Odd audio problem!!

[Simon Russell]

Hi there, I have a recurring audio issue that is more of an irritant than a major problem.

I'll edit a film, then when I'm tweaking sound I'll often drop on a denoiser effect, and all seems well. However on playback through the timeline, wherever I have the effect the sound on the clip will drop way down in volume and sound very muted and muffled. This will happen for perhaps the first 2-3 seconds of a clip and then the sound will jump back up to normal again. If I then pull the scrubber back and re-play that section the sound will play perfectly without the issue and will continue to be fine for the remainder of the time I have that project open.

This isn't much of a pain in itself, but when I come to export a film, unless I've first played it all the way through I'll get the muffled sections on many of the clips in the exported version.

As you can imagine, this really slows things down, having to play through a whole film each time before I render it. I have to do this every time I open the project. If a client has a 30 min film and wants a small shot change or something, I'll make the cut (1-2 mins) then have to play the whole film through before I hit export - essentially adding a needless 30 mins to my workflow.*

Any ideas what could be causing this? I run CS5, but noticed (and lived with) the problem on CS3. These are both different editing machines, so I know it's not a problem specific to my machine. I'm currently editing footage shot on a Sony EX3 and a Canon 5D, but had the problem when I used to work with an XHA1 and an XM2 (i.e. captured DV footage), so I don't think it's a footage/camera specific problem either.

I always assumed it was just a little teething bug with premiere, and back when I had a lower output of films it really wasn't much of a problem. As I make more and more films and try to make my production process more efficient, this small gripe is turning into a time waster!

Any ideas/thoughts would be much appreciated, Thanks!*

[Adam Gold]

I'm wondering if it might have something to do with rendering the audio. Try that first before playback and tell us if it helps.

[Simon Russell]

Thanks Adam, I'll try this and will feed back results...

I'm assuming rendering the audio happens when the frame rendering occurs? i.e. tap enter and off it goes...

[Adam Gold]

Usually but not always. Go to Sequence > Render Audio.

It's probably not the issue but maybe worth a try.

[Simon Russell]

I tried the audio render and still the same problem unfortunately. As before, on the first play through the sound jumps from very quiet to normal levels and sounds softened at the start of most clips that have the denoiser effect. The second play through and it sounds perfect... as though some sort of pre-rendering or something has been done?

Clicking render audio doesn't result in any form of progress/render bar (like when you render video), all it does is jump to the start of the seqeunce and play through...

[Adam Gold]

Yeah, the more I thought about it, the less I thought that was it.

It might be a genuine bug. Have you contacted Adobe support?

[Simon Russell]

Thanks for your thoughts Adam - it was worth a shot! I haven't contacted Adobe support yet, but will do so. I'll also see if I can upload an example of the problem and will link it in here...

[David Chilson]

Simon,

That's an odd problem that would follow you from CS3 to 5, to me it sounds like a hardware/software glitch other than a Adobe one. I would start by remembering what plug-ins, add-ons or sound/audio hardware that you have carried over to the new install and start removing/changing them until I found the culprit. There is a common denominator here and I suspect it's not Adobe. Just my two cents.