Mark Birsching Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 I recently updated to 3.10.12 and ran into a problem I had not seen before. If I play song all the way through, it works fine and the audio matches the video. But, when working on part of a song and the Play Range is set to only play the part of the screen showing, then the audio gets off. It's a audio file I've used for years and is set for the correct bits per second (128). This is the first time it's happened on this audio file. If I play from the beginning, then it's fine again. Since I'm working on the final seconds of the song, it's annoying to have to replay the entire sequence just to check everything is in sync. It worked fine in 3.8.x and earlier, so is there something I need to change or a new option to check? Computer is plenty fast. Thoughts from anyone? Thanks! Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightson Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 Did you run this song through Audacity and make sure not only 128 bit rate, but also "constant bit rate" was selected? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe V Posted October 12, 2013 Share Posted October 12, 2013 Ditto with mine....I was sequencing just fine for particular parts for the past month (with 3.10.8) then I did an update to 3.10.12 (yesterday)now the play visible screen or anything but play full sequence is off on the audio track...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stanward Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Lightson is correct, be sure the mp3 file is 128bit and CBR (Constant Bit Rate). Or like some people, they only use Wave files and no mp3s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted October 21, 2013 Share Posted October 21, 2013 Open the sequence and change the state of 'Use Internal Media'. If it's off, turn it on or vice versa. Does the problem go away? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Birsching Posted October 21, 2013 Author Share Posted October 21, 2013 Mike - I'll have to check and get back to you when I get home from work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kzaas Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Open the sequence and change the state of 'Use Internal Media'. If it's off, turn it on or vice versa. Does the problem go away?Thanks Mike, That seems to have corrected my sync problem. I have been using this song for a long time now and knew it was CBR at 128, but I still ran it through Audacity again but that didn't fix it. I turned my "Use Internal Media" on, and that corrected it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 When we (LOR) say things like CBR 128K RULES, that is really a gross over-simplification that typically fixes 99.9% of the problems out there. The reason is that by re-encoding the file in question (via LAME), we get rid of the 'weirdness' that may be screwing up WMP. Now, most of the time that weirdness has to do with VBR coding. Sometimes however, it has more to do with how the data was encoded - even with CBR. The MP3 standard doesn't really specify bit-for-bit what an encoding should look like. So if you run the same PCM data through 2 different MP3 encoders, you will most likely get 2 different files out the back end. They may sound the same, but the actual bits are going to be different. ...And that is where a problem sometimes comes in. Audio decoders can just 'do their best' and/or 'throw away' stuff that isn't correct. Usually without impacting the sound quality. Unfortunately, programs like LOR S3 can't do that. We rely on WMP to give us accurate (to the ms) timings. When it starts throwing away incorrectly coded information, the timing and the audio get out of sync. The same thing can happen on the decoding side of things. The decoder is responsible for taking the MP3 data and producing a PCM bitstream from it. To do that, it is not just looking at the current time, but also before and after the time in question. 2 different decoders could look at an identical MP3 file and produce 2 completely different PCM streams. Again, the decoder could look at this current 'chunk-o-stuff', decode it into something invalid, and throw it away. So every-once-in-a-while we see a problem with an MP3 that by all rights should be PERFECT: It's CBR. It's 128K. It was encoded with LAME. Yet, it still goes south. Welcome to the world of dealing with media. That's one of the reasons we've changed media handling in 3.9/3.10. We will continue to work on it in 3.11 and future releases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viennaxmas Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Why not simply use linear wave PCM files? Disk space is cheap and converting to wave also not a problem. Most of us run the songs through some program anyway before using them in a show and all LOR users could save a lot of headache by going linear. I know upconverting from MP3 does not restore the lost quality but to simply eliminate this as a possible source for trouble saves time for other things.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kzaas Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 So is it actually better to use wave files? No sync problems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Birsching Posted October 22, 2013 Author Share Posted October 22, 2013 Open the sequence and change the state of 'Use Internal Media'. If it's off, turn it on or vice versa. Does the problem go away?Mike: I re-ran the file through Audacity (a newer version) and the problem seems to have gone away. If it comes back, I'll try using the internal media option. Thanks for your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Why not simply use linear wave PCM files? Disk space is cheap and converting to wave also not a problem. Most of us run the songs through some program anyway before using them in a show and all LOR users could save a lot of headache by going linear. I know upconverting from MP3 does not restore the lost quality but to simply eliminate this as a possible source for trouble saves time for other things.... Good question. Here's the answer: Did that. Got the T-Shirt. Returned it for our money back. The original idea was to create PCM WAV files right off the bat. 3.10.0 in fact does use PCM WAV internally, and assumes that ALL media can be converted to WAV,for the exact reasons you describe. Here's the problem -- WMP can NOT change the playback speed of WAV files properly. Grrrrrr..... Then we discovered that due to encoding issues (like the ones above) we were not able to reliably create WAV all the time. Double Grrrrr...... As it turns out, there was no one answer to all of our media problems. Starting with 3.10.8, we create 2 different internal files - one of which is PCM WAV. The system will then look and attempt to choose the best of all 3 files created, Original, PCM, or Internal for the task at hand. The 'Use Internal Media' controls a lot of how that happens. When that option is OFF, the only choice the system has is the original file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dntknowdou Posted October 27, 2013 Share Posted October 27, 2013 I have been having this issue as well but with version 3.9.0 I downloaded Audacity but not sure what to do with it. Also don't know where to find were to change the state of internal media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Posted October 27, 2013 Share Posted October 27, 2013 3.9.0 doesn't have an 'internal media' setting. A PDF of how to use Audacity can be found here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dntknowdou Posted October 29, 2013 Share Posted October 29, 2013 Thanks for your help Don you solved my problem. Corey L. Johnston Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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