Audio distortion

[Jeff Harper]

Hi guys....week or two ago I thought I had solved this issue and claimed to have fixed it, but I found out almost immediately it wasn't fixed at all.

So am starting this new thread because I did not describe the issue properly before.

When I bring NON-protected .wma files to the Vegas timeline they play on the timeline as if speeding up and slowing down, and the vocalist sounds drunk. The audio track from the actual video is fine however. The wmv will sound fine for a minute, and then intermittently it "gets drunk" again. It's very distracting. It also makes editing songs difficult because what I hear isn't necessarily the exact thing on the timeline at certain points.

It renders fine, it's just playback on timeline that stinks.

I dealt with this problem in XP by rolling back to older version of Windows Media Player, but I don't see that as an option with Vista. Uninstalling Media Player is not possible with Vista, at least that is what I have read.

Any ideas?

I just tried converting a WMA file to wav and it works fine....but I can't imagine doing this all of the time. Is there a workaround for this wma issue?

[Jeff Harper]

Anyone? I can't imagine being the only one with this issue.

[Rob Wood]

have you considered rendering the WMA to WAV in a fresh timeline, then replacing the audio in your main project?

~

I haven't used WMA for audio. If it uses VBR rather than CBR i wouldn't recommend it.

i've re-opened projects and found that the section of music that should have been at location "X" has shifted back or forth in the timeline (i don't mean "physically" on the timeline, i mean WITHIN the clip itself... also glissando-like sounds in the high end courtesy of the compression.

for me, the glitch happened when i moved the audio files on my drive... when i tried to reconnect them everything went south on me... when i recreated the e-x-a-c-t file path the audio had been in, everything was fine again.

since then, i've switched to plain WAV and not had any problems. i believe any CBR format should also work since it is a consistent format throughout and VBR is not (kHz range is increased/reduced depending on frequency content).

this may have nothing to do with your problem... i mention it just in case.

good luck
rob

[Jeff Harper]

That is a good idea Rob, and it works. Unfortunately, I have hundreds of royalty free songs that came on discs that I ripped with Media Player, and I hate to have to do that for every project, especially when I use 5- 10 songs for a project.

Windows Media player has an interface that I am accustomed to, and I haven't found anything else I really like much, I have Nero, and others but I guess I'm old school!

That being said, I feel certain there must be a better solution. I think I'll call Microsoft support for a suggestion. That should be fun!

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it!

[Jeff Harper]

Microsoft had not a clue, of course, but they tried, in a very clusmsy way to help. It is obvious that with the bad rap Vista has gotten they are attempting to make up for it with more attention from customer support. I actually got a follow-up phone call since my issue was unresolved and they were very nice. That and a dollar and I can buy a cup of coffee.

What was funny in a pathetic kind of way was at the end of the conversation this manager started to explain to me how great Vista was because you can have a moving background for your desktop, etc., and though I knew all of this, I just listened as he extolled the wonderful "pretty features" of Vista Ultimate. He was obviously trying to reinforce the positives, but it was funny because I never complained about the OS. I am one of the rare folks, I guess that acutually LIKES Vista. I admit though I wouldn't have switched if it wasn't 64 bit.

[Jeff Harper]

Problem solved. I changed my default player to Nero and the problem vanished. Should have thought of that before!

[Mike Kujbida]

Change your default player to either Media Player Classic or VLC media player and you'll have even less problems (due to a lack of system overhead).

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks Mike!