Clips out of sync.

[Craig Irving]

I'm experiencing some issues with some clips being out of sync. It's not a performance issue during playback though, since it occurs also when I export to a new file for playback on a different machine or DVD player.

Perhaps it was a performance issue during the HDLink conversion process? (I didn't automatically convert on the fly, I'm pretty sure I captured to M2T first)

The material was shot with an HVR-V1U at 24p (extracted from 60i w/ HDLink)
Originally I may have been on CS3 and Aspect HD. Now I am on CS4 w/ Prospect HD.

I find with my problem clips, I typically have to advance the audio by 3 frames. Any ideas at what stage this could have come about? And just to ensure I am precise with syncing it back up. Should I re-capture? I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to re-capture it precisely to maintain the correct edit points, but.... I haven't looked at Premiere Pro yet, so I'm not sure how easy it is. Or how it is from a 3rd party plugin perspective.

[Robert Young]

Interesting to hear that you are having the problem with HDV.
I am having the same problem with Sony XDCam EX1 footage converted to CF in HDLink, but only when played by PPro, either CS3, or CS4. If I play the CFHD.avi clip in a player (WMP, etc.) the synch is fine. I've never figured out what the problem is. My workaround is to unlink the A & V in PPro timeline, adjust the synch. It's a real nusiance.

[Mike Harrington]

same here.....
i have been unlinking and manually dragging audio for a while now...(CF converted RED footage)

but sometimes it will go back into sync on output....so if you moved it you could be moving it out of sync as well

[Robert Young]

Exactly.
It's very aggravating.
I think I filed a trouble ticket on the issue back in CS3/PHD3 days, but no one could ever figure it out. On top of that, it doesn't always happen.
I would love to find a cure.

[Marc Salvatore]

I have also been experiencing this problem recently. I've had it happen for sure on Z1 clips captured and converted to 1920x1080 high quality Cineform. To fix I recaptured the clips in Vegas as M2t files and they were fine. This is a bummer as I have a large 2 hour + multicam shoot that has already been edited but seems to have the problem throughout.

[David Newman]

I have the feeling that you are not all talking about the same thing, after all Red conversions and M2T sources share nothing is common. And the resulting AVIs just have an uncompressed audio track, that can't play faster or slower, it is just there. Premiere/Prospect under CS3 can a have a startup situation where the audio is temporarily played a few frames off by syncs up quickly (still annoying) -- Premiere handles the audio, we handle the picture, sometimes the two engines take a moment (except when using an AJA card, we use that as the master sync, no sync issues on startup.) But if you have a different situation you have a clip that does it, send it to support. Use ftp://ftp.cineform.com/pub/incoming and file a ticket indicating the name of your uploaded clips.

[Mike Harrington]

In my case David...the audio speed is correct i.e. it dosn't drift over the length of the shot...however it is out of sync by about 10 frames when played back in PPRO...

in WMP or others the audio is perfectly in sync, only in PPRO does it go out of whack.
I remember in CS3 how the audio would start out of sync and then catch up, but in CS4 it seems to stay out of sync for the entire clip.

I will send some clips in when I have a chance.

[Robert Young]

My experience is exactly the same as Mike's, except my footage is EX1 source. This is definitely different than the old audio "slow start up" in CS3.
It is not clear to me if it is the audio (PPro) or the video (PHD) that is off time, but I am consistantly dragging the audio to the left to correct. That implies that it's the audio that is delayed.
It is a major issue for any footage with talking heads.

[David Newman]

We need those samples, as that seems straight forward to fix, particularly as WMP is playing the same data correction. ASAP so we get that sorted out in the next build.

[Robert Young]

David
I'll look for a short clip that does it.
It's a slippery issue though. On occasion I have deleted a poorly synched clip from PPro & reimported it and it's O.K., only to have it out of synch on reopening the project at a later time.
And, again, these CFHD clips play normally in WMP & other players.
Seems like a bizarre PPro issue of some sort.

[Marc Salvatore]

Robert, I'm having the problem in Sony Vegas so it's not isolated to Premiere.

[Robert Young]

Hmmm...
The plot thickens.

[David Newman]

Different story. Under Premiere our importer is responsible for audio sync, under Vegas we have no importer as it uses VFW, so Vegas is responsible for audio sync.

[Marc Salvatore]

I'll have to keep a closer eye on this in future projects but from what I can tell it has something to do with a glitch during HD Link capture (tape dropouts?) which then causes the converted clip to be permanenty out of sync.

It happened again recently in a project with interviews where only some of the interview sections were out of sync. The footage was shot on a Z1 and then converted to 1920x1080 cineform. To fix I recaptured everything in Vegas as straight M2t files and they were all in sync.

Marc

[David Kovalev]

I'm having the same issue and its very aggravating (z1u 60i). Its interesting because I import footage and give the footage on an external hard drive to someone else to work on (our projects are split and we work from two different locations/computer) When he edits it, all is fine... when I receive the hard drive back, some clips are out of sync. (could it be the rendering thing it does in the beginning is out of whack somehow?) Or maybe my video card? It also play fine in windows player.

Maybe this will add to the puzzle...