VERY irritating AE problem

[Steve Roberts]

Tell us about the codec of your source footage and the type of source audio.

[Dave Forrest]

Thanks for the reply Steve.

I’m still pretty new to all this so, if you don’t mind, where would I find this information?

Dave.

[Steve Roberts]

You could click on the footage items in the Project window and tell us what shows up next to the thumbnail at the top of the window.

For audio, WAV or AIFF is good. Others are bad.
For video, many codecs are good, many are bad. For example, DivX, MPEG-2 and HDV are bad.

So, what do you see?

[Kevin Camp]

is the audio a separate file, or is it part of a video file?

if it is a separate file, is it a wav, aiff, mp3, etc…? wav and aiff work very well in ae, compressed audio formats like mp3 don’t work well. so, if you have a compressed audio file, re-export it from the source, or convert it using a conversion utility to an uncompressed format.

if it is part of a clip, then what codec was used (uncompressed, mpeg, dv, etc…)? if you didn’t do the compression (or export of the clip) and don’t know the codec, try opening the file in a player and see if you can find out any info about the media there (like in quicktime, you can choose movie info and it should give you the codec used). many video codecs compress video and audio, so you may need to extract the audio to a separate, uncompressed file to use it in ae.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Dave Forrest]

OK, the audio is coming from both the video layer – which is basically a talking head – and from a seperate audio layer which is providing some quiet background music.

The only information I can gather from the project panel relating to audio is as follows:

The video layer is an AVI – 32.000 kHz / 16 bit U / Stereo.

The music layer is .WAV – 44.100kHz / 16 bit U / Stereo.

Thanks,

Dave.

[Darby Edelen]

[Dave Forrest] “The video layer is an AVI – 32.000 kHz / 16 bit U / Stereo.

The music layer is .WAV – 44.100kHz / 16 bit U / Stereo. “

Those are very weird sample rates for video. 48kHz is the standard.

Not sure if that’s the problem, but I thought I’d get my foot in the door on this conversation 🙂

Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Kevin Camp]

if you don’t need the background music on, try removing that layer or just turning it off.

as for the avi, it’s hard to tell what codec was used… avi is just a container, you can encode an avi with any number of codecs…dv, mpg, uncompressed, etc. so, it’s hard to say if that is what’s giving you problems.

ae will load the entire audio in to ram. since shortening the work area didn’t help, you might try placing the video footage into a new comp, set the work area to the are you need to work in, make note of the time that the work area begins, then choose composition>trim to workarea.

bring that shortend footage comp into your main comp, position the inpoint where the footage was trimmed (so if you trimmed it at 12 seconds, position the new inpoint at 12 seconds in the main comp). once that is lined up, hide the full footage layer and audio, so just the trimmed layer and audio are visible.

then see if you can preview that.

if that doesn’t help, then you’ll want to find a way to extract the audio and export it as a wav.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Dave Forrest]

Thanks guys, this is a great help.

The video file was edited by myself in Adobe Premier. Can I choose which codec Premier uses to render out the file somehwere inside the programme? Currently, when the edit is as I liike it I’m just hitting File > Export Movie. Unlike AE, Premier doesn’t seem to have an ‘Output Module’ so I can’t see where I’d give specific instructions for the codec etc.

And, Darby said that the sample rates were ‘wierd’ for video. What should the sample rates be and how do I change them? In the output settings when the video is rendered out presumably but…see above.

Dave.

[Dave Forrest]

OK, I sense my lack of knowledge is becoming a little tiresome – please bear with me.

The AVI file was rendered out of Premier. I honestly don’t know what codec was used, only that I never had the option to choose one or anything like that. I’d guess that whatever Premiers ‘default’ codec is (if there is such a thing) – that’s the codec that was used.

Dave.

[Kevin Camp]

so when you go to export your movie from pp, and a window opens to allow you to save it, there isn’t a botton called options or settings, or maybe a pulldown menu…?

if i were to export (not render) an avi from ae, it brings up a very basic settings window with 2 buttons, one for video settings and the other for sound settings. if i click the video settings, it can select form a handful of codecs… there’s nothing like that in pp?

you may need to go to the pp forum to find out more about working with pp and exporting, unfortunately, i just don’t know the software…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW