My exported video drifts out of sync :(

[Daniel Raebiger]

Hey Folks,

i am currently editing a massive music video (38 tracks with different camera angles) and am near completion.

yesterday i rendered a preview in wmv format with the media encoder and was suprised and shocked to see, that my carefully synced music video gets out of sync gradually. Around one minute it's extremly noticeable.

I've tried with mpeg2, mov and flash format with the same result. surprisingly only in quicktime format the clip is out of sync from the start (by .5 seconds) and then degrades even more.

after about two minutes the clip is 1 second off sync.

When i render a preview or simpley play the project within premiere everything is perfect.

I am hitting the deadline on thursday and have no idea whatsoever :(

any help is highly appreciated!

thanks
-Daniel

[Tripp Woelfel]

This could be caused by a variety of things. Search the Adobe Premier Pro knowledgebase for a document describing how to optimize your system for PP. Follow those instructions. It's not difficult and shouldn't take too long.

Making sure that you have the latest software and drivers is key. Don't rely on any programs provided by your computer manufacturer to get it right. Go to the manufacturing source for each component and download each driver. It will make a difference.

[Daniel Raebiger]

Originally Posted by Tripp Woelfel

This could be caused by a variety of things. Search the Adobe Premier Pro knowledgebase for a document describing how to optimize your system for PP. Follow those instructions. It's not difficult and shouldn't take too long.

Making sure that you have the latest software and drivers is key. Don't rely on any programs provided by your computer manufacturer to get it right. Go to the manufacturing source for each component and download each driver. It will make a difference.

hm i really think my rig is ok - i have and had no problems with other projects i am working on right now. drivers are up to speed, everything's shiny.

[Ervin Farkas]

Try exporting a test in the native format of the project, to see where the problem occurs. Your project might be OK, just the transcoding set wrong.

[Daniel Raebiger]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

Try exporting a test in the native format of the project, to see where the problem occurs. Your project might be OK, just the transcoding set wrong.

my project is a HDV 720 25p project - i've tried exporting in 720p at all times

[Ervin Farkas]

Sorry for the ambiguity: I meant the project video format as in "the internal format", not frame size.

Haven't worked in PremPro for a while, so I don't recall this step, but most NLEs let you choose (some of them have it fixed) the rendering format - any source clips you put on the timeline will be conformed to ONE format. At the time of export that internal format is transcoded to whatever format you choose.

I suppose for a 720p project that would be either AVI or MPEG2. You can find out exactly what the format is bringing up the project settings dialog.

[Daniel Raebiger]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

Sorry for the ambiguity: I meant the project video format as in "the internal format", not frame size.

Haven't worked in PremPro for a while, so I don't recall this step, but most NLEs let you choose (some of them have it fixed) the rendering format - any source clips you put on the timeline will be conformed to ONE format. At the time of export that internal format is transcoded to whatever format you choose.

I suppose for a 720p project that would be either AVI or MPEG2. You can find out exactly what the format is bringing up the project settings dialog.

ah ok, now i see what you meant. Well, i am editing 1080 HDV footage from a Canon XH A1 shot in 1080f mode in a HDV 720p25 project. So every single frame is being transformed, resized and stuff. (I edit most of my projects in exactly this setup as it gives me more creative control as i have 1080p footage and only a 720p frame so i can scale the image exactly the way i want even if the shot itself is not exactly centered etc.)

Native therefore would be mpeg2 but it goes out of sync there as well :(

[David Beisner]

I had this problem as well with one project (though mine wasn't even close to the size of yours...) never had it before that and never had it since. Try exporting it to Encore and burning it to DVD. That was the only way I could get it to export without losing sync.

[Daniel Raebiger]

i finally figured it out: obviously premiere cs3 had a problem with that many tracks in one sequence (had ~ 50 tracks)

i've melted everything down to around 3-4 tracks, hit ctrl+c, created a new sequence in the same project, pasted it with ctrl+v and my export was just fine...

[David Beisner]

That's interesting... The project I was working on that had the trouble only had four or five tracks. I've done other projects with close to 20 tracks that have had no issues at all.

[Daniel Raebiger]

well i seriously hope it never ever happens again - no customer will understand 'hey your video's finished but... somewhat out of sync and i don't know why'

[David Beisner]

Haha.. yeah, that's true.