iPhone 4s Video - Serious Sync Issues Eliminate Premiere as a tool

[Guest]

I was excited to see how great the video is from the iPhone 4s.  I have taken one hour 1080P videos of lectures that look great.  However, when pulled into Premiere (CS5), the sound goes out of sync to the point that it is unusable after about seven minutes.  I have checked the original file (.MOV) using QT - it plays perfectly.  Indeed, I can trim and split the file using QT and I know that creating a bunch of small videos to link in Premiere would be a solution of sorts. 

What is the deal?  No ability by Adobe to handle MOV files and the screwy indexing they use?  Disappointing. 

Or have I missed something?  The sync problem is apparent in the source window - before I add to sequence. Any ideas?  Has anyone tried this with an iPhone 4S video beyond 10 minutes?

Brad

[mattsilbert]

Changing the extension from .mov to .mpg solved the problem for me too!

[zikade]

The iPhone does indeed record with a variable framerate, depending on lighting conditions for example. Still, you could export it from QuickTime player into something like ProRes and import that into PPro.

[Baz R]

open file into quicktime, goto save as, save as refrence video. Done

[LumberZach]

Oh my dear lord.

I just wasted two whole evenings trying to figure out why my iPhone 4 videos kept outputting with the sound out of sync in After Effects CS6. I'd done it successfully without problem before (though always with videos filmed indoors or with consistent daylight; the video I was attempting to edit was filmed at night under bright carnival lights), so I felt myself slipping gradually into madness because I didn't know the light mattered at all. I tried every kind of render setting and even tried my hand at Premier, which led me to this thread. Eventually, I found out iPhone 4 videos use variable frame rates, but I had no idea how to change them or force their framerates to actually match up with an After Effects composition. Then, Studio North Films up there droped this bomb of genius, "open file into quicktime, goto save as, save as refrence video. Done"

All I had to do was open the original movie file in Quicktime, save it and BAM — its framerate was no longer variable. My iPhone movies work beautifully in After Effects. Everything is right and wonderful in the world again.

Thank you, Studio North Films.

[the_wine_snob]

Great news!

Many have praised the iPhone footage, but it is basically designed to be played on an iPhone/iPad, where that variable FPS will be handled for playback, but not so much for editing. That QT Save_As is a good trick for stabilizing the variable FPS.

Good luck,

Hunt

[Stefanos6]

I just tried this - opened my 1080p MP4 footage in QT, saved it as a 1080p MOV, and everything was synced up. It was a 2GB file, and took less than a minute.

[HarleyTDavis]

Ignoring it?  They built in a way to fix it.  You just have to go with a more comprehensive workflow.

Avid will play through, so will FCP.  However, try a multi cam edit with those, and you'll either freeze or crash, unless the video is in it's own sequence that is used for a multi cam; which either reframes\retimes the video, or simply guesses the frames on the fly, interpreting them for the new frame rate.  Adobe avoids this because it requires more resources to render that on the fly, and they don't want to slow things down so much.  Their system installed software is designed to hold on and hold out for guys like me with limited resources to procure hardware.  They allow a minimalist approach, with a professional workflow.  They also hold on to the old FRAME by FRAME style.  This is a continuous bridge so that experience and the old hat still fit in as well.

Just remember to know your tools.  With VFR you'll end up with audio out of sync in premiere, but you can fix it by a simple transcode.  You can start that process by using either prelude or AME.  Your workflow is limited by tools in capture as well as POST.

[khangkhung]

I know this thread is old but your suggestion worked. A colleague is having the same problem. Clips plays perfectly in VLC and MPC but audio and video is out of sync when imported to Premiere. He just opened the .mp4 file in quicktime and just clicked "save". THAT'S ALL. Problem solved. THANK YOU!

[energybell]

I got my videos back by organizing up my iPhone photos & videos files through iPhoto.

[Guest]

QuickTime 10 doesn't include the save as reference movie option.

I had the same issues editing iPhone video for a client, and was able to change it from Variable Frame Rate to Constant Frame Rate, keeping the file in the same H264 format by using HandBrake.

[humananon]

I had  the same issue editing some iphone footage.  I used "handbrake" to convert the iPhone variable frame rate footage to constant rate.  I imported and began editing.....however I could not render footage before editing.  If I did it would go back to being out of sync.  So I edited and exported without rendering.....with success. 

I made a short video on what I did here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUo2j_ibpNM

[CalebMcLaughlin]

One clarifying question, humananon:

When you say to edit unrendered, do you mean not to render any preview files within Premiere?  Or do you mean not to transcode the footage to ProRes or whatever intermediate codec you like to use?

[humananon]

Yes,

The redline above your tracks that indicates unrendered footage, you want to keep it unrendered to edit the footage....Otherwise, you will be trying to edit the footage out of sync.  I don't know why it exports in sync even if it's rendered, but it would be difficult to make the cuts if you edit it out of sync.  So I just import the "handbrake" footage, edit it unrendered and export. 

This can be an issue if your computer cannot handle the unrendered footage or you have effects and multiple layers, but I managed okay so far.  Ideally I would prefer non-iphone footage, but the client needs it done, it's going to get done!

[Gordon James McDowell]

Have faced exact same situation.

Have (sadly) come to terms with not being (presently) able to use native iPhone 4S footage in Premiere Pro.

I do have a Sony Vegas licnese, and Neat Video license. I've used this as an excuse to pre-process all footage thru Neat Video filter.

Basically everything is recompressed. But it is an opportuntity to use some image processing that would otherwise be annoying on-the-fly.

This approach is painful in licensing fees (and feeding thru each capture one after the other). So I'm not saying it is great.

But your observation/experience PPro is not up to 4S import is correct. This is what I do. (6.0.3)

I do hope PPro is improved so the footage can be imported directly.

[the_wine_snob]

Gordon,

Thank you for providing your workflow.

Personally, I think that it's time for Apple to move away from the variable Frame-Rate in the iPhone. That is OK, if one ONLY wants to view the footage on an iPhone (and probably an iPad), but makes editing that footage tough. Note sure what the motivation was, for incorporating the variable Frame Rate, but it does get in the way, when trying to edit.

Good luck, and maybe Apple will reconsider with iPhone 6, or whatever comes next?

Hunt

[humananon]

Hunt thanks adding to the discussion.  Caleb cleared this up mentioning the variable rate used to compensate for low light while shooting.  I originally thought this was silly because of the issues I was having, but if the newer operating system can handle this then it makes sense to do it to maintain well lit footage or as you thought if the iPhone 6 can eliminate this issue regardless of which operating system we have.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Really sorry to hear about your experience. I also have an iPhone 4S. I recently used it for a dash cam with lots of long takes. FWIW, I had no problems with audio sync, however, I am running OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. Perhaps an upgrade to your OS might help?

[CalebMcLaughlin]

If your footage is consistently lit, then the variable FPS doesn't really come into play.  The only time it varies (as far as I can tell) is to compensate for lighting changes (lower FPS allows a lower shutter speed, and thus more light).  I, like Kevin, have experienced the relief of a driftless iPhone video, but not often.  You can download a few apps to lock off the FPS, though if you're a pro having to edit iPhone footage, you probably aren't shooting it yourself...

[humananon]

Caleb that's exactly right, thank you for bringing this up so people understand why they use the variable rate.  You can actually see this play out in my footage, where the black areas light up a little bit in a green tone.  So you can download the app to shoot the video in constant rate?  If so do you know what it's called?  I don't shoot the video at the moment, but I may start doing it for the client to avoid these issues.  Thanks for the feedback!

[humananon]

Kevin thanks for this info, I'm running 10.6.8 which could be the issue here.  I'll look to make the update, thanks again!

[Gordon James McDowell]

Reading the further comments it appears most likely consistent lighting keeps frame rate consistent.

I would certainly LIKE to see PPro support iPhone footage directly, but can appreciate variable rate footage being tough to parse accurately.

But Sony Vegas does do it. So my iPhone footage passes thru that on its way to PPro.

This is Windows 7 64-bit.

[humananon]

Absolutely, how does Sony Vegas compare to APremiere?

[Gordon James McDowell]

Gave up on it (Sony Vegas).

Felt like multicam shoots were not as flexible, to go back in later and expand or improve the raw coverage, while still having an editing master project in development at same time.

Both PPro and Vegas are the most flexible I can find anywhere, in terms of being able to import broad range of footage (including consumer grade stuff). iPhone import is a rare distinction between the two. Certainly I've shot tons of H.264 on cheap cameras and it works in both.

PPro subscription model is what I need. And I can better manage large projects.

There's weirdness to PPro, but CS6 (and each major revision) seems like a big step forward and I have more confidence PPro is headed where I need it to be than Vegas. Vegas feels like they're chasing feature checklist. Vegas has lower hardware requirements for decent performance. My PC has 64GB RAM for PPRo. I've found that helps.

[humananon]

Thank you for that comparison.  Wow 64GB of RAM, is there a difference between Mac RAM and PC RAM?  I'm using 3GB of DDR3 which doesn't seem quite enough most of the time.  And I haven't really looked into more since I bought this platform 2 years ago.  Thanks.

Best regards,

John Noah

[Gordon James McDowell]

I don't know if PC vs Mac memory requirements are different, I expect not significantly so. I do know Windows XP has memory constraints.

My project has much multi-cam footage, and is many TB is size. Most people shouldn't need nearly so much. But 3GB sounds low for even just modern computer usage.

Max out your machine's RAM. I don't think there's a better investment than RAM, particularly if you're sitting under 8GB. You machine's operating system, and Adobe apps will do very well turning any unused RAM into a cache.