Audio Video Sync Issue In Premiere Pro CS5

[Larry Kropp]

Hi I'm hoping you guys can help me on a problem I'm having with P.P. CS5 regarding importing HDV files losing audio/video sync. When I record a wedding or even a soccer game the video is about one second ahead of the audio after it is imported into P.P. CS5 for editing. Goal is scored and the clapping comes about a second to late. Very frustrating as you can imagine. It does not matter if I import the files from the Sony HDR FX 1000 using an HDV tape or from my back up FSH 200 hard drive, the video and audio is out of sync. It is not the camera or the hard drive because when I play back directly from them the video and audio are synced. I've used all the family of products from Adobe 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and have never seen this before. I really cannot put up with this and may have to drop Adobe and go with a different editing program. I wonder if you have any ideas? Any fixes from Adobe? Maybe I could go back to CS4 but I have a new 64 bit computer system and would like a 64 bit editing program. Thanks.

Larry Kropp
L&M Video

[Adam Gold]

Are you editing off an external drive? If not, how many internal drives do you have and how are they set up? What are your other PC specs? 64 bit is great but what chip, how much RAM, etc?

This is a different problem than the original thread so you probably should have started a new one.

I think we need to confirm whether this is a Premiere problem or a playback problem. Can you confirm that the actual clip has an error in it? That is, can you find a single frame event, like a single hand clap (or a clapboard if you had one or were in Hollywood) where you could put the clip in the Program monitor and put the CTI on the frame of the even and switch to audio-only waveform view and see if the audio spike is in the right place? If it is, you're looking at a playback issue, and I'd then look to your hard drive/directory setup for trouble shooting. If it isn't, then I'd look for some sort of capture issue which would be causing your audio to go out of sync.

If you don't have such an event, I'd shoot a test clip with a hammer and a two-by-four.

[Pete Bauer]

Upgraded this post into a thread of its own and removed a cross-post in another thread. (Please post a topic in only one location).

Larry, can you list your system specs? Sometimes slower systems, or a slow sub-system within the computer, can cause the audio to lag.

[Ann Bens]

Capture your footage with scene detection on, this will get rid of the OOS-problem.

[Larry Kropp]

System specs. Windows 7 Professional, 12gb ram. Two 600gb 10,000rpm internal hard drives.
Intel Core i7-980X Hega-core 3.33 Ghz. Nvidia Quadro 4000 Graphics card. Does this help? Video does play very smoothly on play back. I will also try and load the video on an external hard drive and see how that syncs up.

Adam I will try the single frame event experiment that you're suggesting and see what I get.

Ann, sorry but what does OOS mean? Scene detection is for loading from the camera and HD tape. Would it have to be on if I imported clips from the portable hard drive? I could try that.

Thanks everyone. I have some testing to do.

Larry

[Adam Gold]

OOS = Out of Sync.

I wasn't recommending you try an external drive, I was only asking if you were using one because if you were, that might be the cause of the problem. When you say the clips play back fine, do you mean outside of Premiere or within it? Within Premiere. what happens when you reduce playback resolution to 1/2 or 1/4?

Physically your system sounds more than fine. So until we can determine whether this is a Premiere problem (unlikely but possible) or a playback problem (more likely) or an actual clip problem (possible), let's go over some basics, which you probably have covered already, as you've been using prior versions for a long time. So sorry if you've covered all this already:

You've got two fast Hard Drives, so OS and Premiere should be on one, and your project and all assets (video files) should be on the other. You should be running no other software while you are running Premiere, you should not be on the Internet, you should not have anti-virus software running, and you should have disk indexing and file compression turned off in Windows. Premiere gets its feelings hurt if it isn't the focus of all of your PC's attention.

Another question: you are doing the initial HDV capture within Premiere?

Can you try and confirm all this and let us know how it goes?

[Larry Kropp]

Hi Adam. I shoot the soccer and football games in HDV. Some really beautiful stuff. I am now spoiled and don't even like shooting in SD anymore. When I use an HDV tape I set the capture setting in Premiere to HDV and then import the tape files. However, when I capture HD on my portable have drive it is in a .M2T file wrapper. I'd like to use the Quick Time HD option but Premiere cannot import those files. Anyway, the way I get those clips on Premiere is as follows. I upload the clips to the 10,000 rpm hard drive on my computer. Once that is done I open Preimere and import the HD clips to the the proejct panel. I use the Focus Enhancements hard drive so I reduce wear on my camera tape heads. I have played back video after uploading it from the portable hard drive on Windows Media Player and it looks fine and all is in sync. So I still think there is a problem when I import the files to Premiere.

My two hard drives are set up as you noted and I'm never on the internet when I capturing. However, one thing I like to try is to turn off the disk indexing and file compression in windows but I don't know how to do that. Can you tell me and I will try it. I will turn off the anit virus software also. I will also try reducing the playback resolution to 1/2 from full. Finally can't some software be running in the background without me actually having it open? Thanks.

Larry

[Adam Gold]

Go to your disk drives and right-click and select properties. There will be two check boxes that relate to indexing and file compression. Make sure they are unchecked.

I'm a little confused about your capturing process. Either it is more complicated than it needs to be or I am misunderstanding you, probably the latter. I think you should be doing all your capturing directly from your cam in Premiere without any external other devices or drives at all, just to simplify things. I'm confused about capturing then importing. When you capture, the m2t files should show up directly in your project, no? When I was still using tape I captured directly from tape into project.

Originally Posted by Larry Kropp

. I use the Focus Enhancements hard drive so I reduce wear on my camera tape heads. I have played back video after uploading it from the portable hard drive on Windows Media Player and it looks fine and all is in sync. So I still think there is a problem when I import the files to Premiere. Larry

Wait, Focus Enhancements? Are you using a Firestore to record to disk instead of or simultaneous to tape? Does the OOS problem occur on scenes captured from tape withing Premiere or from the exact same scenes imported from the Firestore? Or both?

[Larry Kropp]

Checked windows and the compress option was not checked but indexing was. When I unchecked it and it gave me two options. 1. Apply changes on Drive C only or 2. Changes on Drive C and all sub folders and files. Do you know which I should choose?

I mainly use the firestore since using tape wears a lot on my camera video heads. I use both tape and the the hard drive when I do a wedding and need a back up just in case the tape breaks. I've done that for serveral years.

I capture in two ways. When I capture from the camera and tape I open Adobe and capture directly from the capture option in the softeware. When I need the files from the firestore I have to upload them so they are on my computer drive permanetly so Adobe can access them when I open up the project. I also cannot leave them on the firestore since I need it for my next recording seesion. Firestore uses a San Disk card to record on at 30MBs. Hope this helps. Thanks

Larry

[Adam Gold]

And you're sure this problem is with both files captured directly from tape or those imported from the Firestore?

I'm going to hazard a wild guess here and guess that your answer is that the problem is with the Firestore files and not with those captured from tape. IF this is true then there may be a problem with the way the Firestore writes m2t files and the way Premiere reads them compared to the same data written to tape. We know, for example, that timecode data is written differently and that it took awhile for Premiere to figure that out and that it still doesn't quite read tape and card data the same way. If this is true you may have indeed discovered an incompatibility.

If this is true, then you have four options:

a) Report it to Adobe and wait for them to come up with an update
B) Report it to Firestore an wait for them to come up with an update
C) Dump the Firestore and switch to the Sony MRC1k, which we know works fine
D) Switch to another NLE

Of these, I think C) is the fastest, easiest and probably least expensive if you can sell the Firestore.

Again, this is all wild conjecture.

But if the problem also occurs with files captured directly from tape, but you say they play correctly outside of Premiere, then the files themselves are fine and something is happening during playback within Premiere.

As to the other points, now possibly moot:

On your drives, choose option 2. Do this for all your drives. Even if it has nothing to do with your current issue you should do this anyway for best performance.

The tape deck in your cam is meant for this purpose. Using tape in it does not wear it out.

[Jay West]

Just a brief follow-up on Adam's and Ann's comments and questions.

First thing is that your problem sounds like one that turned up with PPro's capture utility back in CS3 and which still seems to show up with CS5 for some people on some systems and does not seem to be limited to tape captures. A solution that has worked for some people is using Cineform. Download a trial version of Neo and install it. Call up the "HD Link" application. Under Prefs, check the box for "Split File on Scene Changes." Run a conversion and see if it makes any difference.

Second thing: can you play the m2t files in Windows Media Player and, if so, are they in sync there?

Third thing, I'm not familiar with the Firestore devices, but I wonder if it has recorded metadata files along with the m2t file? (That is how Sony's MRC1k works; maybe the Firestore is different.). Are you coping the entire file directory or just the m2t files? If the latter, you may be missing metadata files.

Fourth, a shot in the dark, but some audio subsystems have latency settings and sometimes those can interact in odd ways with PPro. Look at the audio and audio hardware settings under PPro's preferences tab and tell us what your choices are and what the options are. Might be something there.

Fifth, have you cleaned the media cache? Does cleaning it and deleting render files (under sequence) have any effect?

Sixth, are you using CS5.03 or an older version?. Some of the earlier versions had audio sync issues. (If you have CS 5.5, never mind.)

[Bart Walczak]

I would suggest deleting your media cache folder, and allow Premiere to re-encode and reindex the files, without doing anything in the program at that time.

I had a similar issue and it turned out that the problem was corrupt media cache. For some reason Premiere is pretty sensitive during decoding of hdv files.

[Jay West]

Bart has given good advice about not doing anything else with PPro while it is indexing mts and mt2 files and conforming the audio (audio peak file creation).

[Adam Gold]

I completely forgot about that and it is a great point.

[Marty Molloy]

I'm having the same problem with OOS clips in Premier 5.5 also... The audio is lagging behind by about 6 frames, when we use clips from tape or from a Focus hard drive. We're using Canon XL-H1 cameras. Larry, did you find the solution to your problem? We were having the same problem in Premier 4.0 and 5.0 as well.