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I've got some old VHS tapes that were captured to mov. Played back in VLC, they're perfect.
Bringing them into Premiere, however, the sync drifts. By the end of the 90 minute tape, it's around 5-6 seconds out of sync (with the video being faster).
The tapes are in 29.97 frames, 44.1khz audio. I have tried using "interpret footage" to adjust the frame rate slightly, but nothing seems to work, or even get it closer to correct. I do not believe this is a variable frame rate issue, but it is having the same effect as when I get long clips from someone's iphone that does shoot with a variable frame rate.
I have been un-linking the audio and video and then slowing down the video by the difference to line stuff up, but I have to do this for several hundred clips and any advice would really save me a lot of time.
Windows 10, Premiere v 22.2.0
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For clarification, I did not capture these tapes, it was done by some professional place several years ago. I see a lot of stuff about the tape source natively being 12 bit audio, but the files I have report themselves as being in 44.1 and play back fine in VLC.
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The video files from the cheap USB capture devices usually don't play well in Adobe Premiere Pro.
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Hello Gwar,
You might try rewrapping the files in Shutter Encoder (free) to see if you can still use the files but get rid of the VFR or other anomalies that don't play well with Premiere Pro. Let me know if the advice helps. By the way, I saw Gwar live two or three times. Good stuff.
Thanks,
Kevin
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Oh man! Awesome that you got the reference. Wish I was actually the band.
That encoder is awesome, what a great tool. It hasn't seemed to fix my problem yet though. I've tried:
Rewrapping as an MP4 (didn't like the codec)
Rewrapping as MOV (no change in drift)
Rewrapping as MOV and changing audio to a few different things (mp3, PCM 24 bit at 48k and 44.1) (no change in drift)
Conforming to various frame rates (no change or worse drift)
Are there any settings I'm not thinking about that could be useful?
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I have also tried converting to H.264 AND conforming to 29.97 with the advanced features. It plays back great in VLC still, but once again Premiere has the same amount of sync drift. Shouldn't that absolutely knock out any possible VFR that could be going on?
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Please post a screenshot of the tree view or text view of MediaInfo for the original source video. Then do the same for one or more of your converted clips.
It's entirely possible that you may have to manually re-sync the audio for each clip. 😞
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Wow, even if I don't end up fixing this problem, at least I'm finding cool tools in this thread.
Here's the MediaInfo for each, the left is the original, right is the h264 conversion. The only thing that's variable is the bitrate, but I think that's normal on most every file? They are both showing constant frame rates, and 44.1 vs 48 didn't make a difference for the audio.
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Out of Sync issues usually start with the capture device.
What device did you use to capture the tape?
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I'm not sure, I received the files from someone else. It was done at one of those professional tape capture facilities for a documentary crew a few years ago. Again, the sync is fine when played back in VLC, the issue only appears in Premiere.
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Here's a long shot: what are your sequence audio settings? Compare that to what the interpret footage dialog shows regarding how Pr is seeing this footage.
It may be irrelevant to this particular case, but based on the samples per frame (SPF) shown in the audio portion of MediaInfo's report, something seems amiss. My VHS captures never have more than 1 or 2 frames/sec difference between audio and video. Your audio FPS calculates to 43 FPS (Source) and 47 FPS (Converted) for a 29.97 FPS video. VLC, as a player, may compensate for this difference. Premiere Pro, as an editor, may assume the difference is intentional and not adjust it without your say-so.
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If you don't re-interpret the footage, but set your sequence audio to 48k instead of 44.1k, does anything change, good or bad?
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It looks to be exactly the same
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did you try prores? MOV is a container. what codecs did you try?
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Yes, the first suggestion was just to try rewrapping it, so that's what I did there. I also converted it to h.264 MP4, which also plays back fine in VLC but not in Premiere. I'm working on Windows so prores is not a good option for me.
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shutter encoder supports prores or you can try cineform or dnxhd. since you have drift, I don't think a re-wrap is gonna work. you'll have to merge it into another format like cineform, prores, dnxhd.
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I tried converting to Cineform and DNXHD and it baked the errors in so that not even VLC had the sync correct. Also the files were 90x larger than the originals, so I'm kind of glad this was not a good solution.
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sounds like your fourcc decoder got hijacked if you can't even export shutter into an intraframe codec! vlc must be using a separate fourcc decoder when playing back. you'd got some sleuthing to do. try looking at the .dll to fourcc relationships and meta-info. As a last resort, VLC has a built-in convert-save-as. you might be able to export something out from there.
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I tried googling what fourcc decoder dlls and such were but I could not decipher any of that. Got any hints?
I did use VLC's converter, it's actually my go-to file conversion software, but it has the same problem. File looks good in VLC still, but not in Premiere.