Quicktime audio/video out of sync

[Tom Munday]

I realise this is a rather old post but it seems to be a persistent problem that no-one has an adequate solution to.

I’ve struggled with this in the past and it’s cropped up in another project today. My assumption is that it’s the Quicktime player not adequately syncing the audio with the visuals, rather than a problem with AE or the file itself

The fact that if I re-import the file into AE and check the waveform against the video it all lines up correctly and plays back fine through ram preview seems to verify this.

So I’m hoping that this is a local issue on the Quicktime player on my PC and that it will play back fine for my Mac based clients. However I can’t be sure of this and would still ideally like to be able to view my work on the Quicktime player…

There are a whole load of audio settings in Quicktime preferences but I haven’t had any joy fiddling with these. Anyone any ideas??

[Mitch Lewis]

I was having this same problem and here’s how I fixed it.

1) If I viewed the waveform and pressed the period key on the numeric keyboard AE would preview the audio, and it was in perfect sync with the waveform.

2) So then I double checked that I didn’t have any external monitoring set up in Preferences>Video Preview.

3) Then I tried a RAM preview (Multi-Processing turned on) and I noticed that it took much longer than normal to render the RAM Preview.

4) I looked at the Info pallet and noticed that at the bottom there was some red text that said “Playing 11fps – NOT REAL TIME. Color Space is turned on”.

5) So at the bottom of the Project window, I clicked on the 8 bpc (could be 16 or 32 in your case) and the Project Settings window opens. I went to the Work Space tab and turned Color Space to None.

THAT FIXED IT! Now when I did a RAM preview the Info Pallet would display “29.97 fps – Real Time”

BTW, this is on a brand new MacPro 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 16 GB of RAM. (16 total processors according to the Activity Monitor!) The video files were pulled from two G-SPEED esPro RAID’s. (plenty of speed)

Hope this helps! 🙂

—————————
Sony EX3, Letus Ultimate, Nikon lenses, Sachtler tripod
20 years as a videographer/editor – HD and 35mm adaptor newbie
Experienced with Apple products, Final Cut Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, MOTU Digital Performer, Flip4Mac, etc…

[Tom Munday]

Thanks Mitch but I’m afraid it’s not a slow Ram Preview problem. Visuals are playing fine and no lowered frame rate, just an audio that’s a dozen or so frames behind the visuals…!

The problem rumbles on…

[Mitch Lewis]

No problem. But here’s just a guess….any chance it’s a audio sample rate mismatch? For example: AE is expecting 48k or 44.1k and your audio is actually 32k or something? (this is a common problem with some of the DV cameras that record both 32 and 48k audio.

Just trying to help! 🙂

—————————
Sony EX3, Canon 5DM2, Sachtler tripod – 20+ years as a videographer/editor
Experienced with Apple products, Final Cut Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, MOTU Digital Performer, Flip4Mac, etc…

[Tom Munday]

Thanks Dave but none of these apply to me – I’m an animator so most of my projects don’t have footage in them. And I’m always very careful to work with uncompressed audio rather than mp3s or any such type…

And I’m always very careful about exporting uncompressed from AE and compressing it in Quicktime for the multi-passing so not an issue there either…

’tis a mystery…