Audio out of sync when exporting H.264

[Inrot]

I just discovered the following:

Whenever I export a H.264 in MP4 container, the audio in the resulting file goes about 10 ms out of sync. (575 audio samples to be exact.)

Screenshot:

Green is the original clip, red is the resulting file from export.

I used 25fps in export settings.

To test this I used:

• HD bars and tone that lasts exactly 1 frame @ 25 FPS
• Cleared / reset the cache
• Disabled the h.264 acceleration in settings and restarted premiere
• Rendered the timeline to green
• Tried to render with Adobe media encoder

The result was always the same, audio is not in sync with the original timeline.

To see if it's just a display issue, I copied the empty space in the start of audio, pasted it 100 times and it was silent. I also brought the video file to cubase and the desync was clearly there as well.

I tried other codecs and they all worked fine and are 100% in sync, including H.264 in .MOV container.

The video is exactly the same in the resulting file and lasts for 1 frame as it's supposed to, the audio starts 10ms late.

I tried to export audio only as MP3, that made the audio go even further out of sync.

I've gotten similiar files from my coworkers using adobe premiere, which is telling me that this is not a problem with my system only.

What is the cause of this and can it be fixed?

[Shane Russell]

I forgot to mention this started happening when I was on Mac OS Catalina but I just recently updated to Mac OS Big Sur and the problem persists. Thanks in advance 🙂

[Brett5C46]

Since you have a macbook, I'm going to copy my solution from earlier in this thread. 

"I found a pretty weird solution to this problem that has worked for me (and might for other mac users as well). Once I export my project (H.264, high bitrate), I drop it into iMovie. When I scroll through the timeline in iMovie, there is no issue with the A/V sync. Then I export the video from iMovie and it's totally normal."

It seems like by using this loophole, you can keep your export settings the same. Hoping that this works for you.

[roberth63696283]

It’s absurd that we have to go through this. Does Adobe support exist?!

Sent from my iPhone

[Brett5C46]

They do, yes. I've only used their support once though and I found it to be very unhelpful 

[Mephistoned]

The solution I found was simply to export uncompressed. Two movies had the same issue - MP4s were coming out out of sync. The first I believe I then exported it AVI uncompressed. Oddly, that seemed to come out as an MPEG file. But it was in sync and uploaded to Youtube fine. The second... for some reason this didn't work the same way. I got my AVI, but it was HUGE 63GB meaning it would take days to get onto Youtube and I have a premiere two days later. Nope. Instead I tried again selecting 'match sequence settings' -  export produced an XMP file (?). Used the media encoder the second time - this worked and produced the MPEG in sync. So > match settings / go uncompressed / aim for the MPEG (oddly the MPEG preview format is not selectable - but I got it by matching settings). The problem all seems to be caused by variable frame rates within the movie (quite likely as footage is filmed by students on different cameras, sometimes even phones, and who knows what settings they are using). Yes, ideally I would check all footage and turn it into constant frame rate but... I didn't (and that's a lot of work!).

Adobe really should make all this clearer and easier. Yes, it's a program for professionals, but frankly many of us using it are not, and a little hand holding wouldn't hurt - a wizard for example, warning about variable frame rate? Autoconversion into CFR if that's what the formats need?

Of course, don't get me started on the many stupid UI and UX flaws, how often the program does something I don't want it to, and how often it crashes. I am not exactly new to Premiere - I've used it for around 15 years on and off and produced 5 short movies with it now, and countless other smaller productions. It still greatly frustrates me.

[Averdahl]

I got my AVI, but it was HUGE 63GB meaning it would take days to get onto Youtube and I have a premiere two days later.

By @Mephistoned

Don´t go uncompressed for YouTube. Set the Format to QuickTime and use the Apple ProRes LT preset in the Export Settings dialog. The files will be less huge, and in sync.

And, convert all VFR footage to CFR before starting the edit to avoid all sync issues. Too late now, but til next time it will come in handy.

If you have worked with Premiere Pro for 15 years you should invest some time into the "how-to" doing exports, what settings to choose, what setting not to choose. If you export uncompressed and get an MPEG file you did it the wrong way, it´s a user error and not Premiere Pro´s fault. It´s a great investment in time to learn the export phase of editing. I am not writing this to be a pain, i am writing it for your best.

In the next version of Premiere Pro the export workflow has been simplified and can already be tested by all users in the public Premiere Pro beta that you can access via the Creative Cloud app.

[Terrence5C9C · Accepted solution]

Solved this in my case in a few ways. I had some footage that was falling out of sync after export, but it only seemed to be a problem when it was playing it through quicktime. You can play any local video off your device through Google Chrome, just open a new tab and literally drag the video there, you'll see a green + sign appear by the cursor. When I tried playing those same exported video files that had laggy audio in quicktime, they played perfectly fine and in sync in Chrome. So the problem there was with our quicktime was reading the file opposed to how the file itself was encoded. This was really confusing because I used media encoder to confirm that the source video had a constant frame rate (frequently the culprit for these audio sync issues) and the footage was in sync when I tried playing it in the premiere timeline.

I had some other footage that had a variable frame rate and that footage didn't even import into premiere in with audio in sync. Quicktime would play that same footage in sync, but when loaded into premiere, the video and audio instantly fell out of sync, even in the premiere timeline. I used handbrake to reencode that footage to a constant frame rate and had the audio sync issue solved. 

[Shane Russell]

Oh wow!! You're right! It plays perfectly fine in chrome. It seems like its a quicktime problem and not premiere. Sorry adobe! Now I gotta go over to the apple forums, ha!

[MLeonard]

This did not work for me. I'm going crazy.

[pete collins]

That is what I have experienced. The file is in sync in Premiere and also when I post it on Vimeo, but when I play it back through Quicktime, it gets incrementally out of sync as the video progresses. I have always use Quicktime playback to check that everything is correct before uploading to Vimeo, but know I have to assume that the sync issues are just a glitch and then wait to see if everything works out after the upload. Thanks so much for the Chrome suggestion... so simple! I am pretty sure this problem started after I updated Premiere last time. Never had this issue before. So it seems to be a conflict between Premiere and Quicktime and not a sync issue with the actual file?????.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Pete,

Thanks for reporting back on your experience. Much appreciated. I will let the Premiere Pro team know about this.

Regards,
Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Terrence,

I'm going to mark your answer as correct since the OP is no longer posting here.

---

You can play any local video off your device through Google Chrome, just open a new tab and literally drag the video there, you'll see a green + sign appear by the cursor.

---

Glad that worked. Most Mac users use QuickTime to check the quality of the video and VLC, not so much. The community has discovered that QuickTime Player is introducing sync problems for H.264 play out that are not there in VLC nor are they there once uploaded to YouTube.

File a bug here: Premiere Pro User Voice

I will advocate for a fix in the meantime.

Thanks,
Kevin

[MLeonard]

Ok, I have one thing to add. This worked for me.

When I was having problems, I had the renderer set to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL).

I changed the renderer to Mercury Playback Engine GPE (Metal) - Recommended

With that change, the video and audio were synced after export.

[sarahf50308390]

I recently had the same issue with my h.264 audio going out of sync. The audio is also muted in certain places too. I do have mixed media including gifs and screen recordings. But this is the FIRST project I've ever had this audio sync issue with. I've contacted Adobe support and they suggested using Premiere Pro 15.0 instead of the latest version but that didn't help at all. What to do? Thanks.

[sarahf50308390]

Where are the render settings located? I don't see where there is an option to change renderer to Mercury Playback Engine GPE (Metal) - Recommended under export settings?

[sarahf50308390 · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: I contacted Adobe support via phone. It seems the issue with both Quicktime player and YouTube. My video plays fine in VLC player. Last week I was going crazy because audio was muted and out of sync for almost the whole 9 minute video. But, I played it on VLC Player and it works great. When I uploaded to YouTube today it plays smoothly! Hope this info helps.

[roberth63696283]

Same here!

[magnobarros]

Are they suggesting the problem is with Quicktime and Youtube? They will need to include Iphone too... They audio is completely out of sync when i watch it on my iphone. ADOBE needs to fix it. All the workarounds are time consuming and should not be required of us. Seems like something they can easily fix if there is will.

[sarahf50308390]

As long as your file plays correctly in VLC it will work properly on iphone, quicktime, youtube, etc. 🙂 But, yes, I agree...I prefer to see it play correctly on Quicktime before I post it to social media. The issue isn't happening for me anymore.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Magno,

Sorry about this situation.

ADOBE needs to fix it. All the workarounds are time consuming and should not be required of us. Seems like something they can easily fix if there is will.

---

I checked it out. There is actually a bug already filed by our support team, so the product team is working on the issue now. Hope it gets fixed soon!

Regards,

Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Right on! Thanks for confirming, Sarah F!

Regards, 
Kevin

[AOE]

Dear Inrot, 

The issue for me was that the source video had a different frame rate from the sequence (60fps in the video vs 25fps sequence). You can check the fps of the source file by right-clicking on the video and selecting properties. If the frame rate is off, you can use media encoder to change the fps of the source file. Use the new 25fps file in your premiere sequence with, now, matching frame rates, export it and it should be good. The same goes for audio. It took me 3 days to fix this issue and finding out the solution. Hopefully, this helps!

[roberth63696283 · Accepted solution]

It was driving me crazy, but I found that VLC played it perfectly.

[Brian22574017al07]

I just exported a video that plays perfectly in VLC player but when I upload it to my google drive and download it to my iphone, the audio isn't sync'd.  Not sure what to do.  I want to upload it to social media but the only place that it plays really well is in VLC player.

[marcog44506272]

Hi there, I know this is a year ago, however did they ever find a solution to this problem as I have exactly the same issue. Through my windows player it plays fine, when I upload it on vimeo or google drive on my computer it plays fine, however, when I open the file on anyone elses computer or iphone (including my own) from google drive/vimeo/youtube it plays out of sync