Audio Woes

[DeadEyesSmiling]

I'm having some problems with the RAM preview and audio. I can hit the period key and hear audio just fine, I can RAM preview without audio just fine, but when I try and do both, AE just freezes and never does anything. I'm working on a project timing effects to audio, so the capability of doing this is pretty important.

AE 6.5 Pro
Windows XP SP2
Pentium 4 2.40 GHz
2.0 GB RAM
Sound Card: Creative SB Audigy LS
Video Card: ATI Radeon X1300 Series 512MB

My memory and cache settings are all set at defaults:
Max memory usage: 120%
Max RAM Cache Size: 60%
Maximum Disk Cashe Size: 8000MB

I also have Open GL preview rendering on, if that affects anything.

Thanks ahead of time!

-DES

 

[Matt Grunau]

You shouldn't have any problems with your audio when doing a Ram Preview. If you can hear your audio when you hit the period, then the audio track is ok.

You really should not be doing any audio work in AE. There are exceptions, but those are limited to time remapping, and such where the audio can be tweaked nicely with what AE does to video.

Try putting your comp video settings to Adaptive and see if that helps.

Otherwise, import another instance of the file you are tweaking, mute the layer you are tweaking, and allow the other layer to provide audio. You may have some odd codec issue. DivX and Xvid files are notorious for messing up audio in app.

You should be doing all of your audio with your main NLE, and only adjusting what you need video wise in AE, and then importing the tweaked footage (hopefully with a lossless codec) back to you NLE.

AE is not strong in audio, and that's one of the reasons by default when you go to render, the audio check box is not check marked.

Everything I have done in AE with audio Ram previews fine with the audio included (on the very few occasions I previewed with audio), but as a rule of thumb, don't render from AE with audio. That's not really what it is meant to do.

Leave your audio to your NLE and think of AE as Photoshop for video. You will be better off if you do.

From your system specs, I can't see why you are having the issue you you do, try upgdating your audio card drivers (and with Audigy there is usually not a problem), and give it a go.

If you are using AE for video manipulation or enhancement, leave the audio out.