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Posted by: Fran Nov 30 2008, 01:00 PM

Hi,

Yesterday I recorded my take on fear of the dark, 7 minutes, and I got the sound from Pandora and video from Logitech webcam.

Then I went to Movie Maker, as usual, to put both the .wmv and .mp3 files together into one vid, and it works fine from the beginning to the middle of the song, but it slowly starts to get unsynchonized, there's like a half second lag between sound and video, sound coming faster.

Why is that? Is there anyway to avoid that happenning? Is it Movie Maker's fault, my computer's (it's not very powerful), or something I might be doing wrong?

I don't have this problem when I record shorter videos, up to 2-3 minutes it's unnoticeable.

Posted by: DeepRoots Nov 30 2008, 01:11 PM

Fran- i will really be interested in whatever solution you find to this....as i'm using exactly the same webcam (and the px5d) but with vegas to sync it......and am having the same problem.

I haven't found a solution as of yet...i'll let you know if i do though.

By the way- my pc is a beast and this problem occurs, so it may not be because you have a slow pc. Are you on xp or vista? Vista for me.

Posted by: Fran Nov 30 2008, 01:40 PM

XP here.

Posted by: Vinod Saranga Nov 30 2008, 01:50 PM

I also had that problem.It's because of mp3.Try to to record in .Wav. 






Sometimes it might be after  rendering in Movie maker.

If so you can try different rendering formats. 

Posted by: DeepRoots Nov 30 2008, 02:06 PM

I actually use .wav , and it isnt just a post-rendering problem...as ill record video and audio then drag it into vegas to sync it- then find i have audio and video of different length!

I line them up and sync them, but they just drift out of sync.

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Nov 30 2008, 02:48 PM

I had this problem in the past and I suspect it is due to the webcam not accurately synching - maybe a limitation of webcams in general.

When I do the same with a MiniDV cam it works perfectly.

Posted by: Fran Nov 30 2008, 02:55 PM

I'll try the .wav solution next time I record the song just in case.

What I do is record the video with the webcam and the audio through Pandora, and I obtain a .wmv video file and an .mp3 file. Then I close both Reaper and quickcam program and all I use is Movie Maker to put both files together into a vid with sound, and that's were the problem appears.
Funny thing is short (2 min) videos don't have a problem at all, it's only with longer ones that it happens.

Maybe it's due to the webcam's video recording, which adds some lag... if that's the case I guess there's no solution. I'll let you guys know if I manage to eliminate the lag.

Posted by: Vinod Saranga Nov 30 2008, 03:12 PM

Yes this supposes that it is  a problem in Webcam 

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Nov 30 2008, 04:11 PM

hmm, possibly you got some dropped frames during capturing of video mate. You can check out dropped frames usually in the status bar of the capturing applicaiton.

Posted by: Fran Nov 30 2008, 09:39 PM

One thing I didn't mention is that when I import the video in Movie Maker it "breaks" it in multiple smaller videos, although the original file was just one. I put them all into the timeline and in the end it's as if they were one.´

I guess that's normal movie maker behaviour though...

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 2 2008, 12:24 AM

Hmm, did you make sure you properly aligned them mate? Possibly every brake added a bit of time to your video and this is why video is late.

Posted by: Dejan Farkas Dec 2 2008, 12:34 AM

I believe that the problem lies in mp3, try compressing a wave file to mp3 and then check it's length.. mp3 will be shorter

Recording the sound in wave format (PCM uncompressed) will avoid the problem. I remember when I was recording the little finger workout lesson, I exported the backing to mp3 and then recorded the lead while listening the mp3 file, and when imported the recorded mp3 file to cubase it was out of sync.. so I stick to wave

Posted by: Fran Dec 2 2008, 05:55 PM

Ok I just tried making the movie rendering the sound as a .wav instead of .mp3 file, and with the .wav file the problem is much smaller!

Before (with mp3 as sound file) half the clip (7 minutes long) wasn't in synch. Now I manage to have almost the whole thing in synch, I only get a minor lag on the first or last minute (I can choose where by dragging the sound timeline in movie maker...), which isn't as big as before, so all in all I can tell that the .wav file minimized the problem quite a bit.

It's not 100% solved, but much better than before. Thanks guys.

And, of course, any further suggestions/tips to completely erradicate the problem are more than welcome

Posted by: Dejan Farkas Dec 2 2008, 06:25 PM

You're welcome

I never recorded video directly to WMV format, maybe this causes a problem as well, try if possible DV-AVI or MPEG

Posted by: Fran Dec 2 2008, 08:08 PM

I use the logitech program to record, and I'm afraid it only allows recording in .wmv

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 2 2008, 08:21 PM

You can cut or slow down a video a bit to remove the issue mate.

Posted by: Fran Dec 2 2008, 08:25 PM

Hmmm, how to slow it down or increase its speed?

I think it will be really hard to get the exact speed, at first it looks good, both sound an image, then after some minutes it starts to be out of synch.

Or I can also make it start a bit out of synch, and then after a minute it stays fine until the end. It's weird.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 5 2008, 08:25 PM

You can slow it down easily in Vegas, but if you use other video editing app, just cut the video a bit, and move it by a notch to the right in the part where you see the sync problem mate. I hope this can help.

Posted by: Fran Dec 5 2008, 11:49 PM

Ok I see Ivan , but wouldn't that leave a half-second blank screen in the middle of the vid?

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 6 2008, 12:47 AM

The only way for that to work is to have such a small sync issue so the transition is not even noticeable. You mentioned that you have very small latency now, so you can sort of copy one small portion of the video from the previous frames and insert there. Of course if sync is out for half of second, than you should find another solution. Again I recommend using Vegas for this cause Movie Maker is lot less precise with these things.

Posted by: Fran Jan 7 2009, 08:31 PM

Just tried today with my new laptop running windows vista, and the video came out fine!

Only difference from last time is the computer, windows vista & its new version of movie maker. I also rendered the sound in .wav just in case. I'll do anther try with .mp3 this week, see if that also works.

Just recorded one 7 minute long video, I hope it wasn't a coincidence. I hope the quality is consistent now, once I've shot a few more vids, I'll post again.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jan 8 2009, 05:08 PM

This should help Matt in solving his problem as well, thanks for sharing Fran, and glad you got the problem solved

Posted by: Daniel Robinson Aug 16 2009, 05:43 AM

Hey Fran, i use Windows Movie maker as well.


The thing with cutting the vid into little pieces sometimes the software cuts frames that were not whole numbers I really dont know how it decides where to cut.

On the vid capture screen is a check box that says "split into clips when the wizard finishes" Make sure the box is unchecked so it doesnt chop it up


This way the vid remains intact.

I was having this same problem with sync even streaming the vid and sound because it was rounding the clips it chopped

Daniel

Posted by: Fran Aug 16 2009, 01:52 PM

Thanks Daniel!

That might very well be the solution, as now I'm using vista's version of movie maker and it doesn't cut the vid in small pieces, and I don't have the problem anymore. Good to know why and how to avoid it in the future, just in case