Audio Out of Sync After Premiere Export? I've tried everything. HELP!!!!

Report · Apr 28, 2020

Hi Everyone,

This is kind of long, but please bear with me.

I just finished editing a music video, and when I playback the edit on my timeline, everything is perfect. But as soon as I export the video, the audio gets all out of sync. The audio is in sync for some of the clips, but out of sync for some of the others, and the gap becomes greater over time it seems. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix it.

Does it have to do with the latency during playback inside of premiere? Why are some clips synced and others not? Does it have anything to do with the bitrate settings? Frame rate settings? I have tried both constant and variable bit rates, and I have tried many different combinations of audio settings for the export (different KBPS and Hz). The export settings for framerate match those of the source media.

Furthermore, the final export seems to realign with the audio on the second playback? As if my computer needed additonal time to process the file? I have a very powerful editing computer with an abundance of RAM and storage space so I do not belive this to be the issue. The second playback is only better on my desktop, which is Windows. When I transfer the file to my mac or to my iphone, the audio stays out of sync no matter how many times I play it back.

There are several nested clips and also after effects compositions used in the video. Would this have any impact on the export as opposed to just premiere clips? I have seriously run out of ideas here.

If anyone has any idea what might be causing this PLEASE let me know. The client is expecting the media this weekend. He has already seen the clip via playback inside of Premiere, but I cannot send him the exported file until I can fix the audio.

(Additional note, I use bluetooth speakers because my monitor does not have internal speakers. Would this add additional latency during editing? This still doesnt seem to make sense though because it even is out of wack when watching the exported clip with the same speakers...)

I will be forever greatful if someone can answer this for me!!!

Report · Apr 28, 2020

Can you tell us more about the media you are working with? The best way to see a lot of info about your media is from the tree view of Media Info. That being said, this sounds like exactly what happens with Variable Framerate media that you would get from footage coming from a Phone or from Screen Capture. I will provide some suggestions based on that assumption.

Here is Adobe's article on it and perhaps the VFR is subtle enough that the Premiere option will work for you: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/faq-how-to-work-with-variable-frame-rate-vfr-media-in-pr...

(Note that Variable Frame Rate is not the same thing as Variable Bitrate).

For other info on VFR, including how you would transcode your media to a constant framerate prior to editing, check here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VideoEditing/wiki/faq/vfr

If it is indeed VFR that you're dealing with and it's severe enough that you need to deal with it outside of Premiere, you can transcode your problem clips to a constant framerate and then replace your footage inside your project with the new clips and they will update in your edit. Because the timing difference between everything, you may need to slip a few of your clips to retime the edit, but you wouldn't need to start from scratch.

Report · Apr 28, 2020

The media was shot on a Lumix GH5. I dont belive is is VFR? Most shots were shot at 29.7 FPS and a couple slow motion shots were shot at 93FPS (weird number I know), but the way the camera writes the media it plays back in 29.7fps? At least thats what the properties of the clip say (not my camera so im not entirely familiar with it). The audio is an MP3 file sent to me from the talent. I checked the properties of it, and it says it is 160kbps and 44100Hz which I made sure to match on the export settings.

I can post pictures of the actual properties windows in a second so you can look at them for yourself.

And also, I am using the most current version of Premiere to my knowledge.

Report · Apr 28, 2020

Yeah you're probably not dealing with VFR issues then. That's good. It also means the culprit may be less obvious (at least to me).

My mind does go to the sample rate: maybe making sure your sequence also matches the export sample rate - although I don't know that that's it. Going to research a little and hopefully some reinforcements jump in with other ideas 🙂

Report · Apr 28, 2020

Some other things I would try:

Transcode your mp3 into a .wav file. Do a Save As on your Project File as a backup and then replace your mp3 with that .wav file. It might be worth a test at this point, but just to get another helpful cleanse in there, delete all your media cache files and previews and then relaunch Premiere, letting everything reload.

(It is worth noting that your bluetooth speakers are probably not a great thing for doing audio work and if you can use headphones I'd recommend it, but I'm assuming your issue is bigger than that.)

Report · Apr 28, 2020

I believe I found my issue!! My camera operator accidentally shot three takes in 23.976fps rather than 29.7 like the rest. I only used a couple snippits of these shots so they eluded my search of clip properties. Time to make some

adjustments -___-

Report · Apr 28, 2020

Great. Good catch! Hope that leads you down the right path then.

Report · Apr 29, 2020

I greatly appreciate your help! One last question, you wouldnt happen to know any way to convert these clips to a consistent frame rate without modifying playback speed and effecting the overall timeline would you? I have a lot of edits on there that I really dont want to have to recreate! Thanks again for all your help!

Report · Apr 29, 2020

The GH5 shouldn't be capturing VFR, but if you were dealing with VFR issues and wanted to convert to a constant framerate you could do that with Handbrake or FFMPEG (See the reddit VFR wiki link above for more info on that: this is mostly a concern if you're dealing with audio sync issues - if it was just video you could probably transcode in AME or something else.) Once you have your transcoded files there are 2 ways you could go about replacing the existing ones:

1. Manually replace the footage (in Project Panel, right click on footage and choose Replace Footage, navigate to your newly transcoded file and load it in. It should repopulate your entire project with the new clip. If there are timecode variations you may need to go through your edit and make sure things match (*make sure to duplicate your project before doing this type of major change. It may also help to have an exported reference of the video as it 'should' be to help make sure you get things back into place. You can also use the difference blending mode to help identify where visual areas of your video have changed.) This manual method is a good approach if you don't have a lot of media to work with, or if you can't do option 2.

2. When you're trying to replace a large batch of transcoded media, the best approach is a sort of bait and switch method where you break the link to the folder that has the existing video media, and relink to a new folder containing your transcoded files. For this to work the transcoded files must be the same name, and optinoally, same extension (Otherwise you're back to manually doing.) So keep that in mind before you transcode your original files if you're going with this second approach. It makes organization important. This method used to be how you would work with proxies before Premiere made that super easy.

Hope these make sense and are helpful. If not for this, then for future projects.