HELP!!! Premiere Pro CC export audio out of sync!

Jaime Valles

Veteran
OK, folks. I need your help. I have a looming deadline of THIS FRIDAY to hand this in.

I have a finished multicam edit of a show that runs 1 hr 20 min. It plays back perfectly in the timeline, all video and audio perfectly in sync. Looks and sounds exactly like what I need.

When I export the video as an H.264 file, the audio gets out of sync with the video by 13 frames! But that's not all... It doesn't happen to the entire audio track. There's about 50 minutes in the middle of the video where the audio goes out of sync. The audio at the beginning and ending of the video is lined up perfectly in sync. It's just the middle section that gets screwy.

WTF?!

This has never happened before, and I've worked a lot with multicam before this. Never been an issue. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Premiere, and also deleting all media cache files, but still no dice.

My setup:

MacBook Pro Retina (Rev. A)
Premiere Pro CC (latest version)
GH3 footage in 1080p 24p AVCHD
3 camera & 1 audio WAV file in Multicam

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Jaime

:badputer::kali::-BlackEye(DBG:shocked::cry:
 
Have you tried exporting first the video, then the audio and splicing them together afterwards?

There might be a dropout somewhere in the video that makes it glitch.
 
Have you tried exporting first the video, then the audio and splicing them together afterwards?

There might be a dropout somewhere in the video that makes it glitch.
I'll try that now. Export a high quality version (ProRes HQ?), then import that out-of-sync video clip into a new project and fix the sound issues there. If there's something corrupted in the project I'm working on, then this should fix it.
 
Hey, I recently had the same problem. It's the first time I've had it happen with Premiere CC. It could either be that I had nested sequences, which I don't usually have... or the new 7.1 update.

ANYWAY, I wish I had an easier solution for you. It's very frustrating. If you go up to sequence/delete render files, you force it to re-build the audio files on the next render. That has fixed it for me, but it's hit or miss.

So try that, or try pasting it all into a new sequence like others have said. Or render out an uncompressed video only file, then render out the audio file and marry them in QT Pro, or in Premiere again.

I hope adobe fixes whatever is going on!
 
Is the error section same every time you export? Can you identify the section in the timeline and trouble shoot it? eg difference method. Try a test export around the point where error occurs. eg 1 minute either side of error.
 
like shooter said, try identifying where the issue occurs and there might be something specific causing the issue, i've done similar troubleshooting over the years by this method, even just the other day exporting kept failing and i traced it to a certain dissolve effect being the problem.

also, are you using presets or a custom render setting? make sure keyframes are being used.

also, try rendering out to another format, like windows media, it's plenty high quality and you can at least see if it turns out the same issue. if not, and you can deliver that or even an mpeg2, they can be just as good a quality with additional bitrates. or download huffyuv codec, render to that, then transcode that in media encoder to h.264.

if desperation hits, you could stop by my place and see if my machine is any friendlier
 
Hey, guys. Thanks for all the advice. I was getting desperate, and no amount of troubleshooting seemed to help, so here's what I ended up doing:



  • Opened the exported clip in a Premiere timeline to figure out exactly where the sync went wrong.
  • Determined exactly how many frames I needed to shift the audio (13 frames).
  • Went back to the original timeline and shifted the audio by 13 frames. This made playback in the timeline appear completely out of sync (as it should).
  • Exported the timeline with the shifted audio section.

And that did it. I now have an H.264 that plays back the whole video with audio synced correctly. It's a temporary solution, because the problem still exists in the original sequence, but at least I can deliver the footage now. I suspect what caused it was that I made a multicam edit, and then once I had the edit in place, I went back into the nested sequence and shifted some of the video clips to fine tune the sync with the audio. All the problems started happening after I did that. Now, Premiere definitely has a bug because if it plays back perfectly on the timeline it should be able to export it exactly the same way every time. But from now on I'm going to make sure that the audio and video are completely synced properly before starting to edit in a multicam sequence.

Thanks again for all the great advice!
 
Hey, I recently had the same problem. It's the first time I've had it happen with Premiere CC. It could either be that I had nested sequences, which I don't usually have... or the new 7.1 update.

ANYWAY, I wish I had an easier solution for you. It's very frustrating. If you go up to sequence/delete render files, you force it to re-build the audio files on the next render. That has fixed it for me, but it's hit or miss.

So try that, or try pasting it all into a new sequence like others have said. Or render out an uncompressed video only file, then render out the audio file and marry them in QT Pro, or in Premiere again.

I hope adobe fixes whatever is going on!
DBP, you figured it out! It worked. I deleted the render files and then tried exporting it again and the final video is in perfect sync. Thanks so much! Hopefully this helps anyone else having this issue. And, yes, Adobe needs to look into it. I should be able to export exactly what's on the timeline.

Thanks again!
 
Its actually good practice to clear cache and render files occasionally during longer or more complex edits. Kind of like emptying the briefcase out before one starts to fill it with junk again.
 
DBP, you figured it out! It worked. I deleted the render files and then tried exporting it again and the final video is in perfect sync. Thanks so much! Hopefully this helps anyone else having this issue. And, yes, Adobe needs to look into it. I should be able to export exactly what's on the timeline.

Thanks again!

No worries, glad it worked. Another piece to the puzzle... I've been editing off of a USB 3 drive. I have the source files on there, and I had the project set up so that audio/video previews were going to that same drive.

I've had more consistent success by changing the path of the rendered previews to a different drive. I suspect the USB3 drive may have gotten bogged down reading/writing all at once, hence the glitches.

I haven't had any sync issues since.
 
No worries, glad it worked. Another piece to the puzzle... I've been editing off of a USB 3 drive. I have the source files on there, and I had the project set up so that audio/video previews were going to that same drive.

I've had more consistent success by changing the path of the rendered previews to a different drive. I suspect the USB3 drive may have gotten bogged down reading/writing all at once, hence the glitches.

I haven't had any sync issues since.
Interesting. I have the same setup. USB 3.0 drive with the project, the source media and all rendered files in there. This is all very good info. Thanks so much!
 
Separating work across multiple drives is also good practice and advised. Local drives will generally be better than externals.
 
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