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Big Sound Export Problem in Premiere Pro
In my videos my voice audio playback is fine for 80% of viewers, but muted entirely for 20% of viewers. Yet all other audio in the video (background music and sound effects) play fine for 100% of viewers, whether my voice is audible or not.
Background:
I produce a ‘talking head’ video using Adobe Premiere Pro as part of my CS5 suite. My video has an opening sequence with background music, then I appear on screen, begin talking, and in production I turn down the background music audio level so my voice can be heard over the music as I begin to speak in the video.
It’s important that all viewers have a good experience with the video, but on older computers the only audio track that plays during playback is the background music. As a result, my voice track is inaudible during the playback on the viewer’s machine and I stand on the video moving my lips with muted audio. It is not a professional look that I desperately need to fix. This only happens to 20% of the viewers. The other 80% hear my voice just fine. What gives? Here’s more background info:
The video plays just fine (with both my voice and the background music combined) on all of my computers at home, on my computer at work, on my iPad 2 and when I burn the video as a DVD and play it on my DVD players at home. Yet even with all of this (supposed) double-checking to ensure quality, my voice fails to play on outside computers on many occasions, and true to Murphy’s Law, it fails at the worst possible times when I really need it to ‘Wow’ someone and avoid making them think the exact opposite thoughts: “Rookie! He needs to figure this out!” I’m using video in my business to great effect but I really need to take the ‘hit-and-miss’ aspect out of the equation. All instances need to play as expected and I can’t figure it out on my own how to make this happen.
This problem has been ongoing for the past year.
In the interest of full disclosure, I began my video editing efforts a year ago using a $129 program called Pinnacle Ultimate HD (which is the low-end, entry-level offering from Avid). As my video editing skills developed and my productions became more complex, I realized that I needed ‘more horsepower’ from my NLE program, so I made the substantial investment in an Adobe CS5 suite ($1600). Within the old Pinnacle program I had the same exact problem – no voice playback when played on certain computers – only the background music track could be heard. I figured (a wild assumption at the time) that ‘cheap old Pinnacle’ just put the background music on the left channel and my voice on the right channel and if someone’s old tower computer only had a tiny mono speaker only the left channel would be heard, thus my voice would be muted. Again, this was my assumption and I figured once I dropped $1600 to upgrade to the high-powered Adobe suite this problem would be long gone. Sadly, it is not.
I am now beginning to think that it may be a hardware issue on the machine where I create the videos since it is happening with both software programs, but I have not been able to figure it out, or alternatively figure out a way to force Premiere Pro to either ‘flatten’ or ‘combine’ or put all audio tracks onto one track so this muted voice situation will no longer occur. The computer I have was a high-end purchase from Fry’s Electronics in March 2010. It came with an i7 Quad Core processor, tons of memory, all high-end stuff so I would be surprised if it is a hardware issue but I’m open to any possible outcome that helps determine the diagnosis so we can find the cure. I don’t give a hoot how this is solved or what kind of work-around is required. I just need any videos I provide to folks to play, regardless of the age or type of their machines.
The problem extends to all formats. That is, to test and investigate the problem on a computer at a client company where I want my videos to play well, I have gone to their offices and sat at the actual computer that will not play my voice and tried multiple formats in their office to try to figure this out – a DVD burned using Adobe Encore, a Windows Media file burned to play specifically in Windows Media Player, and a YouTube version of the file (the one that plays well below) – ALL play with no sound for my voice but the background music sounds great. These very same DVDs, YouTube videos and Windows Media files will play just fine on other computers in the same company. I need to figure out how to have my videos play on all of these computers. Can you help? What would you suggest? My belief is that the computers that don’t play it are older tower computers but this theory was debunked when a laptop at this company also would not play the files. But again, other laptops there would. Head-scratcher!Here are the two videos, posted to YouTube so you can see for yourself:
First, here’s the video that has good sound for 80% of viewers and plays like a champ on my system. I don’t know I even have a problem until it tries to play on outside computers. Does my voice play on your system?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-bZIzPdc7sThis is what the video looks like when my voice is muted (looks ridiculous). This video came out this way when I attempted to export the file with mono audio, attempting to see if I could jam all of the audio into a single track that would play on the small mono speakers of tower computer systems. Heck, it won’t even play my voice on my current system, so that answers that. Again, could this be another input into the equation that helps us solve the riddle? See the video when exported in mono, and what I fool I look like as I attempt to win new business by playing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iIXr5iJLoUIs my sound card on the computer where I create these videos the culprit (since this same issue occurs with both NLE low-end and high-end programs? Is the encoding that both Pinnacle Ultimate HD and Adobe Premiere Pro use something that older computers are unable to decode? Can I dial that encoding back to a more universal (older) codec to make it work everywhere? (I thought that by using three different formats (YouTube, DVD, local file on USB thumb drive) that ONE of them would work on the computers that won’t play my voice but I was shut out on all fronts – 0-for-three. It’s time for me to solve this problem no matter where I have to go to solve it and I’ve exhausted the small amount of personal computer skill that I have in this area. I could really use your help.
In conclusion, other random thoughts/strategies as I close: Since I begin the video with the background soundtrack playing by itself, does that music track keep my voice from mixing in 20 seconds later from a separate track? Also, my voice track is a stereo track, as is the background music track.This is probably the longest post ever for help, but I’ve tried a dozen things to address this problem over the course of a year this with no luck whatsoever thus far. My frustration is now very high and my business need has grown. Can you help me? How can I have my voice sound play on 100% of the computers where my YouTube videos, DVDs and media files are played? Why does it only work 80% of the time? How do I close this gap? A thousand thanks!
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2 Replies
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If you export your timeline to AVI there will be one audio track
Put this AVI in a new project and export this in the different formats you want (DVD, MPEG 2 etc)Good luck
Phocas Kroon
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I’m going with a different guess.
Their systems have something F*ed up in their audio output. Someone whose system doesn’t work…I bet doesn’t work for every video you do (meaning it’s their system, not yours.) Have I heard of something like this before? Nope – never.
I was going to suggest a mono output, but it looks like you’ve done that. If your’e not hearing your voice on a mono output, something is wrong (either with the way you’re setup or the way you’re mixing it.)
So, get simpler. Set the Master output to Mono – put your voice AND ONLY your voice in. Export it. Did it work?
Now, add ONE track of music in the background. Mix it. Export that…did it work.Somewhere along the line, we’ll figure it out….
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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