Audio Cuts out and Video Continues to Play – Completely Random

[Errol Lazare]

On playback on the timeline in Premiere CS6 the audio randomly cuts out / stops playing while the video continues to play. I have to stop playback and then start playback in order to get the audio to play again but then it sometimes cuts out again 2-5 seconds later and sometimes it doesn’t. The source audio is fine it is just premiere cutting out the audio. We only have 3-6 audio tracks

I’m on a Mac 8 Core with 32 gigs of Ram playing back h264 and Wav audio / music

Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com

[Evan Briggs]

I am having the same problem with my AVCHD footage. Some of the clips don’t play back any audio, some do, and some cut out in the middle. I’ve been searching online and it seems like an issue specific to CS6 (I just switched over from FCP so didn’t use 5.5) but found no solution. I’m starting to get super annoyed, as I’ve now wasted an entire day dealing with this issue. What is the deal??
Also, it seems like Premiere is endlessly conforming my clips???
Any tips would be much appreciated!
Thanks.

[Shaune Fradley]

I have the same problem. I’m wondering if it was an update which I applied to Premiere a couple of days ago as it was fine before that.

[walter biscardi]

AVCHD is a bit of a headache if that’s the codec you’re using.

Also if you’re using any third party hardware like AJA or BlackMagic, you need to ensure you have that all set up correctly for audio playback to work properly inside Premiere Pro.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Shaune Fradley]

Actually I’ve just made a discovery which seems to work for me. In Preferences/Audio Hardware I set my default device to System Default Input/Output, since then everything is stable.

Doesn’t really make much sense as I had my settings matching my system settings anyway but I guess there may have been some hidden conflict somewhere.

Hope that helps you too.

[Noah Leon]

I am also having the audio problem. I have an iMac i7 (8GB memory, external FW800 RAID 5 for videos, internal HD for audio) and recently switched from FCP7 to PPro CS6. Before that I remember trying CS5.5 and having a similar problem. I thought it might be limited to my hardware, but it does the same thing on my recently acquired MacBook Pro as well: The audio randomly drops out, and pausing-restarting will bring it back… till the next drop out. I’m not editing anything particularly complex, but I am working natively with Canon h.264 files most of the time.

I should mention that the audio drops out nomatter what format it is in (.wav, .mp3, .aiff, .m4a), and nomatter whether it is 44100hz or 48000hz. Rendering the audio doesn’t help, drop-outs still occur.

I spent two hours on the phone with Adobe, and they had no clue as to what would cause this issue. They had my try running premiere in a new user account, even took over my computer via Adobe Connect tor try and solve the problem. I was about to re-format and re-install my system, thinking that might be the issue, when I edited a sequence on my new MacBook and it had the same issue. I’m surprised more people haven’t discussed this.

[Jeffrey Gould]

Same issue, using Matrox MXO2 mini with CS6… Stop and start the sound does back. Same thing on two computers.

Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions

[Slav il]

I’m a Premier Pro newbie, but this trick helped me solve this exact problem

Edit – Preferences – Audio Hardware – ASIO Settings – In the Output tab, make sure that “32 bit playback” is checked.

I’m guessing this plays the audio at a lower bit rate, or lower quality and thus can process the audio faster and have smooth playback. I don’t know if that’s right though…all I know is that my audio playback is working fine.

I made an account just to post this comment, hopefully this helps those searching the internet for hours for a solution…

[Noah Leon]

Thanks Slav,

Unfortunately it didn’t solve my problem, my iMac has no ASIO audio device. The audio devices it has are pretty simplistic with few options. I’m guessing either that you’re on a PC or have some add-on audio hardware? You might be on to something with the 32-bits thing. I may try checking in my Mac’s Audio Midi Setup (for anyone reading this who is having the same problem on a Mac, you can control the audio devices better through Audio Midi Setup which is in the utilities folder). I will try degrading it a bit, perhaps it’s just getting overloaded.

[Noah Leon]

I found a solution to this issue here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1202924

Basically, you keep your project files and associated stuff on the local system drive, and your media on your external or second drive. For some reason, this helps.