Need help with rendering problem. Corel VideoStudio X8

[JumpSalty]

Over the course of the past month or so, I recorded a lot of footage from a computer game my friends and I have been playing. Wanting to make a video, this being my first time ever editing anything in my life, or using Corel VideoStudio X8, I took four or five videos I recorded at 720p via a program called dxtory. When recorded, it caused the audio tracks to get out of sync for some reason, and from what I read, had something to do with the way the audio track was saved or compressed while saving. Anyway, that's a whole different problem. When editing, I just synced everything up with the videos myself. I've worked atleast 40 hours on this 20 minute short film I plan to upload to Youtube. As a VSP file and just playing it as a project, the sound syncs perfectly... The only problem is when rendering, in certain areas throughout the video, certain sound clips become unsynced. It's like they were moved forward a second in the audio tracks. It doesn't do it with all of them, just random audio clips throughout the video, in which I had to paste a sound here, or a sound there, to compensate for the video not being synced with the audio. The video is very much watchable as it is, but it really bugs me when I worked so hard on getting the sound to where I want it, only to have it not sound right after the rendering process.

Things I have tried so far: I have turned off smart render, rendered at 1080i, rendered at 720p, rendered at 1080i with lower sound quality hoping that might work. I've searched high and low on the internet but haven't really found a solution. The only thing I haven''t tried is rendering at SD because the quality is bad. My search has led me here and I'm hoping that somebody can help me with this, because I am ready to upload this video and start on another. Thank you in advance for helping out a newbie like me. I'm hoping this is a user error that can be solved and not a result of me having to chop up bits and pieces of sound to the audio to make up for the syncing problem. Once again, watching the video as a VSP all the sounds sync up like I want, but after rendering into a MP4, a few of the sounds, here and there, seem to be moved a second or so out of sync from the video.

Thank you in advance for your time and knowledge. It's greatly appreciated.

Edit: Trying to render as "Same as Project Settings" now. Will update here in a few. It's 65% done.

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums!

I assume that since you recorded in what you describe as 720P, that it is AVCHD in format (1280 x 720, 30 or 60 FPS if you are in an NTSC country, and probably using Dolby or AAC audio). But can you please right click on one of the clips in the X8 timeline and confirm those Properties.

In the X8 Preferences, have you ticked the box on the General tab beside "show message when inserting first video clip"? If so, you should receive a message when you start a new Project asking if you want the Project Properties to match those of the first clip when you insert it. You say yes. Then when you have finished editing, you can go to Share and Choose 'Same As Project Properties" to produce a final video with exactly the same Properties as the original clips. Everything should now be in sync. And you can upload the video to YouTube... As you may be aware, AVCHD is already mpeg-4, though produced using the H.264 codec. But YT can accept it even though it has the .m2ts (or .mts) extension instead of mp4.

[JumpSalty]

@Ken, Thank you for the hasty response. As of right now I am still rendering, it's at 95%, so gonna wait and see what happens this go round since it's so close to being finished. This will be the sixth time I've rendered this puppy and it takes over an hour every time! I cannot look at the clip properties right now, but I do know for a fact that I did NOT tick the box on the general tab to show the message inserting the first clip and I am 99% sure that the audio/video properties are not all the same! I had no idea about the AVCHD! I am very green to editing, but I really enjoy doing it, and really feel like I have a knack for it. Pretty much everything I've done I've learned through youtube tutorial videos and just plain experimentation, which could explain why I've spent over 40 hours on this video.

I can't wait to try your advice and will post the clip properties as soon as it's done rendering(96% now.) The anticipation is real! Lol. Thank you again. Will update here in a few minutes!

[JumpSalty]

Thank you for your hasty reply.

First clip properties are:

File
File Format: Microsoft Avi files -- OpemDML
Filesize: 1.18gb
Frames: 30fps
Duration: 146.367 seconds
Data Rate 8235.86


Video
Compression: Lagarith Lossless Codec
Atrributes: 32bits, 1280 x 720
Total frames: 4,391 frame(s)


Audio
Compression: PCM
Attributes: 48,000 KHz, 16 Bit, Stereo
Total samples: 7,035,840 samples


I also have a wave file as a song intro at the very start, as well. I did not check the general tab to show message when inserting first video clip. If I do that now, can I make them all the same and it work? Thank you again for your hasty reply.

[JumpSalty]

Not sure if this helps, but under project settings, the whole time I've been editing it, it's been set to DVD. I never messed with it so I guess it just put it there as default? I see the AVCHD as a choice in the drop down tab, but it's set to DVD.

Edit: After setting the project settings to AVCHD 1280x720, and selected "same as project settings" for rendering, it helped a LOT. I only hear one spot about 11 minutes in where the music drops out for about half a second, like there was a hiccup or something while it was rendering. Only problem now is the file format was rendered into is m2t. I googled converters and saw a few, so I'm guessing I could convert it from m2t to mp4 no problem. Will this cause a quality loss in audio or video?

Just for the future, what are the MUST DO's BEFORE I start a new project? I didn't have the settings to make all files the same format as the first one in the project this go round, and I feel like that may have caused me a lot of trouble and excess rendering of a 20 minute long video(rendered it nine times so far, each time over an hour).

I am still learning, so any and all advice is welcome. I am here to learn.

Now if only I could just convert this sucker to mp4 and be done with it.

Baby steps. Baby steps.