No audio: EX1 MP4 clips on Premiere CS3

[Tuomas Sebastien]

Help, MP4 clips work on Premiere CS3 (windows xp) simply by dragging them in to the bin. Audio however is lost. There's no error notifications or nothing. Audio track comes with video track and the info says it is 48kHz - 32-bit Float - Stereo. However no waveform is visible on timeline and no audio plays. What am I doing wrong? How to fix it? I tried copying codec dlls of clip browser to plugin folder of premiere... didn't help. I installed latest ffdshow with audio codecs... didn't help.

-I can hear audio on sony clip browser

-I can't hear audio on VLC player

-I can't hear audio on media player classic and it gives following error
D:\ex\BPAV\CLPR\419_0022_01\419_0022_01.MP4::Sound Media Handler (eng)

Media Type 0:
--------------------------
Audio: 0x0000 48000Hz stereo

AM_MEDIA_TYPE:
majortype: MEDIATYPE_Audio {73647561-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
subtype: Unknown GUID Name {736F7774-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
formattype: FORMAT_WaveFormatEx {05589F81-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}
bFixedSizeSamples: 1
bTemporalCompression: 0
lSampleSize: 1
cbFormat: 54

WAVEFORMATEX:
wFormatTag: 0x0000
nChannels: 2
nSamplesPerSec: 48000
nAvgBytesPerSec: 0
nBlockAlign: 0
wBitsPerSample: 16
cbSize: 36 (extra bytes)

[Brad Bodily]

This could be a longshot, but is Premiere by chance still conforming the audio? I don't have any EX1 footage, but with footage from the DR60 I know Premiere "conforms" the audio, which takes a bit. Before it finishes, the audio track shows but without a waveform. The lower right usually has a progress bar when this is going on.

[Tuomas Sebastien]

When i import clip it doesn't do anything to audio like it does after capturing from DV. If I extract audio from the clip in premiere I get empty waveform.

[Bill Heslip]

Premiere Pro does not support EX1 HQ footage natively, or provide any kind of intermediate codec for such cases (don't get me started). The only workable alternatives at this time (IMHO) are to buy a Cineform codec (Prospect HD, specifically), or shoot and edit HDV (although CS3 reportedly has serious HDV sync issues).

The Cineform codecs are really great, but Adobe has let users down in this regard.

[Bob Wells]

I am having the same no-audio problem. The Sony clip browser plays fine, but the CS3 files are video only. Any help will be much appreciated.

[Tuomas Sebastien]

You need to convert MP4 clip with ffmepg to DNxHD mov for example
i used following line for 720p and got both video and audio out from converted file in CS3:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec dnxhd -b 60Mb -acodec copy output.mov

http://arrozcru.no-ip.org/ffmpeg_builds/
http://www.itbroadcastanddigitalcine...peg_howto.html

I have no idea do you loose quality on this conversion but to be safe you could use 90Mb stream for 720p and 185Mb for 1080p

I tested out various conversions and the example above was only one i got working with good picture and sound. Using some other video codec might be better but i don't have enough knowledge about understanding different codecs and what switches to use to avoid quality loss for sure.

[Jon Carlson]

I have a Matrox Axio hardware/software system running with PPro, but I use Clip Browser to convert to MXF files and it plays them fine, including audio.

It looks like PPro 3.1 natively supports MXF files, so maybe you can experiment with that. It's a lossless process from a quality standpoint, but it takes a little while to re-wrap the files. Still beats real-time logging and capture!

[Tuomas Sebastien]

Originally Posted by Jon Carlson

It looks like PPro 3.1 natively supports MXF files

Can anyone confirm this? Will EX1 clips, both 720p and 1080p, work with updated CS3? Current update is 3.1.1 and 3.1 mentions P2 support but nothing about EX1 in details. If someone has newest premiere with newest updates, could you test it out?

[Jon Carlson]

Even though PPro claimed MXF file support, it must only be native P2 MXFs (even though MXF is supposed to be a broad standard...). I have PPro 3.1.1 installed on my non-Matrox laptop, and it won't import the MXF files that Clip Browser outputs. It still doesn't seem to support the audio from the EX1, either.

Hopefully soon...

[Bob Wells]

It's taken awhile, but I have found two solutions. One is Cineform, and both Aspect and Prospect now work to read both picture and sound. The other solution is a product called MPEG Pro from Main Concept.

[Andreas Johansson]

Someone posted this as a comment on my site regarding sound and Premiere CS3

"The problem with the native EX audio is its Big endian (a la motorola) not little endian (a la Intel) which is why its mute unless you convert it."

You can use ffmpeg to extract a wav file then you don't need to do any DNxHD stuff but you need to import video and sound separately and put the together in the NLE.

This might work:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mp4 -nv -acodec pcm_s16le outputfile.wav

[Charles Young]

I just did some shooting yesterday, about 2 hours. Took the card out and copied it to directory #1 took the other card and copied it to directory #2 third card to directory #3. Took about 7-10 minutes on the laptop in the field. Today, opened Premier 3.2 and started a new EX1 project in 108060i. Imported all the clips by selecting the BPAV directory and "Import Directory" button, repeated for all 3. Selected all the clips and dropped them in the Timeline. Total import time just a few minutes. Rendering to SD letterbox right now, will then burn the DVD for SD customer playback, this customer only has SD.

Could have output to BluRay but don't have anything but HD-DVD drive. Oh well. Customer #2 does have a HD-DVD. Don't yet have it figured out how to render it to HD-DVD.

In the timeline the audio was just fine.

[Dennis Wood]

The fix for this issue for us was here: http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...3179&sliceId=1 ... basically delete your media cache files if you've got some overlapping from the 3.2 CS3 update. This will correct the audio coming in as a "flat line" in CS3

If you're getting import errors, delete

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS3\Plug-ins\en_US\importerXDCAMEX.prm
and
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS3\Plug-ins\en_US\importerXDCAMHD.prm

then download and run the 3.2 update from Adobe again: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...atform=Windows You should be able to import whole BPAV folders, or single files once this is done.

Also, Mplayer will play the MP4 files right from the card with audio: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html

Cheers,
Dennis.

[Charles Young]

My CS3 is at 3.2.0.

I use Premeier all the time to edit with the EX1. I just right click BPAV folder and use cut. I navigate to the video storage drive on my Laptop and create a new directory and hit paste. I open Premere and new EX1 project, then File Import and navigate to the BPAV directry I created. I just click on the BPAV and then import directry button. Takes about 30 seconds and all the clips are available in the project window. Drag them into the source window edit to drop in the time line. The audio follows right along.

[Ray Bell]

Thanks for the later posts, I was looking for this upgrade just the other day...

Here's the blurb from the Adobe site....

Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 3.2 update
The Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS3 3.2 update adds native support for the Sony XDCAM range of cameras, including disc-based XDCAM and XDCAM HD cameras, and the newer SxS-based XDCAM EX cameras. This release also includes improved handling of MPEG streams (for example, HDV video), along with error detection and other important bug fixes. Recommended for all Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 users.