Audio slippage

geriman · Post by **geriman** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 9:40 pm

Something very odd is happening with my Videostudio 10.

I insert an avi video (XVID, audio mpeg-1) into the timeline for editing. Playback is fine.

I edit, and convert to a mpeg file (with Dolby 2/0 audio) ready to burn onto a DVD.

And then I discover that the audio has slipped by around 30 seconds forwards!

Tried several clips, all the same.

Any ideas? I'm not aware of having changed any settings, but who knows?

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:21 am

That's one of the inherent risks of editing highly compressed video files. It's commonly known as OOS (Out Of Sync). You can split the audio from your video, and try manually adjusting it back into sync, or you can first convert your Xvid video file to MPEG-2, then insert that into your project. However the latter still will be subject to OOS....

geriman · Post by **geriman** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:03 am

What I don't get is, it didn't start happening until yesterday.

Strange...

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:09 am

That's just the nature of the beast of editing. You can "get away with" editing what should be very problematic files without problems for a long time. Then suddenly, bam, now they surface..

geriman · Post by **geriman** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:17 pm

I'll give it a try.

Very odd - been using Xvid for years no problem.

Doesn't seem to happen with other DivX files, and when I ran the file through Cool Edit Pro before Videostudio, it takes longer to convert to mpeg, but no audio slippage.

Wmv files are also OK.

What changed, I wonder..

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 7:52 pm

Very odd - been using Xvid for years no problem.

Doesn't seem to happen with other DivX files, and when I ran the file through Cool Edit Pro before Videostudio, it takes longer to convert to mpeg, but no audio slippage.

Wmv files are also OK.

What changed, I wonder..

Right! It's the particular XVID file... Perhaps it was made with a different XVID encoder, or perhaps there was a glitch during encoding. I used to have this problem with some MPEG-2 files (before I got a special-purpose MPEG editor). I try to avoid "highly compressed" formats.

If you have a camera that records to XVID, then all of your XVID files should be the same, and once you have a procedure that works, that procedure/workflow should work every time. But, if you download files from the Internet, you're going to run into challenges and different files will need different solutions. Your Cool Edit solution may be a good work-around if you run into this again.

If you can convert the file to DV/AVI before editing (i.e. Save-As DV/AVI), and if you can do it without A/V sync problems, that should solve your problems. After editing the DV/AVI file, you can save it in the format of your choice.

The least-compressed formats tend to be the most trouble-free, and the most-compressed formats (DivX, XVID, WMV, MOV, MPEG-4, etc.) are the most trouble-prone. At 13GB per hour DV/AVI is usually rock solid.

geriman · Post by **geriman** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:42 pm

Curiouser and curiouser.

It's happening with DX50 files as well.

Not with wmv or mpeg files as far as I can tell.

And it's never happened before. I've used all these formats over the years with no problems - although you do get some vids where there is a synchronisation problem in the initial file, but this is different, it' sonly there after conversion.

Can't get my head round what has changed, whether my settings are somehow different (but I'm pretty sure I've not changed anything) or what.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:52 am

One of the quickest programs to convert your source material into an editable format (Either DV or MPEG2) is a FREE program Super

Interesting to hear that you have been editing these formats for a few years without problems and that only now you are getting this issue. This tends to suggest that your computer is perhaps a little less efficient now than it was previously. Perhaps it could do with a general "spring clean" such as de fragmentation of the hard drive(s) A check of the various startup locations to see if something is now running in the background that wasn't there before.

Other things that can affect the overall computer performance would include updated software such as your anti-virus program, Microsofts "automatic" updates and Service packs.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 3:48 am

Just by way of example, my Quad has worked flawlessly since I bought it 18 months ago. But in the past couple of days, it has started doing a couple of strange things, including not being able to "see" the two internal DVD burners. The only change I have made was to install Vista SP2 just before these problems started to appear. So my conclusion that it was something in SP2 which has clashed with something already on the computer... If the problems persist, I will uninstall SP2 to see if it corrects the situation...

geriman · Post by **geriman** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:55 am

D'you know, that might be it. There have been several updates to XP (I don't use Vista) and my antivirus software (McAfee) recently, plus I use Adaware and Spybot.

Not sure what I can do about that...

Post by **Ron P.** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:28 pm

geriman wrote:Not sure what I can do about that...

What I'm fixing to do....Remove any internet access from my editing machine. That way I don't need all those updates, anti-virus, spyware programs.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 1:05 pm

Not sure what I can do about that...

A System Restore to a point before those updates were installed.

IndieFlick · Post by **IndieFlick** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:18 pm

I am also experiencing audio slippage with VideoStudio X2 when editing Xvid videos. I don't have a problem with VideoStudio 8 or 9, but it always occurs when I use X2. During the editing everything is fine, audio is in sync, but when I render, regardless of the selected codec, the audio is OOS. My work around is what has already been suggested. I load all the clips from my camera into VideoStudio 9 and convert to MPEG2. Then I bring the MPEG2 clips into VideoStudio X2 for editing. Its a hassle, but it works.

I uploaded a 6 second video from the camera of a clap board "clap". If you use X2, I would be curious if you try to render this video if you also see OOS.
http://members.cox.net/michael.sabo/CLIP0042.AVI

Thanks

geriman · Post by **geriman** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:08 am

No, I use Videostudio 10.

THere was no slippage with your clip, but it's quite short.

I'll give an example. I took 3 sections, each about 2-3 minutes long, from a 45 minute DX50 file (about 650MB - football match, just wanted the goals and the build-up). The audio (audio codec MPEG1 layer-3, whatever that means) was about 6 seconds fast on the first bit, 14 on the second and 22 on the third.

Whereas from a Xvid file, the slippage was around 6 seconds SLOW.
And wmv files seem OK.

I can re-sync it by using a larger section, moving the audio, and then removing the extra video.
Or using Cool Edit Pro which converts the whole file to a larger (~1GB) Xvid file with no audio codec (according to the system), and although that takes about twice as long to convert to mpeg-2 for burning to DVD, there is no slippage.

IndieFlick · Post by **IndieFlick** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:50 am

Here's the clip rendered in MPEG from VS X2.
http://members.cox.net/michael.sabo/CLIP0042.mpg

I didn't edit the clip, I simply dropped it on the timeline and rendered it. The slippage is obvious even with such a small clip. My results are the same regardless of the codec I select, including the original Xvid codec. By the way, I know it's not a H/W problem. My video editor is a gaming rig with a Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM and WD640 SATA 2 drive. I can edit HD all day, it should be able to keep a 2MB Xvid video in sync.