Sound clicks and pops in Premiere

[Arber Davidi]

I am using PPro CS3 to edit some footage shot with an XL2. I am experiencing sound clicks and pops in some scene transitions. When that happens, either one or two of the red lights at the top of audio meter levels, turn on. What I have done so far is checked the footage vs. project properties. They are:

Type: AVI Movie
File Size: 6.6 GB
Image Size: 720 x 480
Pixel Depth: 720
Frame Rate: 29.97 (24p)
Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 16 bit - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 00;31;07;25
Average Data Rate: 3.6 MB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 0.9

Is that the reason for the pops and clicks in my case? I tried creating a new project and changing the audio properties but did not see a 16bit stereo choice for the audio. What would you guys suggest?

Thank you.
Arber

[Michael Nistler]

Hi Arber,

First ensure you don't have some artifact micro-clip left-overs in between your footage. Stretch the sequence time (horizontally) - perhaps you were not careful with some prior cuts and have a few bits and pieces not easily seen with normal time base widths.

Otherwise you could again streth the time sequence, view the audio clip (not video) and locate the offending footage to determine the problem source. And if you need a quick fix, you could always add a few key frames on the audio and turn down the amplitude at the point of the clicks. Incidentally, I'm assuming you've validated the problem is not attributable to the source video/audio and the captured/imported media is okay.

Good luck, Michael

[Arber Davidi]

Originally Posted by Michael Nistler

Hi Arber,

First ensure you don't have some artifact micro-clip left-overs in between your footage. Stretch the sequence time (horizontally) - perhaps you were not careful with some prior cuts and have a few bits and pieces not easily seen with normal time base widths.

Otherwise you could again streth the time sequence, view the audio clip (not video) and locate the offending footage to determine the problem source. And if you need a quick fix, you could always add a few key frames on the audio and turn down the amplitude at the point of the clicks. Incidentally, I'm assuming you've validated the problem is not attributable to the source video/audio and the captured/imported media is okay.

Good luck, Michael

Hi Michael.

Thanks for responding to my post. I don't have any micro-clip left overs in between the footage. I have double checked and triple checked. I have also not been able to figure out if there's a way to change the project sound properties from 32 to 16 bit. Would you happen to know how? I will try the frame idea. I did try fading the audio in and out of the clips where the pop/click happened without inserting any frames but that made no difference. Does that mean it is something else?

Thanks again.
Arber

[Jim Montgomery]

One of the reasons that audio clicks at an edit point is that you did not cut at a zero crossing. For instance if your cut is on the top side of the waveform in one clip and the bottom of the waveform on the next you could have a significant increase to decrease in volume, causing a click.

Expand your timeline so that you can see the waveform as it crosses zero, move your cut to there on both clips.

See if that helps.

Jim

[Arber Davidi]

Thanks Jim. Your suggestion made me look at the sound levels some more. It seems that the 0 point of one of the clips was different from the rest of them. So I tried doing a manual fade out and fade in and that seems to work for now.

On another note, when I try compiling the movie I get an "error compiling movie" pop up. Any idea what that could be? I've tried pasting the movie into a new sequence with no luck. The rendering fails at roughly about 83%. I tried cutting the last 25% of the movie and rendering it and I still got the error. I also tried exporting the movie as an uncompressed Microsoft AVI unsucessfully either. Does Premiere store a rendering log somewhere? Any suggestions as to what could be going wrong here?

Arber

[Arber Davidi]

I actually managed to figure out what was causing the render to fail. I thought I'd post how I resolved it in case it helps somebody else. Instead of exporting the movie in Premiere which combines rendering with exporting, I went to Sequence > Render work area and where green meets red was the effect that was causing it to fail. Removed the effect and it rendered fine.

Arber