Loading .avi files into Premiere Elements 2018

[CerebralCaustic]

Like others before me I am having difficulty loading .avi files into Premiere Elements. These are old family films that we have used a converter to digitise from VHS tape.

I have tried converting the files to mp4 using Handbrake but the sound is all over the place on the resulting file. I have tried using VLC media player to covert but the resulting files are unplayable.

Any suggestions? I am new to all this - maybe there are settings in Handbrake I should be applying to get the sound to work?

Here are the results for my file from MediaInfo:

Format                                   : AVI

Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave

File size                                : 847 MiB

Duration                                 : 29 min 50 s

Overall bit rate                         : 3 966 kb/s

Video

ID                                       : 0

Format                                   : AVC

Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec

Format profile                           : Main@L3

Format settings                          : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames

Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes

Format settings, RefFrames               : 1 frame

Codec ID                                 : H264

Duration                                 : 29 min 39 s

Bit rate                                 : 3 811 kb/s

Width                                    : 640 pixels

Height                                   : 480 pixels

Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3

Frame rate mode                          : Variable

Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS

Color space                              : YUV

Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0

Bit depth                                : 8 bits

Scan type                                : Progressive

Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.414

Stream size                              : 809 MiB (96%)

Audio

ID                                       : 1

Format                                   : MPEG Audio

Format version                           : Version 1

Format profile                           : Layer 3

Format settings                          : Joint stereo

Codec ID                                 : 55

Codec ID/Hint                            : MP3

Duration                                 : 29 min 50 s

Bit rate mode                            : Constant

Bit rate                                 : 160 kb/s

Channel(s)                               : 2 channels

Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz

Compression mode                         : Lossy

Stream size                              : 34.1 MiB (4%)

Alignment                                : Aligned on interleaves

Interleave, duration                     : 26  ms (0.78 video frame)

Interleave, preload duration             : 1096  ms

[Steve Grisetti]

Premiere Elements can't work with H.264-AVIs with a variable frame rate.

Converting it to an MP4 using HandBrake is definitely what I'd recommend. I'm not sure why that isn't working for you or what you mean when you say the sound is "all over the place".

If you use the settings I describe in my tutorial you should get good results.

Fixing Out of Sync video with Handbrake - YouTube

The only difference in the settings is that you should be setting your video's dimensions to 640x480.

[CerebralCaustic]

Thanks Steve,

I have followed your tutorial but the sound problem remains. What's happening is that the sound is all sped up and sounds jumbled up and then stops about 13 minutes into the video. It's almost as if Handbrake has compressed the sound into the first half of the video, if that makes any sense?

[Steve Grisetti]

Can you upload one of your AVIs to a public Dropbox and post a link to it so we can download it and experiment with it?