Slow Audio Playback During RAM Preview

[Walter Soyka]

What version of AE are you running? What kinds of footage?

Have you applied all the latest updates?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Pravin Chottera]

Hi Walter. Thanks for your response.

I’m on AE5.5. I don’t have any footage – only animated images.

I haven’t applied updates yet because I’m going to be switching over to the full CS tonight. Could the solution be as simple as applying updates?

[Walter Soyka]

[Pravin Chottera] “I don’t have any footage – only animated images.”

Unless you’re generating the audio with AE effects, you have footage (even if it’s audio-only). What format is it? Have you tried transcoding it to another format?

Do you get any warning messages during RAM preview in the Info panel?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Pravin Chottera]

Ah, I see what you mean. My “footage” is an AIFF exported from Garage Band.

I have my RAM preview set to lopp, skip 1 frame, and play at half resolution. When I click RAM preview, my info panel says “fps: 14.985/14.985 (NOT realtime)” in red, even though it looks and sounds fine. Then when it loops, my info panel says “fps: 14.985 (realtime)” in white, even though the sound is clearly playing at half speed.

[Pravin Chottera]

Walter – I also tried converting my AIFF to m4a, mp3, and aac, all with the same result.

Any thoughts? Thanks again for your time and help!

[Michael Szalapski]

Try transoding it as a WAV.
Also check what khz your sound file is. If that’s off from what AE’s expecting, it could cause weirdness.
Also check your Audio hardware settings in AE.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Pravin Chottera]

Great! I changed my audio output to “System Default” and it seemed to fix the problem. Thanks so much!

I don’t remember it was originally set at, but any thoughts on why that change fixed the problem. Or why there was a problem in the first place?

Anyway, thank you Michael! And Walter!

[Michael Szalapski]

I don’t know the nitty gritty details, but if AE’s trying to output audio to different type of audio setup, the signal it sends will be different.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Pravin Chottera]

Hey Michael – The problem is back. I don’t know why/how it got fixed yesterday, but when I tried to RAM preview again today, the same thing happened.

It plays fine the first time, and then when it loops to play a second time, the audio is slowed down.

I tried using an AIFF, an AAC, and an mp3. They are all at ~44KHz.

[Pravin Chottera]

I checked my audio files, and they are all at 44.1 kHz.

I changed the audio sample rate in File>Project Settings to 44.1 kHz and it didn’t help. The weird thing is that the RAM preview played correctly the first time. It is only slowed down when the preview loops.