Page 1 of 1

Video Studio X2 PRO sync problem

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:13 pm
by lparcshinoda
Hi, my first post here.

I've happily used previous versions of Video Studio (version 10 and 11 as far as I remember) and NEVER had synchro problem since now that I've changed my Laptop with an Intel DUAL CORE / Windows Vista - powered system and the X2 Pro Version of Video Studio SW. I'm also using the latest version of the SW (12.0.98.1 - Nov 2008).

The fact is:

I add 1 single video clip (MOV format), I add Music track (MP3), I disable audio for the video clip, I go at point 1:13 of my track and do lip sync with music (voice starts at 1:13) editing the start of the clip....

Starting playback at 1:13 shows everything perfectly sync so I do the "share" options (no matter which video profile I chose, same result at each time) and encode the video.

I watch the video and ... WHOA !! the music isn't sync'd at all !! It is out of sync of about 1,02 seconds .... but in the Video Studio Editing it keeps showing all fine when STARTING PLAYBACK near the start of the voice in the track.

Last test, I start playback in Video Studio from the beginning and the sync is WRONG as in the VIDEO RESULT.... but starting playback from 1:13 min shows the RIGHT sync.

So I'd never get the right sync like this !!

:(

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:06 pm
by Ron P.
Welcome to the forums,

What I see is that you're using 2 of the more difficult formats to successfully edit, MOV and MP3. What is the source of your MOV video file? The codec used can make a difference on how well VS is able to handle it. Digital still cameras generally will use the MJPEG codec, while others use a QuickTime MOV format, the latter being more troublesome.

VS seems to have problems with some MP3 files, especially those that use the LAME codec, VS just does not like it. Try converting your MP3 to WAV then using the WAV file in VS. Try using AUDACITY, a free open source utility for recording and editing sounds. It is capable of converting your mp3 files to wav.

Right-click on your video clip in either the timeline or library, and select Properties, then post them back here. This will help us to provide further help..

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:23 pm
by lparcshinoda
Ok thanks, now I'll try changing the audio format ... I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS65 to record videos (I'm a low budget director :D ) but I've NEVER had problems on Video Studio 10 and 11 versions with the same audio and video source.

I've done some tests before .... RE-editing the video again, done "split audio" ... done again sync ... done video result and .... O_O not it syncs perfectly and the video is more viewable (before when trying to skip in KMplayer it was crashing ...never happened this before with previous versions of VS, though).

So it seems that the AUDIO source was messing the syng ... MAYBE ... I'll try with WAV ... ;)

EDIT: no need to use WAV, it was the original source movie that was creating problems ... I'll use a recoded version of the MOV videos, probably MPEG 2 (which is the exporting profile I widely use for the FINAL video).

THANKS :P

EDIT 2: Here is the INFOs of the movie source .... some clue ?


Format : QuickTime
Format/Info : Original Apple specifications
File size : 123 MiB
Duration : 4mn 19s
Overall bit rate : 3 999 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-01-25 17:33:57
Tagged date : UTC 2009-01-25 17:33:57

Video
Format : M-JPEG
Codec ID : jpeg
Duration : 4mn 19s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 3 934 Kbps
Width : 320 pixels
Height : 240 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 1.707
Stream size : 121 MiB (98%)
Encoded date : UTC 2009-01-25 17:33:57
Tagged date : UTC 2009-01-25 17:33:57

Audio
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Unsigned
Codec ID : raw
Duration : 4mn 19s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 64.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 8 000 Hz
Resolution : 8 bits
Stream size : 1.98 MiB (2%)
Encoded date : UTC 2009-01-25 17:33:57
Tagged date : UTC 2009-01-25 17:33:57

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:21 pm
by lparcshinoda
Ok, the initial sync now almost fits perfectly but at the end (about 3minutes) of the video it goes a bad out of sync of some small bunch of second. Isn't there a way to maintain sync ?

Now I use WAV for audio track and 30fps MOV / MPEG2 for video track (it's the original source video) to get better sync. Using Converted Video source doesn't affects sync at all.

EDIT: The sync seems pretty RANDOM ... :shock: I encoded test versions of the video and each time it had a different sync ... has the VS encoder gone crazy ? O_O

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:29 pm
by lparcshinoda
ok I keep answering by myself since I keep trying and nobody else cares here :P

anyway, this is the result of the TEST:

- original video source (MOV, MJPEG2, 30fps) [works both converted in MPEG2 (25fps) or NOT converted]
- used WAV music (16bit, 44.1 KHz) [works well with MP3 track too]
- done sync in VS at the start of voice acting
- muted the whole video track
- splitted the video source in 20 (and more) mini-clips
- done VIDEO result with PAL MPEG2 settings (25fps)

** the VIDEO result doesn't skip forward correctly in a player (stops video and keep audio) so I re-encoded using VSx2 (and NO editing) and MPEG2 profile again so it fixed. This is weird but it solved.

- tryed the NTSC video output and it doesn't need to re-encode to work in KMP. But I prefear PAL result.

- !! - SO the important thing to do is to split the video track in a lot of clips so that VS can handle it better and not lose sync ... this is what I found out. Is this right ?

Maybe someone have some Idea to have a better editing process or some clue about the test result ... ;)

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:24 am
by DVDDoug
- !! - SO the important thing to do is to split the video track in a lot of clips so that VS can handle it better and not lose sync ... this is what I found out. Is this right ?

Maybe someone have some Idea to have a better editing process or some clue about the test result ...
Whatever works for you! There seems to be several causes & solutions for sync problems... So, sometimes you have to experiment to figure-out a solution that works for your particular files. The more compressed formats (both audio and video) tend to cause the most trouble, and the least-compressed (or uncompressed) formats are the most trouble free.

So, another thing you can try is converting the video to AVI/DV (13GB per hour) before editing. If you can do that without loosing sync, everything should be OK. You should be able to re-compress to MOV (or other format) as the final step after editing.
ok I keep answering by myself since I keep trying and nobody else cares here.
Give it some time. Some people only check-in once a day or so. This isn't a "chat room", and sometimes it takes a few days of back-and-forth to get a problem worked-out...