I've been working on an animation sequence where I have 8 clips (separate poser projects) that were rendered out at full res. The are about 72meg uncompressed 640x480 that I then compressed using Virtual Dub and Indeo 5.04 codec to 320x240 20 FPS. I pulled each of the clips into pinnacle studio 7. There I added sounds to each sequence that were sync'd.... I needed to add more sounds so I exported the entire clip and then extracted the complete wave file. I imported the wave into Sonar (a music package I use in my life as a musician) and I overdubbed dialog. I exported the wave which is now the exact same length as the wave I took from clip. I then went back into pinnacle, deleted the disjointed audio clips in favor of the new audio I created. The audio is now 5 seconds short... well thats to say that it appears that the video and audio have different ideas about how long 25 seconds is. Being that I lifted the original wave directly from the video clip, and did not change its length I expected that the re-import would work just fine and line up perfectly. I suspect frame rates are a cause but I don't see how in this case. Any Ideas?

Have you tried importing both the video and audio into Sonar before you do the overdub. that way you can sync it up and then re-export it back out for further editing in pinnacle studio 7. Hopefully that should clear that problem up for you.

Sonar seems to choke when I tried using the video. (Even on a 1ghz p3 with 512meg of ram)

What version of Sonar are you using and with what patches?

I am current with all patches (at version 1.03 I think) I had all patches prior to the 2.0 release. The video will play but the audio will freak out and sound like a cd skipping. I've been a cakewalk user since version 2 for DOS. The video support was always lame thats why I don't really use it. It works great for audio and midi but I don't know anyone that uses it for video editting If you do, maybe I just need to set buffers or something... have you made settings changes for video?

I probably don't have your answer but the same thing has happened to me. I seemed that the video editing program could not display as fast as needed. The sounds play at the expected rate and the video is left behind. It seemed that if I used a compressed finished clip and the standard tools for viewing all was well.

You might consider going to: www.digidesign.com At the bottom of the page is a link to "Pro Tools Free" Download the free version of Pro Tools. It allows 8 tracks of audio, 48 tracks of MIDI, and has a video display window for synching with video. It's fully functional with no time limits or anything. I've been able to work out audio for QuickTimes using this. I don't know if the Windows version uses QuickTime or some other technology but this is certainly worth trying.

In my case the 25 second audio was taken from the processed video which was also 25 seconds. The unprocessed video when I go back to editing appears to be 30 seconds. When I import the audio its 5 seconds short. Its like the unprocessed video and audio were 30 seconds... when processed and saved as an avi, the video and audio become 25 seconds. I don't want to reuse the processed video as it would lose quality.

I am not in front of that computer right now so I can't check what settings I have. I have Version 2.0 with latest patch. What you may want to do though is to check and make sure your sync is set to audio and not internal and also check your CPU and disk meter and see what the percentage is. maybe it is overloading. If you have any other programs open you may want to close them and have only Sonar open until that process is complete.

There's also a possibility that you're going back & forth between 44.1 and 48 sample rates.

Talley, did you accidentally "stretch" the video at any point in the sequence? Or is there a default setting somewhere during initial "new file" creation for "30-second project lengths" or something similar? That might explain it. (I'm not wording it exactly right, but hopefully you get my drift.) Also, definitely go with Bobasaur's suggestion, Pro Tools Free rocks. However - the Windows version has some minor glitches, unlike the Mac version. On Windows, I use both Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video and the lower-end Video Factory, and the sync precision is awesome and consistent. You can check it out at www.sonicfoundry.com --Donnie

BTW - what are the specs of your video card?

The audio/internal synch is a possibility... I switch that depending on which device I use as a clock. My machine has plenty of horse power even with tons of effects and tracks running in real time. The sample rate may be an issue - I'll have to look at that but it would seem to me that that is the frequency for recording the digital image and not effect play back lengths. Like I said the audio remains the same length in time but the video seems that its longer than the first export.

This is what I did step by step: Created 8 Poser Separate Animations at full res Compressed them each separately Import each into Pinnacle to derive a complete sequence out to a new AVI with sound Exract sound from AVI as wav Import wav into Sonar and overdub (no trimming no additional length) Export wav... results in same length as original video. Try to apply new audio to original video... it doesn't match Video card = 16meg Diamond Viper 550

VirtualDub allows you to adjust the video stream's frame rate so the video and audio durations match. This probably isn't what you're looking for, but it might be interesting to try it and see if it puts everything back in sync.

Video menu --> Frame Rate --> "Change so video and audio durations match"

By the way, at any time in the process did you compress the audio? In some editing situations, that might cause desynchronization issues.

-- Little_Dragon (Animator #11.3)

What I have so far..... Either Pinnacle or Indeo report time differently.... within pinnacle the time is 33 seconds the Audio is 16bit Stereo 44.1k PCM (no Compression) Sound and vid sync.... After export video and time shrink to 25 seconds When I tried to recombine, the audio was then short... its weird. So I went back and re did the video with no changes except dropping the sound.... I pulled it into sonar and added the 25 second audio and it lines up. There has to be a better set of codecs/ compression settings editing software ect.... Any hints?

If you have sufficient hard drive space and horsepower, I'd recommend saving compression for the final step in the editing process.

I usually use Huffyuv video compression, however. The compression isn't very efficient, but it's lossless, and every frame becomes a keyframe, so it's ideal for editing.