · Oct 07, 2017

bjstoops wrote
Steve, yes, I did try a project preset with 5.1 sound. That DOES work. The problem is that the only preset with 5.1 sound is for 30fps. So I have to either choose between losing my audio or cutting the fps in half (or extracting the audio from the video, then importing the audio and adding that as a new track).

It has been a long time.... Back when version nine current, I had a brand new Panasonic SDT-750 (like a TM900). You had to pick project settings. It was not until a couple versions went buy that automatic project setting and "official" support of AVCHD/1080p came. Users were not supposed to be able to edit 1080p60 footage! Common advice was to set you camera to a lower quality to match the capacity of the editing software.

I didn't want to do that.

In version 9, I picked a 30fps "progressive" project setting to edit 1080p60 footage from the Panasonic. It seemed that the project setting was more for the "real time" editing previews. At output I would pick a 1080p at 60fps. Output rendering apparently re-reads all the source files per the instructions you've set up in the project. So my source files were 60fps, my editing took place at 30fps, but my output matched the source at 60fps.

At least, I think that is what happens because I don't get to talk to the programmers!

Bill